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MongoTX

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Just picked up a G-loc. The game plays fine but it has horizontal lines through the background. From what I have read this is a bad Rom.

  • I see that you can get a Rom testing program for afterburner 2 will this work on G-loc as well? (not sure it works with the Y-board)
  • Is there a schematic that can help point me to the set of Roms that might be bad?
  • What type of Rom would I use to replace this with?
  • Suggestions on a good Rom writer.
Am I way off track?

Thank you for your help!!
 

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It’s hard to tell from your pics, but is the horizontal lines through the entire display or only certain tiles? If it’s only certain tiles then a ROM issue is likely the culprit. If the lines run through the entire display then it’s more likely an issue with line buffer RAM.

Schematics for the Sega Y Board hardware are here:

https://arcarc.xmission.com/PDF_Arcade_Manuals_and_Schematics/Galaxy Force Schematics.pdf

Before programming a new EPROM, try carefully removing each socketed ROM chip from its socket, blow out the socket with compressed air, and reinstall the ROM. If the legs of the ROM look dirty or tarnished, scrub them clean with an emery board or a Q Tip with isopropyl alcohol.

If cleaning and resocketing the ROMs doesn’t help anything then you can move on to isolating your culprit. The schematics may help if you’re knowledgeable of electronics, but I think you’d have faster diagnostic results if you dumped all the ROMs with an EPROM programmer and compared the checksum of each dumped file against MAME. I believe every EPROM on System Y boards is a 27C1000 chip - check the part number on the EPROMs on the board already to be sure.

We have a thread discussing cheap quality EPROM writers here:
https://www.arcade-projects.com/thr...ammer-for-most-arcade-hobbyists-to-have.4046/

You can also check for a faulty ROM by probing each one with a logic probe and checking for incorrect signaling, as per my tutorial video here:
View: https://youtu.be/2PAtTIAijeA?si=wHx8-pbWlhXcZCeR

Finally, if the horizontal lines are only running through specific background tiles or sprite tiles, you can try isolating which ROM provides the art for those tiles by using MAME. Using a backup ROM set of G-LOC, use a hex editor to write zeroes over the graphics ROM file you want to test. Then launch G-LOC in MAME through the command line (so you can bypass the “incorrect checksum” error), play the game and see if the same tiles are corrupted in MAME. If so, you found a match - focus your attention on that ROM on the physical board and the connections that drive it. If not, restore the zeroed-out ROM from backup and move on to the next.

You can find out which ROMs drive which subsystem by looking in the MAME source code. The Y-Board source is here; for G-LOC, scroll down to Line 1883.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/sega/segaybd.cpp
 
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Thank you for spending the time to write this up! This is great info. The lines go through all of the background the objects like the heads up and the overlays look great.

Looking at the schematics I can't find the line buffer RAM. Is this something that is easy to replace?

Thank you again.
 
I did some reading up on the Y Board hardware as well as firing up G-LOC in MAME, and I learned a few things that should help with your diagnosis.

First of all, G-LOC has a Self Diagnosis mode that you can load up through the Service Menu. I highly recommend starting there if you haven't run it already. If you're lucky, it'll find the problem for you and indicate which chip(s) are your culprit.

Screenshot 2023-10-18 123443.pngScreenshot 2023-10-18 123506.png

Second, here's a writeup on the specs of Y Board and the custom chips used:
https://segaretro.org/Sega_Y_Board#Technical_specifications

Y Board basically has two sprite rendering systems:
- the "bsprites" are rendered with the same chips used in the Sega System 16B arcade board and are used for non-scaling, non-rotating sprites. The art used on the HUD and overlays are rendered with this system, and I think it's working fine on your board since there aren't any lines going through them.
- the "ysprites" are rendered with hardware specific to the Y Board and are used for sprites that can be scaled and rotated, including the background landscape and enemy airplanes. I think this system has the problem on your board, but since the lines are going through everything (and not just some of the tiles), I don't think the culprit is a specific ROM chip. Rather, I think the culprit is in the framebuffer RAM that holds the pixels being drawn by the "ysprites" hardware before being composited with the output from the "bsprites" hardware into the final image.

The "ysprites" system processes data like this:
- the 315-5305 custom chip is the "ysprites" sprite generator. It reads sprite data out of the EPROMs, and passes the data on for transformation.
- Two 315-5306 custom chips take the sprite data handed to them by the 315-5305, then apply scaling and rotation to the data. The transformed data is written out into 32 static RAM chips - 16 per processor. This is the "ysprites" framebuffer.
- Finally, the 315-5312 "video mixer" custom chip handles mixing the video from the "bsprites" pipeline and the two 315-5306 "ysprites" pipelines into the final output image.

I think your culprit is one or more of the 32 static RAM chips that make up the framebuffer for the 315-5306 chips - they should be located along the top edge of the bottom Video Board. The schematics for each 315-5306 pipeline are pages 13 and 14. Isolating which specific SRAM chip of the 32 is your culprit won't be easy - you could probe the RAM signal lines with an oscilloscope and see which chip has signals that look "different" from the others, or you could just go with the "shotgun" approach and replace all 32 of them on principle. Soldering skills will be required to desolder the old RAM chips and install the new RAM chips. You can also test the RAM chips once they've been removed from the board with an EPROM programmer - most programmers have a RAM Test function. That way, you'd only have to replace the RAM chips that test Bad out of circuit.

Please note that I don't have a Y Board myself, and everything I just wrote is my interpretation of the MAME source and specs - my writeup may be inaccurate.

One more simple thing you can try besides removing/cleaning/reinstalling all the socketed chips - try seperating the circuit boards from each other, clean the connectors with electrical contact cleaner, and then connect them back together. If you're lucky, a bad inter-board connection could be your cultprit.
 
You are the man! Thank you so much for the direction and help. I ran the memory test and it looks good. (It also shows you how bad the screen looks.) I did notice that C70 was only soldered on one end and the other end looks like it was never connected it attaches to chip 315-5306. I'll take a picture tomorrow. Would they put a cap on a board and not connect up both ends? I hate to connect it up and fry that chip.

Also, bad night as you can see I bent the crap out of two pins on one of the connectors. Does anyone know what connector this is so I can replace it?

Again thank you for all you help!!
 

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I got the pins fixed. Moving back to the board. I've attached a picture of C70 which is not connected. It has a very long leg, making me think it was never connected. I am thinking I will solder it down and see what happens.
 

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