Help with CPS2 SFZ2 Asia (grey) - And interesting photos!

[hatmoose]

Hi Team

I bought this the other day off a local auction site as "non working" - its the only grey CPS2 set in my collection and I've always had a soft spot for the SFA/SFZ series

The shells looked absolutely rotten when I got them, but have cleaned up nicely. The sticker looks a lot worse than it actually is, those gouges out of it are actually gunk stuck onto it - I havent started work on it yet but with some gentle heat from a hairdrier I have high hopes that it can be saved.


I'm guessing it was used in an illegal money laundering operation at some time (arcades are all cash baby!) because there is no serial number sticker


The grey boards are interesting because they were a lot more "hand made" - the program roms look like they were done in the factory, but hand written. I guess it's possible that they are fake, but it's a pretty low-value board to fake, and the factory seals are all intact, so chances are it's factory. The clips are shiney stainless instead of the normal painted black, and the motherboard doesnt have the normal colored sticker on it. miraculously the battery hasnt leaked, and is still showing 3.6v


So fun times! Hopefully these pictures are enough fresh new content that you will consider helping me fix it - more on that in the next post

 

[hatmoose]

Continued from the exciting part 1

board is in good physical condition, battery is intact and supplying current. I've done the basic stuff like cleaning the jamma edge and reseating the Mask/program roms

When I fire it up I get a garbled white screen - at some times it looks like there might be a picture behind the garbled whiteness, but that could just be my imagination

Video #1 in portrait orientation - which my kids inform me is the new hotness

And the same thing - in landscape for the non-tiktok generation

Things I do have
Logic probe, osilliscope, infinikeys
Things I do not have
Any other grey CPS2 A or B boards

 

[djsheep]

Have you dumped and checked the ROMs against MAME?

 

[hatmoose]

Have you dumped and checked the ROMs against MAME?

Nope - such a thing is beyond my current capabilities (no eprom reader/writer). Is this a common symptom of bad program data? I haven’t reseated all of the chips yet.

I do have a complete spare set of USA xmen vs SF chips from a battery suicide board, shall I swap them over and see what happens?

 

[hidaniel]

Regarding the clips, of the five A/B board pairs I have, four of which are USA and one is a rental, four came with stainless clips and only one had black clips.

 

[djsheep]

Nope - such a thing is beyond my current capabilities (no eprom reader/writer). Is this a common symptom of bad program data? I haven’t reseated all of the chips yet.

I do have a complete spare set of USA xmen vs SF chips from a battery suicide board, shall I swap them over and see what happens?

It’s worth checking them against MAME in case they’re undumped and to make sure the data is right

 

[jesfknkrys]

Nope - such a thing is beyond my current capabilities (no eprom reader/writer). Is this a common symptom of bad program data? I haven’t reseated all of the chips yet.

I do have a complete spare set of USA xmen vs SF chips from a battery suicide board, shall I swap them over and see what happens?

Unfortunately, you are unable to use the X-men vs Street Fighter roms because they require a F PAL and you have a D PAL currently installed.

Potentional issues:
1. Bent or missing pins on the A or B board where they connect to each other.

2. I believe the roms were taken from an Orange CPS2 Board(Brazil) or someone just programmed them to that region. Gray board is supposed to be ASIA Region, to the best of my knowledge. Hard to tell what region the current roms are actually programmed for without verifying using a eprom reader.

Since the battery looks original and has a charge, i would assume that your board has a different set of keys stored than the ones required to run the game.

If you have an infinikey, try removing the battery and then discharging the capacitors next to it so the old keys are removed. If they are not removed, the infinikey will not be able to store the new keys. With the battery removed and no longer needed, solder the infinikey to the board and solder the correct Solder points to reflect what should be your correct game sfzab(according to your rom labels).

https://www.arcade-projects.com/attachments/89a26281-db97-454b-a5a9-a7e50fd20c16-jpeg.77968/



Let me know if you need further assistance. Post pictures of your work of possible.

 

[kazuo]

He could replace the PAL and change the jumpers to convert it? But really it's probably better to just throw an infinikey on there first and see what happens.

No serial number doesn't really mean much beyond the original owner possibly reselling it and wanting to cover their tracks. This was very common back in the day, especially for MVS cartridges. Doesn't really indicate anything to do with money laundering, IMO.

 

[hatmoose]

Finally got around to finishing this one off today.

The A board is bad - I'll write about that later - it boots to those weird white lines regardless of the game

The B board just needed some infinikey loving - After a little bit of trial and error I discovered that this was "Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha" - I actually didnt even know that this variant existed, so there was a lot of error in the trial and error.

To me this is actually a really cool variant of SFZ2; it has about a bazillion characters inclusing several that arent in vanilla, interesting costumes, and interesting game modes.

So I was actually quite happy with that - was expecting vanilla SFZ2 - got the much more interesting SZF2-Alpha in English!

 

[jesfknkrys]

Glad you got it working.