Konami Rock ‘n Rage

[Supergun]

In the meantime can you confirm pin 25 (A8 of 16C is now toggling?

Yes. I just checked this and I can confirm that it is toggling.

Now just to get the output enable on Rom 15C to work. In the mean time can you probe the ram? I think its the 6264 Ram according to mame source code. Pin 1 is n/c or should be. Doesnt matter what logic level it is. All address and data lines should be toggling. Gnd low, Vcc high. CE OE and WE should be toggling as that controls if the ram is being read or written too

Yes as well. I just confirmed the 6264SL ram at 14C is acting just as you describe above. All address lines are toggling, the ground pin is low and the the vcc pin is high.

However, there is another 6264 ram at position E by the edge of the board. It is a different package as well. So should I probe that one as well?

EDIT: A quick probe of that ram chip showed everything the same with 2 exceptions; Pins 20 and 26. 20 was low and 26 was high.

What are the changes on screen now that 15C is working

Well, different garbage on screen but still garbage. It does tend to move and roll more often now however. I will post some screen shots shortly.

EDIT: just to answer this question here:

“…that LS138@14A: Double check if you got probe set correctly and confirm if all pins are high except ground on pin 8? You mentioned pins 4 and 5 connects to Konami Custom chip 007842? There isn't such thing. Did you mean the 007327 ?

This was my mistake. I read the chip number from the chip surface which as you can see looks like it says 007842. However, if you look at the silkscreen on the PCB, it is 007342. So I simply misread the 3 as an 8 because it is so faded on the chip itself.

As for the LS138, it now reads as follows:
Pins 1, 2, and 3 are BOTH and Pin 8 is LO. All other pins are HI.

 

[Monstermug]

Edit: I realised I haven't slept yet so better reply to when i'm not zombified as i'm getting things mixed up.

 

[Supergun]

I completely understand. It’s a very busy time of the year and there’s lots going on. And I’ll have to check out this weekend for a few days myself for family matters.

One thing I would like to note here is that I did double check the rom contents of the program EPROMs and they still match perfectly to the mame set. And, one of my eprom programmers has an IC tester so I can test these TTL chips as I remove and replace them if you request it.

(as an example I tested the LS32 last night and it failed so it was a bad chip)

 

[stj]

thats good, so you can probably test sram then?

 

[Supergun]

This is the main unit I’m currently using.

https://www.bkprecision.com/products/discontinued/864-universal-device-programmer.html

As far as I know, these are the 3 RAM devices on this board:

6264 at position 16F
6264SL at position 14C
2128 at position 10C

And I already replaced all 3 way back earlier in my troubleshooting. But yes, I still have the old chips here for testing.

 

[Monstermug]

It would have been more accurate if you had a scope. Knowing our luck the fault will be from an invalid address line not outputting the correct levels required for TTL or a damaged quartz crystal amongst other things. Although the ram can be probed that only helps if there is a catastrophic failure in the ram chip. Like I have said before, ram can and often will try to stay alive. Imagine a Rom with bad data on it. It will still probe the same.

Not had a chance to review what you have said but initial thoughts were that there are still 3 things to address. the G enable for Rom @ 15c. The all high data lines for the main CPU and something else which I have forgotten. Keep updating this thread and I will review it when I have the time as it's getting difficult to read over the three pages. But by now you should have learn how to pull data sheets from online. Read it and understand how each ttl should function by looking at the description, pinouts and truth tables/logic diagrams. Probe it and work out if its doing as it should and if not follow that lead to the next device where you rinse and repeat. Put what you have learnt into action, as well as document it on this thread so it can be reviewed.

Also if you have some sort of bent device, you can carefully prize that 007342 @ 11F out of it's socket and inspect/reseat it. It's a PGA chip (predessor to the infamous BGA crap) Its also the custom graphics processor which I had initially been confused with the "DAC" (the other larger black flat custom) on the pcb. Make sure u dont bend any pins or put it back wrong way round. Sometimes reseating this will help stable graphics glitches but it shouldn't make the pcb not boot.

 

[Supergun]

the G enable for Rom @ 15c.

Yes. This pin which originally gave no reading whatsoever and was extremely sensitive to the touch causing the on screen garbage to shift, is now reading HI with normal and pulsing with activity.

The all high data lines for the main CPU and something else which I have forgotten.

This has had NO CHANGE. I just probed it again and they are all still reading HI and no pulse either.

by now you should have learned how to pull data sheets from online. Read it and understand how each ttl should function by looking at the description, pinouts and truth tables/logic diagrams.

Well, yes, in that I found this site which lists every TTL and all those details:

https://www.futurlec.com/IC74LS00Series.shtml

Also if you have some sort of bent device, you can carefully prize that 007342 @ 11F out of it's socket and inspect/reseat it. It's a PGA chip (predessor to the infamous BGA crap) Its also the custom graphics processor which I had initially been confused with the "DAC" (the other larger black flat custom) on the pcb. Make sure u dont bend any pins or put it back wrong way round. Sometimes reseating this will help stable graphics glitches but it shouldn't make the pcb not boot.

I do have several different kinds of extractor tools that I use which accommodate the various sizes and shapes of IC’s, but to be honest, I don’t want to touch that chip unless absolutely necessary. Because when I removed it to replace it with a new one from a donor board, it was extremely fragile and two of the corner pins were damaged. So I can’t risk damaging the new one since I don’t have another one to spare.

One question I do have is about the crystals. This board has 2 of them. Presumably, a 3.58 MHz for sound and a 24 MHz for the main game. (and awhile back I replaced the 24 MHz one as a precaution) But my question is this. When you mentioned “quartz”, do you mean “clock” or “crystal” or is that something else? (reason I ask is for clarity but also because I know that some CPU chips have “clock” built in while others have a pin for “external clock”.

 

[Monstermug]

his pin which originally gave no reading whatsoever and was extremely sensitive to the touch causing the on screen garbage to shift, is now reading HI with normal and pulsing with activity.

Is it high or pulsing?

This has had NO CHANGE. I just probed it again and they are all still reading HI and no pulse either.

You may need to probe it between the resistor pack and the LS245. If it's still high this needs to be address. The 74LS245 is a Octal Bus Transceiver which allows a two way communication between A and B and controlled by the direction pin. The OE pin which is active low will shut off this communication. As it is low whatever is trying to communicate with the main cpu isn't able too. So you need to investigate why OE is low.

I do have several different kinds of extractor tools that I use which accommodate the various sizes and shapes of IC’s, but to be honest, I don’t want to touch that chip unless absolutely necessary. Because when I removed it to replace it with a new one from a donor board, it was extremely fragile and two of the corner pins were damaged. So I can’t risk damaging the new one since I don’t have another one to spare.

Yes it was something I was going to suggest later on in the steps but if you have already swapped it (which wasn't really necessary) then you can ignore that

One question I do have is about the crystals. This board has 2 of them. Presumably, a 3.58 MHz for sound and a 24 MHz for the main game. (and awhile back I replaced the 24 MHz one as a precaution) But my question is this. When you mentioned “quartz”, do you mean “clock” or “crystal” or is that something else? (reason I ask is for clarity but also because I know that some CPU chips have “clock” built in while others have a pin for “external clock”.

I was referring the the quartz inside the oscillators. Those crystals are mechanical and are manufactured to extreme precision to produce clock signals with high resolutions.

 

[Supergun]

So I just replaced the LS245 at 15B.
It was giving unreliable readings and it visually looked bad to me. The corrosion was far worse then the remaining original IC’s on the board.

(and I also replaced the LS174 at 15A.)

Before:

After:

And it finally came to life for me:

Details coming soon!

 

[Monstermug]

Well done. Didnt you replace the 245 already? So basically the cpu wasn't able to communicate to anything via the data lines because the bus transceiver was only going one way. Enjoy its a fun and whacky game. Crushes me silly as I've not yet seen the second stage. So the morale of this story is rather than replace ic's blindly, use a systematic approach to find the fault

 

[Supergun]

So I want to say thanks to everyone here who helped me analyze, diagnose, and repair this board. And a very special thanks goes to Monstermug. Not just for sharing his knowledge and experience, but specifically for extending kindness to me through patience.

I still have a few more things that I need to do to the board. And I will be going back through this repair log to update it with higher quality pics (before & after) of what I did and where it led me.

Also 2 major problems still remain:

The first one is an audio issue. The game seems to be perfectly fine with regards to music and sound effects. All of the BGM is present and all of the effects are also good. However, there are no voice effects. The game is supposed to have several of the typical Konami 80’s garbled voice samples throughout, but they are completely absent.

The second problem is an input issue. It seems like the start button input line is stuck ON. The second that I credit the game, it immediately starts rather then displaying the accumulated coin credits and waiting for the player to press start.

And the board doesn’t seem to have any kind of test or diagnostic mode as neither the service/test functions nor the dip switches seem to have any manner of accessing an input test screen.

For now, I plan to simply follow the start input trace from the edge connector to wherever it leads me and look for either a damaged input IC or a shorted input line.

 

[Monstermug]

Iirc that massive rectangular custom which you removed previously does inputs. Not the graphics one. Do you have a sound probe or a probe that can differentiate between analogue and digital signals? Imo it may be more likely to be some sort of dac fault which i think that custom is also used for. Will need to double check. Also check mame to see if your version has those vocals as i spent a few days, once trying to repair a valkyrie namco system 2 game which was "missing vocals" but turned out to be normal for that revision. Logs are somewhere here on AP forum.

Edit: Ignore the above comments. Talking out my ass.

 

[Monstermug]

Also i personally wouldnt edit anything as it may make replies hard to follow for any future repairers who read it. Just make. New post to clarify things instead.

Edit to the above: Just checked mame source code and the 007327 is responsible for the palette circuitry and not input nor sound dac as I had original assumed. So yeah trace inputs down to the component that doesn't respond when that input is selected. Probably a bad konami custom resistor pack.

As for sound, first distinguish if its a analogue or digital fault and go from there. According to mame source speech is controlled by the VLM5030. You can start at the YM3012 DAC to see if the sound if sound is missing from there first. There are two YM3012. I assume the one that is closest to the YM2151 does the sound and the other one does the speech. Then work your way back to that VLM5030.

Mame source code is excellent resource for finding out how hardware works btw. just google "x mame cpp" where x is the name of the game.

Also still not had time to dig out my own copy of Rock n Rage. I have to get a real ghostbusters fixed that is taking up my bench space atm. Had to make a long power cable so I can Slice the bottom board.

 

[Monstermug]

Any updates on this? Hate dead threads.

 

[Supergun]

check mame to see if your version has those vocals…

Yes, there are only 2 known rom sets for this game, Japan and World, and both of them have vocals. Also, all 8 of the fresh EPROMs that I burned for testing match the checksums of the originals perfectly. And lastly, at one point during my troubleshooting, I actually heard some voice samples randomly come out of the speakers, so they are definitely present.

Also i personally wouldnt edit anything as it may make replies hard to follow for any future repairers who read it. Just make. New post to clarify things instead.

Agreed. I will just leave it as it is then.

Just checked mame source code and the 007327 is responsible for the palette circuitry and not input nor sound dac as I had original assumed. So yeah trace inputs down to the component that doesn't respond when that input is selected. Probably a bad konami custom resistor pack.

I have not done what you’ve asked here yet, but I can tell you that some of those Konami resistor packs that are located between the edge connector and the input chips do indeed look visibly rough and have been tilted so many times in each direction that they are ready to crack off.

I will check to see if I have any of these on my Konami parts board so I can switch them out. I certainly don’t trust them.

As for sound, first distinguish if its a analogue or digital fault and go from there. According to mame source speech is controlled by the VLM5030. You can start at the YM3012 DAC to see if the sound if sound is missing from there first. There are two YM3012. I assume the one that is closest to the YM2151 does the sound and the other one does the speech. Then work your way back to that VLM5030.

I will try this next and report back.

Any updates on this? Hate dead threads.

I had put the board aside for awhile to clear my head and was working on another board to distract myself. But I’m ready to revisit it now and still very much wanting to get it 100%.

I will post some pics here in a bit to show you some of the work that I’ve done to the board since my last post.

 

[Supergun]

As for sound, first distinguish if its a analogue or digital fault and go from there. According to mame source speech is controlled by the VLM5030. You can start at the YM3012 DAC to see if the sound if sound is missing from there first. There are two YM3012. I assume the one that is closest to the YM2151 does the sound and the other one does the speech. Then work your way back to that VLM5030.

So here’s where I’m at with this. The VLM5030 is clearly present on the board, no problem there. And there is a chip on the board located between the sound section and the 6809 processor which is 24 pins and looks exactly like a Yamaha YM2151. However, as Konami often did, all of the writing was scratched off making it unidentifiable. But again, I’m fairly certain it is a YM2151. Here’s a pic:

Now, that said. I don’t see and can’t find a YM3012 DAC anywhere on the board, let alone 2 of them. The closest I can find are two 14 pin NEC UPC324 chips, which are amplifiers. So conceivably, 1 of them could be for sound/music and the other for voice. And here is a pic of that chip:

So please let me know if perhaps these are the 2 chips you were referencing?

Thanks!
Billy

 

[Monstermug]

Should be silkscreened UPC324 on the pcb. Sorry normally YM2151 is used with YM3012 hence I have suggested it.

 

[stj]

the 324 should be a version of the LM324
you can get a datasheet and compare the inputs to the outputs

 

[stj]

from mame:
GX620 PWB302109A
|------------------------------------------------------|
| LA4445 VOL1 JP1 LM324 6809 6309 |
| VOL2 JP2 YM2151 |
| YM3012 3.579545MHz |
| |
| CN1 |
| LM324 007420 |
| 6116 620G3.11C 6264 620N2.15C |
| 620N1.16C|
|J |
|A |
|M 24MHz |
|M 620D4.6E |
|A |-------| |
| VLM5030 |007342 | |
| DSW3(4) DSW2( | | 6264 |
| DSW1( 620D11B.7F | |620D6B.15F |
| |-----------| 620G10B.8F|-------| 620D5B.16F |
| | | |
| | 007327 | 620D9.11G |
| | | 620G11A.7G 620D8.12G 620D6A.15G |
| |-----------| 620D10A.8G 620D7.13G 620D5A.16G|
|------------------------------------------------------|

Notes:
6809 clock 1.500MHz [24/16]
6309 clock 3.000MHz [24/8]
VLM5030 clock 3.579545MHz
YM2151 clock 3.579545MHz
VSync 60Hz
HSync 15.16kHz
JP1/JP2 - 4-pin jumper to set stereo/mono output
CN1 - 4 pin right speaker sound output connector
6116 - 2k x8 SRAM (DIP24)
6264 - 8k x8 SRAM (DIP2
Konami custom ICs -
007342 3905 67 3147B (PGA181)
007420 3916 67 23 52 A (SDIP64)
007327 (custom ceramic wide DIP40)


this forum software *really* hates spaces, tabulation or fixed width characters!!

 

[Monstermug]

from mame:
GX620 PWB302109A
|------------------------------------------------------|
| LA4445 VOL1 JP1 LM324 6809 6309 |
| VOL2 JP2 YM2151 |
| YM3012 3.579545MHz |
| |
| CN1 |
| LM324 007420 |
| 6116 620G3.11C 6264 620N2.15C |
| 620N1.16C|
|J |
|A |
|M 24MHz |
|M 620D4.6E |
|A |-------| |
| VLM5030 |007342 | |
| DSW3(4) DSW2( | | 6264 |
| DSW1( 620D11B.7F | |620D6B.15F |
| |-----------| 620G10B.8F|-------| 620D5B.16F |
| | | |
| | 007327 | 620D9.11G |
| | | 620G11A.7G 620D8.12G 620D6A.15G |
| |-----------| 620D10A.8G 620D7.13G 620D5A.16G|
|------------------------------------------------------|

Notes:
6809 clock 1.500MHz [24/16]
6309 clock 3.000MHz [24/8]
VLM5030 clock 3.579545MHz
YM2151 clock 3.579545MHz
VSync 60Hz
HSync 15.16kHz
JP1/JP2 - 4-pin jumper to set stereo/mono output
CN1 - 4 pin right speaker sound output connector
6116 - 2k x8 SRAM (DIP24)
6264 - 8k x8 SRAM (DIP2
Konami custom ICs -
007342 3905 67 3147B (PGA181)
007420 3916 67 23 52 A (SDIP64)
007327 (custom ceramic wide DIP40)


this forum software *really* hates spaces, tabulation or fixed width characters!!

Yes that reminds me where I got the YM3012 from. Okay So I've got my YM3012 mixed with the LM324 in my previous post sorry for confusion. So no voice, I would start at the LM324 (not YM3012) next to the VLM5030. Hopefully that custom VLM5030 isn't an on board voice synthesiser and dac all in one.

Sorry had to edit this as i was getting the VLM5030 mixed up with the 007420 (insert facepalm emote here). Hard to explain what I am thinking sometimes but bare with me