What's new
Bumping this up a little to reconfirm the later revision Red Sun boards with the Jamma notch does not sync with an MS9 chassis. I just tested it on my NAC.
As a side note it runs fine on an MS8 Nanao.

I will be applying the video ground fix soon since its an easy fix. Thanks to @kuze for documenting that fix.
Kinda hilarious honestly with a couple of these shortcuts on the audio and video side and skimping on the bypass caps. (Still need to add those)

The stereo sound fix works and the board now sounds super great. Shout outs to @twistedsymphony for putting some leg work in on that and documenting.


Furthermore, (btw the board I got was from w45050). The default roms he included might be straight up original roms that got flashed. There are sockets clearly added for some of the respective roms as well. (compared to some photos I seen of these boards)

It plays fine with these roms I suppose but there is definitely some glitching with the BG sprite layer on my board. The BG layer will change colors to blue. Eventually it updates and returns to normal. It only seems to happen at random on stages 2 or 4. Its similar to the glitch you get on stage 2 when bombing the flamingos, where you rarely get BG sprite glitching with like the color pallet or something (at least when I used to play in mame.)
Except this will linger randomly as far as the next 2 stages sometimes and randomly will pop in and out.

I am assuming this might be related to what @Hatsune Mike mentioned and the patched roms he made to correct some issues?
Once I have a chance to burn those roms I will reevaluate the issue.

Anyways this thread is a wealth of info and appreciate its existence haha


Edit: Last note before I forget oddly there is a youtube video I found online documenting one of the older revision boards uses a bootleg Yamaha synth and it does really weird things if the 5V power drifts below or above 5.00V. Like the sound channels cut off or change.
Sure enough looking at some photos online it seems that some of the older revisions use some kind of weirdo bootleg stand-in for the Yamaha.

Check your board and see. I would assume that could be an easy fix if your board didnt have an official chip. Just cross reference the data sheet if you want to play it super safe on swapping that chip with a real YM2151.

I also included a photo of my board for your viewing pleasures
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20210215_003448.jpg
    IMG_20210215_003448.jpg
    209.6 KB · Views: 167
Last edited:
I picked up a bootleg Battle Garegga from eBay seller w45050. Aside from the audio and video ground fixes mentioned in this thread, are the @Hatsune Mike roms needed? The board is already socketed. I can dump these roms and compare, but just curious if anyone knows if these boot sellers are already applying patched versions.

I do have audio sync issues with 2 different monitors. I'm hoping the ground fix with resolve this.
 
Shortly after this thread started gaining traction is when w45050 started selling these boards pre-converted and jacking up the price.

I would recommend dumping and verifying the ROMs just to make sure but I'd bet money on them being the same (or maybe an older version of HM's ROMs if he was too lazy to keep up with the thread)
 
I'd bet money on them being the same (or maybe an older version of HM's ROMs if he was too lazy to keep up with the thread)

I figured this was the case. I'll double check when I have some time. The priority at the moment is the video sync. My Blast City gets very angry when I connect this board.
 
The priority at the moment is the video sync. My Blast City gets very angry when I connect this board.
no problem with the video sync... the problem is that this board is missing video GROUND... solder a wire to the video ground pin on the JAMMA edge to any near by ground point and your Blast will no longer be angry.
 
Add me to the Bootleg Garegga V1 club.
The game out of the box had an error, would lock up, and would be unstable.
Doing some inspection of the shit work the previous owner did, I reflowed the TXT and BASE sockets to get rid of "AUDIO ERROR" on bootup.
That stabilized the board, and now it runs in circles.

Moving on to audio... I get none.
I decided to inspect the audio amp section.
My amp is pictured below and looks pretty worse for wear.
I assume I should replace it.
I replaced all the capacitors with their values, reflowed the amp section, and still get no audio.

Connecting the PCB to my MS9 in my NAC, I have no sync.
On my supergun, and my Wai Ya Blast City, it runs fine.
Any thoughts?
 

Attachments

  • 20210317_105200 (1).jpg
    20210317_105200 (1).jpg
    300.8 KB · Views: 168
  • 20210317_105209.jpg
    20210317_105209.jpg
    278.6 KB · Views: 142
  • 20210317_120906.jpg
    20210317_120906.jpg
    135.9 KB · Views: 140
  • s-l1600 (1).jpg
    s-l1600 (1).jpg
    194.2 KB · Views: 177
Add me to the Bootleg Garegga V1 club.
The game out of the box had an error, would lock up, and would be unstable.
Doing some inspection of the shit work the previous owner did, I reflowed the TXT and BASE sockets to get rid of "AUDIO ERROR" on bootup.
That stabilized the board, and now it runs in circles.

Moving on to audio... I get none.
I decided to inspect the audio amp section.
My amp is pictured below and looks pretty worse for wear.
I assume I should replace it.
I replaced all the capacitors with their values, reflowed the amp section, and still get no audio.

Connecting the PCB to my MS9 in my NAC, I have no sync.
On my supergun, and my Wai Ya Blast City, it runs fine.
Any thoughts?
I know you were sharing this with some of us earlier today and I didn't have time to give you my own thoughts.
Here's some observations things to work around or try to do.

===Sound and Amp===
- Multiple leads/legs to the amplifier package look broken in your photo.
- If you bridge the broken Amp legs with solder or a capacitor leg (repair the cracks) just to test and it still has issues then there may also be internal damages ( replace the amp).
- Verify continuity to the pads for the amp to something else near by as that amp looks mechanically damaged which could have broken a via or pad
- Check for power to the amp. Cross reference the data sheet
- Replace the amp.

- You will probably eventually want to replace some of those capacitor values as previously mentioned in the thread. Right now try to at least get audio.

- Check the Volume pot for damages.
- Check for physical damages to the volume pot. Check the solder joints.
- You can triple check the pot by using a multi meter and check for resistance (when adjusting) and or continuity

===Sync problems (Fix)===
- On these boards problems with sync on some chassis's like the MS9 is getting pretty well documented across either revision PCB. Remember @everten 's board had the same sync issue.
You will need to tie ground to your video ground pin on the boards Jamma edge. You can pull this from any solid ground point on the board.

Hope that helps buddy :)
 
Oh, Also please get a close up of the actual sound chip if you could?
I think based on the listing photos you showed me it came with a boot leg Yamaha.

If you really want to be "cash money" you could probably change that to an authentic Yamaha lol.
But the real concern was something I saw documented online where the voices on that bootleg chip do weird stuff depending on the voltage from the cabinet PSU.

My second revision board (with the Jamma Key cutout) has an authentic Yamaha chip, at least its branded as such lol.

I do not know if thats a one off issue though.

Heres the Youtube link:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nh28azaj0I
 
Just picked up one of these. Does anyone have suggestions on where to begin diagnosing this? I’m talking with the eBay seller and he suggests just reseating the socketed ICs. I suppose I’ll give that a shot before trying to send it back and get a refund
 

Attachments

  • 58CF31C6-A4C9-4A12-9029-3DCC84E9822B.jpeg
    58CF31C6-A4C9-4A12-9029-3DCC84E9822B.jpeg
    311.3 KB · Views: 89
Just picked up one of these. Does anyone have suggestions on where to begin diagnosing this? I’m talking with the eBay seller and he suggests just reseating the socketed ICs. I suppose I’ll give that a shot before trying to send it back and get a refund

The QC from these Chinese sellers is awful. Maybe reseat the ICs but whilst they're off the board reflow the sockets and check the rest of the PCB for dry joints.
 
I had one of these that had a bad socket reseating may help and is a good place to start as is the solder joints.
 
So far this is where I'm at
-re-flowed all of the sockets and some joints that looked spotty : still garbled
-pulled the sys ROM and verified that it was the byte swapped file from Yosai's post on page 1
-I then programmed a 27c800 that I had laying around with the character unlocked, no checksum file from page 3 : trying this out resulted in a black screen
-booting up with no sys rom also nets the garbled mess

-following this I started poking around the 68000 with a logic probe and noticed that there seems to be a general lack of activity
-I've verified that the sys and 68000 are both getting power

I'm going to try replacing the sys rom socket in case the eBay seller used a spotty one. What are the chances that the 68000 is dead?
 
Well it certainly could be a dead 68k but it also could be something else. In the semi-fictitious world where I know what I’m talking about here, I’d at least check pin15 which is the incoming clock signal on a 68k. No clock, no nothing. Then I’d check the reset line to see if it’s being held in reset by something.
 
I have seen one dead 68000 ever, so I would say do not remove that unless you've exhausted literally every other option.

Even then, that one was defective in that it started out sensibly, then spuriously jumped to nonsense addresses, which was identifiable on a logic analyzer. I've never seen one that is truly dead, with no address line activity at least at the start.
 
ok so I've replaced the sys rom socket and nothing has changed

the clock seems to be fine on pin 15

the reset pin does read high, so I suppose I'll start following that!
EDIT: I've traced the reset pin back to a hd74ls14p near the jamma edge. Gonna keep poking around here. Thanks for the input!
EDIT2: so according to post 3 here https://www.electronicspoint.com/forums/threads/reset-ic-for-a-68000.151639/ low is active for the reset pin, meaning reset reading high is actually ordinary operation? It looks like that pin goes to a pull up resistor just below it
 

Attachments

  • IMG_4041.jpg
    IMG_4041.jpg
    88.3 KB · Views: 94
Last edited:
Reset is active when low, so constant high is fine. When booting it should read low and then flip high quickly. If it gets pulled low periodically after that then it’s a problem, maybe from a watchdog circuit or something else.

This is why I suck at totally dead boards though, if the clock is pulsing at the frequency it should and the reset line isn’t being toggled active, I forget what to do next so I just start googling. And really most of my dead boards stay dead. Sigh.

I check prog roms (probably would have verified them first honestly) and probe work ram next I guess.
 
Back
Top