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Namco system N2 failing to boot.

I do have some good news to share atleast. Looks like I'm back in the N2 club for now. I finally got the replacement N2 from arcade spare parts and worked on the first try.
 

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You guys are so right, GDrom ain't it. Often takes me 2 tries just for the Chihiro to recognize my GDrom drive. Glad to atleast have tried it once though. Also I definitely gotta replace the battery in this thing. The clock battery on the bottom board is the one that needs to get switched out right?
 
But yeah there's Maxi 1 running fine, I could try wiping down Maxi 2's disc maybe? Looks a bit dirty.
 

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I'm taking a good look at it now and it doesn't look dirty it looks Over lol. Kinda shocked it got past the game test screen.
 

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Mrhide said:
Yes.
You would need to change it if you load a game, set the options, turn off, and then load then SAME game and the options aren't set anymore.

If you switch games, you normally have to reset options.
Click to expand...
You can tell they designed these systems with the intention the games won't be switched out.
 
Anyways back to me not being able to catch a break. So I decided to throw the N2 back into the cabinet and it started up nice and smooth and the game started as normal, for a moment I was happy. I did a race and all was well, then out of nowhere during my second race I noticed the audio sounded very wrong. And after the race I noticed it was stuck in some loop, here's a video on what's happening:
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/1LqZyJ5k5mg?si=JlFUVA4eqR2jq1-V
 
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Yeah it ended up doing it again, also the race where I noticed it happened the load time was muuuch longer then its usually supposed to be. To the point where I thought the game crashed and there was even very minor but noticible mini freezes during the race, think this could be ram or HDD related?
 
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I've also noticed theres a small freeze before the "you win/loose" after a race is finished. I'm gonna try a different HDD Tommorow I'm starting to think this one is just on its way out.
 
I think I had this issue on one of my systems - but after the slowdown, it crashed. I ended up taking the CPU off, cleaning it - putting down new thermal paste and making sure everything was put back together.
 
mathewbeall said:
I think I had this issue on one of my systems - but after the slowdown, it crashed. I ended up taking the CPU off, cleaning it - putting down new thermal paste and making sure everything was put back together.
Click to expand...
Haven't experienced any crashing yet, but have been noticing some micro stutters and longer loadtimes then normal, also that audio issue seems to just happen randomly, on my first test it was after my second race, and on the second boot I was able to get much more races and play for around an hour in before it started doing the weird distorted audio thing again.
 
So I'm feeling really dumb right now, decided to try out my Old HDD on the new N2 and it's coming up as Boot failed... In other words I guess this HDD really did die out of nowhere, and seems like I busted that other motherboard for nothing 😅
 

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These boot sequence means it has no HDD and dongle plus the pic pcb and the small pcb in the case is unplug , motherboard is Good
 
So I tried another HDD and so far after around an hour of play I wasn't able to replicate that distorted audio bug, although I'm not sure if that means I'm 100% safe from it, they are some minor things that are bothering me that I feel might be connected to the bigger issue, for one the little freeze that I mentioned earlier after a race is finished also sometimes UI SFX not playing, and after pressing the gas pedal it doesn't get into the entry screen as fast as my other N2 did. Luckily I also haven't ran into some really long loading screens and mini stutters during the race like last time, but I'm still gonna keep an eye on those issues if they do arise.
 
Also had a bit of a scare tonight, as I was in the entry menu error E20 popped up, even going into the test menu didn't fix it. But thankfully after a reboot that seemed to do the trick and the forcefeedback continued to work as normal. Hope this isn't a sign that my FFB board is on its way out. Either that or I think it's time to replace that PSU in my cab, do you guys know any good replacements?
 

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