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Need help with Nascar Racing (Hikaru) No Video

gamemaster14

gamemaster14

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I recently received a Nascar Racing Sega Hikaru board. I plugged it in and received no video at all.

I popped the rom board off and put it on my known working Hikaru board from my Planet Harriers set. I get the initial boot screen (some weird scrambled garbage) and then nothing else happens. When I boot Planet Harriers I usually get that screen and then the game runs.

Is there some sort of jumper setting that is different between the two boards? Does Nascar racing use a special Hikaru board and no other will work? Could the rom board just be shot and that's why it isn't working?

Any help would be appreciated.

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It is common for the rom boards to fail but I'm not sure the symptoms. Shoot ken at irepairsega.com an email and ask him what he thinks. He still repairs the rom boards for Hikaru but won't touch the main boards.
 
does both motherboards have same BIOS ? iirc older version doesn't supports ROM board type like Nascar.

can you post pic of your Nascar ROM board ? ;) mainly interested in EPR ROMs labels
 
I will take a look when I get home tonight but I believe the bios chips were labeled the same on both boards. I will also post a pic of the rom board as well.
 
A rather strange development today, Thinking the rom board being dirty Is causing the problem, I cleaned it quite thoroughly, no difference. Noticed there was a Jumper near the two eproms, changed it from 23 position to 12, caused error 3 (rom board error), completely removed the jumper and the game got to the sega and ea sports logos, somehow on my second or third booting the I/o board tripped and the game started, I was able to see the first course and all the cars going on the track.

I was able to semi control it with the planet harriers joystick, but of course always ran out of time due to this game not being made to be controlled by an analog stick. Tried choosing the intermediate race on another bootup but the game crashed. I messed with the I/o board and was able to get the game to not auto start every time, after the ea logo it just freezes on the white screen and will not show the demo.

If that jumper is placed back on its default 23 position the game will simply not get past the initial Hikaru boot screen.

Any idea whats going on here?
 
well, if game starts with different jumper position why didn't go to BIOS test mode and run ROM BOARD TEST ?

also, you now, its hard to answer questions based on crystal ball, so post photo of yours ROM board as was asked. there known to exists several types of it for this game.
 
on the ROM board 837-13935 that I own it has 16 TSOP48 mask ROMs and 27C322 EPROMs and there are 6 jumpers. they are all positioned at 2-3 and it works fine with that setting.
if your board is the same that is the correct setting.
Nascar works with any of the dumped BIOS ROMs.
 
right, but this game also was seen on development ROM boards, with program ROMs in square QFPs, and several dozens of flash ROMs instead of masks.
it seems such boards tend to degrade faster that 'regular' ones, so if @gamemaster14 have one these it can be bad already.
 
Mr T Guru said:
on the ROM board 837-13935 that I own it has 16 TSOP48 mask ROMs and 27C322 EPROMs and there are 6 jumpers. they are all positioned at 2-3 and it works fine with that setting.
if your board is the same that is the correct setting.
Nascar works with any of the dumped BIOS ROMs.
Click to expand...
Yeah mine would seam to be the same, it has 16 mask roms and 2 socketed eproms, so far I have only experimented with moving the jumper closest to the two socketed roms, which is what caused the game to boot at all.

I have ran a rom test with the afore mentioned jumper removed and everything comes out as good.

When in game test mode the board comes up as Nascar Racing JPN, could this problem be partially caused by me having my board in usa mode for Planet Harriers, or shouldn't that matter?

I will post some pictures of the rom board later when I get home tonight.

Also, just wondering, does it matter if I leave the Optional Audio board from Planet Harriers in the cage or is that board generic and works with all games? Just wondering because I know some Sega games that use an audio board have special roms on them and will not work right without them.
 
My Nascar works with just swapping the ROM board on a working Planet Harriers and Star Wars Racer Arcade.
No other boards were touched.
You can check the original Nascar mainboard and swap the BIOS EPROM to your working board as a test. Maybe that will fix it.
If not I would guess you have some kind of ROM PCB fault. A common failure point on those ROM boards are the 16-bit buffers (LVCH16245). If those are bad the signals from the EPROMs can't get to the main board. Or maybe not. You say the ROMs test ok so they appear to be ok. There's not much else on the board besides ROMs, protections chips, some buffers and a couple of RAMs.
The jumpers near the EPROMs just configure the ROM (pairs) as either 27C160 or 27C322 and only the first one at JP3 does anything. The others are for the other sockets which are not populated, so do nothing.
Moving the jumper makes the ROM board think a smaller 27C160 ROM is plugged in.
The other 2 jumpers near the ACTEL FPGA configure the FPGA/CPLD (don't touch them, leave it as 2-3)
The Japanese version of Nascar is not dumped.
Please read the two EPROMs and send them to me. I will send you a PM.
 
Mr T Guru said:
My Nascar works with just swapping the ROM board on a working Planet Harriers and Star Wars Racer Arcade.
No other boards were touched.
You can check the original Nascar mainboard and swap the BIOS EPROM to your working board as a test. Maybe that will fix it.
If not I would guess you have some kind of ROM PCB fault. A common failure point on those ROM boards are the 16-bit buffers (LVCH16245). If those are bad the signals from the EPROMs can't get to the main board. Or maybe not. You say the ROMs test ok so they appear to be ok. There's not much else on the board besides ROMs, protections chips, some buffers and a couple of RAMs.
The jumpers near the EPROMs just configure the ROM (pairs) as either 27C160 or 27C322 and only the first one at JP3 does anything. The others are for the other sockets which are not populated, so do nothing.
Moving the jumper makes the ROM board think a smaller 27C160 ROM is plugged in.
The other 2 jumpers near the ACTEL FPGA configure the FPGA/CPLD (don't touch them, leave it as 2-3)
The Japanese version of Nascar is not dumped.
Please read the two EPROMs and send them to me. I will send you a PM.
Click to expand...
Any clue what removing that jumper from the rom board does? I find it really strange that the game will only boot with the jumper by the two eproms removed.
 
if ROM TEST passed all GOOD... perhaps security system failed/damaged ? I'll make some tests on emulation.

can you please tell yours EPR ROMs labels ?
 
The roms are labeled EPRA 23485 and 23486. (from what I can see in the picture)

Below I have attached the picture from the auction:
 

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the EPROM are the same as the version I dumped (which is in MAME). so maybe the 8-pin EEPROM on the ROM board or another EEPROM on the main board holds the region.
The jumper left pin is tied to +5v. the right pin goes to an unpopulated position labelled RAT19 just to the left of the EPROM.
The middle pin is connected to pin 32 of the EPROM (which is A20)
So basically the jumper either ties the pin to +5v or leaves it as-is and then it goes to the white connectors etc.
For a 27C322 it probably doesn't make any difference if the jumper is there or not, it really only affects if a 27C160 EPROM is used.
that explains why it works without the jumper.
The whole system is notoriously unreliable. none of those games work now and if one is working it won't be for much longer.
you should probably just get used to the idea that it's dead and move onto some other project ;-)
 
MetalliC said:
@gamemaster14 did you tried to run it having network board attached ? (top left PCB above ROM board)

@Mr T Guru region code stored in main board EEPROM, it can be changed by secret key sequence in Game Test mode ;)
Click to expand...
I have run it with and without the network/link board and it does not seam to make a difference.

About the region code, the system is set to USA Version (Changed it for English text in Planet Harriers), which can be seen in the initial test mode menu. The game is of Japan region since when you enter test mode it is noted as NASCAR Racing JPN as the game loaded.

My only guess can be is one of a few things, either the roms are slightly different or the region code of the game itself somehow resides in the 16 mask roms on the rom board. Of course this is pure speculation.
 
I will compare that to what mind says when I get home in a few hours.

I know all of my roms come up as good but I will have the check to see if the byte and word match.
 
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