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Reverse engineering 161 in 1 cartridge to change Rom games

lithy said:
Has anyone run a Vortex cart on an MV-1? Or maybe rather, are there any known boards with compatibility issues and a Vortex cart?

Seems to work fine on my MV-1A and MV-4 boards.
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I have problems on all my bigger 1 slots and 2 slots.
 
XtraSmiley said:
MV1C
MV-1A

And as a side note, @rewrite all in one cart does not work in that same MV1C, but does work in the MV-1A. I don't know why.
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As Vortex mentioned back in 2023, he suggests that the chips run closer to 3.3V than the 3V they run now. I replaced both power circuits with my own custom design as well as replaced all the caps on the 2 PCBs and added more caps around the FPGAs and some of the flash memory to reduce ripple. Some cart makers use the stock no name regulator that China slapped into these carts which could be the root cause of the difference you see.

Of course, the best solution would be to use voltage translators, but that would require a whole new PCB design and we're talk about SD cart solution prices now.

When you have a cart with FPGAs and more flash than all Neo Geo carts combined, you're going to stress the system and need to have enough amps to power it all; this is most noticeable with 5V AES consoles.
 
leonk said:
As Vortex mentioned back in 2023, he suggests that the chips run closer to 3.3V than the 3V they run now. I replaced both power circuits with my own custom design as well as replaced all the caps on the 2 PCBs and added more caps around the FPGAs and some of the flash memory to reduce ripple. Some cart makers use the stock no name regulator that China slapped into these carts which could be the root cause of the difference you see.

Of course, the best solution would be to use voltage translators, but that would require a whole new PCB design and we're talk about SD cart solution prices now.

When you have a cart with FPGAs and more flash than all Neo Geo carts combined, you're going to stress the system and need to have enough amps to power it all; this is most noticeable with 5V AES consoles.
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Just curious if you've published your updates anywhere for others to make their own?
 
XtraSmiley said:
Yes, def weird, but with NG hardware and this wonky hacked Chinese cart, I have no doubt shit is weird!

What BIOS does your MV1C have?
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Ive got Leon's modded UniBIOS 4 in there for the "hold b" reset option.

edit: I got my BIOS from Leon, not sure if he wrote the software changes in it just to be clear
 
I have one Vortex from leonk and one from rewrite.

MVS PCB MV1F
Unibios 4 (from leonk, I had earlier 3.2, symptoms were similar with it)

Vortex from rewrite: only I'm getting is the monitor cross hatch test.

Vortex from leonk:

Game selection screen comes up normally, I can select games, but many of them will cause immediately following error: EXCEPTION ERROR HANDLING - ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION (Address, changing depending from game, for example Aero Fighters 2: 002C00D0 and Andro Dunos: 002C00C4)

If I turn arcade protection off, most of games seems to play at least a while fine, but may crash soon (unibios 3.2).

And other games work fine, for example Alpha Mission, Bang Bead or Bust-A-Move

Changing region does not make a change.

If someone is using similar combination, please let me know if working ok with replaced caps or so.
 
There's multiple issues that can cause any Neo Geo cart to fail. I'm not sure what is the root cause of your failure, but here are some of the causes that I've helped others solve:

1. Bad power supply. Check the 5V rail. I've had 1 customer with almost 6VDC!! I'm surprised he didn't kill his PCBs. He replaced his arcade power supply and things got fixed.

2. Bad contacts. I get that on my Neo Geo after testing so many carts. And I don't mean the cart, but rather the actual Neo Geo PCB connector. Deoxite, paper wrapped on a credit card, ..., so many solutions out there to clean the contacts. This is a very common problem with retro consoles (NES) and Neo Geo.

3. Failing component on the PCB.

4. The PCB itself. I've had cases where some PCBs just don't like any multicart and only work with the simplest Neo Geo carts. The best solution is to test the cart on another Neo Geo PCB. Worst case, grab an MV1C, they're dirt cheap and just work. :)
 
I can co-sign with the MV1C. My Leon cart that I had, and my rewrite cart both work perfectly running on a 1C in a Neo25, using a JNX JAMMA to mvs adapter of course. Prob don't need one if you're running a supergun.
 
leonk said:
There's multiple issues that can cause any Neo Geo cart to fail. I'm not sure what is the root cause of your failure, but here are some of the causes that I've helped others solve:

1. Bad power supply. Check the 5V rail. I've had 1 customer with almost 6VDC!! I'm surprised he didn't kill his PCBs. He replaced his arcade power supply and things got fixed.

2. Bad contacts. I get that on my Neo Geo after testing so many carts. And I don't mean the cart, but rather the actual Neo Geo PCB connector. Deoxite, paper wrapped on a credit card, ..., so many solutions out there to clean the contacts. This is a very common problem with retro consoles (NES) and Neo Geo.

3. Failing component on the PCB.

4. The PCB itself. I've had cases where some PCBs just don't like any multicart and only work with the simplest Neo Geo carts. The best solution is to test the cart on another Neo Geo PCB. Worst case, grab an MV1C, they're dirt cheap and just work. :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, will check these out, PSU I checked few months ago when playing another platform. It was ok back then, but who knows now. I'll try to visit friend of mine during next few weeks, he has couple of 1Cs.

I believe this will sort out... one way or another.

Edit:

5,06V and 12,40V when MVS with Vortex cart is powered, in the main menu waiting the game to be selected
 
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