Street fighter ex gets to the Arika logo then fails to boot

[tengugurl]

Hi!
TL;DR any guidance for troubleshooting which eeprom is not working?

I bought a non working street fighter ex1 pcb off eBay and it was DOA.
Cleaned it up, reseated the daughter pcb and took all the socketed ICs off and made sure no bent pins etc…

Then noticed a lot lot LOT of rust that left components nearly falling off. (One actually did so I had to fix it)

Deoxit overload on it and tada! It boots to the main warning screens and arika screen.
Then it goes BLANK ————— x_x. No button inputs change to the next screen.

Try again, hit the coin and I am greeted with the logo and it says press start

BLANK____________ x_x and it won’t load into the game

Any guidance on reflashing new ICs?
I have a writer but I don’t have a good working pcb to get the proper dumps to reflash some eeproms and I’d be going at it blindly.

In total I see
13 socketed ICs and that’s a lotta’reflashing.
Just wish I knew where the main rom for the game resides so I can attempt a new Rom

Oh also. I have another zn1 that has gallop racer on it. Read somewhere a while back I can swap out zn1s easily but I couldn’t get it to work.
The error on the blue screen means a security check issue.
Didn’t see a capcom specific security dongle or thing?

 

[ekorz]

Security is in a CAT702 chip but if it boots passes the color bars it’s fine. Swaps work but only between security families(capcom<>capcom and gallop is tecmo)

I have no idea why I can’t link you to mame master on GitHub right now but here’s the sfex rom list on a branch

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blo...3071db45a5aff61/src/mame/drivers/zn.cpp#L2978

Sadly iirc the program code is part of the banked rom group of 6 roms (3h 4h 5h 2k 3k 4k), and any one of them could cause that. 2H “country rom” is worth checking too, maybe I’m wrong and it’s the sole program code chip (and the banked ones are just gfx or something).

You can verify with the romset in mame though if you have a programmer. If you don’t have a mame set lmk

 

[nnap]

Gallop Racer 1 is Capcom, so that might be worth a try to see if it is the mainboard or the rom board.

 

[ekorz]

Oh right, gallop2 and 3 are tecmo. The bios on the main motherboard is what’s compatible between families and yeah gallop1 should work then

 

[Hammy]

Yep , tecmo motherboard won't work but has the correct memory,
Gallop 1 used less v-ram however.... EX is not too fussy on running....

EX should run as normal with a couple of very minor things missing with the lower V ram...?
It's been a while since it was tested - can't remember.

 

[tengugurl]

@ekorz shame... wish I could swap the Mobo's and see if the issue is on the mobo or the rom board. (ref Tecmo to Capcom)
Gosh I wish I was as smart as you all on this, but I am learning and it doesn't mean I will always be so behind.

Thanks for the link to the ZN1 zn.cpp drivers link. Not sure which chip I can flash that to?


I do have a programmer its a TL866II Plus programer and I have the adapters to dump these eeproms. (Also the know how to do that)
If I am understanding correctly, perhaps I can find the eeprom images for each one of the ICs via MAME and flash them to new EEPROMs and give it a go?
I am totally fine with replacing all ICs until I get it to boot.


Question, I looked in the manual for SF EX and it didnt outright call out the EEPROM ICs, unless do you know if a mapping/schematic exists for this PCB? (Example: 3h 4h 5h 2k 3k 4k)
Here is where I was looking: https://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/S/Street_Fighter_EX__1996__Capcom.pdf


@Hammy hmm I work on MVS PCBs all the time and I do know that is a common prob, issue is, I'd need to see what the VRAM IC is... *looks for CXK5814 and starts typing in all IC numbers that could be Vram.
Hope I am understanding correctly as I am down to buy a bunch of eeproms and bring this thing alive.
From the rust/corrosion areas, I am assuming its near the z80. Just wish I knew which chip had a name/ where to pull the images from.

I did flip the Rom PCB around and it had IC names/ mapping which is nice

 

[ekorz]

Looking at my pcb I'd now bet that the program code is just on the 2H chip. The rom board should have letters going across the top A>K and numbers from the top left corner 1>9. That's the grid, and the number reference is the chip location. It's like 2HJ really, it's a long chip!

Anyway I was wrong, it should be swap-able with the gallop rom/mother.

If you do end up using that programmer with the adapter, your best bet is just to dump the roms and concatenate however many result (in Dos: copy /b) and use mame's romident (or submit the result to an online romident). If your file gets a hit, then it is good. Since you're having to dump in banks, and concatinating, be sure you did that concatenation right or else you won't get a hit!

Also 2H is UV erasable (EPROM), but the rest in that banked set are mask roms not electronically erasable (EEPROM). You'd need brand new replacements for those if they were bad.

 

[nnap]

the v-ram is on the main board. If it is not populated, there will be an empty square solder footprint that has nothing in it. If your Gallop Racer is the Capcom version, the mobo should boot SFEX and the game should play fine minus a couple of minor grafic glitches.

 

[KaPH33n]

just read in your roms and do a crc32 or md5. Check against mame set. Don’t burn them again if they’re already good. The mask roms are probably fine. I feel like sockets/traces get messed up more often than the roms themselves.

 

[tengugurl]

You are all so awesome! Sorry for my delay in replying.
I am going to dump the contents of 2HJ and see if I get any results.

Oh @nnap I have gallop racer 2 and it’s a techno one sadly :/
I do have a empty spot with solder pads on the main board, I’ll take a pic as maybe it was removed? Curious how I can still get the bios/logo to boot.

Also going to check traces to the 2HJ EEPROM as it may just be a broken trace or something. I mean this thing did have a lot of corrosion