Street Fighter II CE crashing/missing COM sprites + What is this modification to a 90631C-5 board?

[Pr3tty F1y]

I'm trying to troubleshoot a Street Fighter II CE board.

I pulled and dumped all of the roms on the B board and they match the parent MAME set (with some minor variation in ROM naming like roms #'s being swapped???).

However, I'm not familiar with the bodge wire C-Board modification. I've seen the 90631C-5 board with the two pins on the chip bridged and wired to one of the resistors (can't remember if it was D2 or D1), but I'm not sure why it is wired to IC6.

The problem that I'm having is that the game boots fine, graphics are fine, sound is fine, but when I start a match - there is no computer player sprite. Depending on who the computer opponent is, the game either shortly resets thereafter (me as M.Bison vs. E.Honda) or the one time I fought Ken as M.Bison, although I couldn't see Ken, I psycho crushered him, the flaming sprite appeared, got stuck in midair, and had no collision detection so time ran out and the game soft locked.

Any recommendations on what else to check to get this board functional?

 

[Megalocade]

Is that a suicide battery on there? If it is then it's a c board from another board the original sf2s didn't have batteries on, I had something similar on a sf2ce board, once I got to a match I was missing the players then board would reboot, turned out to be problem with the C board one of the blue jumper legs had come away from the board, that jumper wire looks very shady indeed it looks like it's bridging some of the other pins on the custom, it might be fixing a broken trace, there maybe other broken traces as it looks pretty crappy around where they soldered it.

 

[ShootTheCore]

SF2 CE normally uses a C board with a CPS-B-21 chip like yours has, only without a suicide battery. Your C board has a suicide battery but then the wire mod bypasses the battery. The bypass wire needs to connect to a +5V source - IC6 can supply that just as well as one of the diodes. The battery should still be removed though - start there.

Do you have access to an EPROM programmer? If so, dump each ROM on the B board and compare it to MAME - one of your graphics ROMs might be bad. You can also try removing each ROM, blow out the socket with compressed air, and reinstall the ROM - there may be a bad connection.

Ideally, you'd want to cross-check the B + C board with another A board so that you can eliminate that as a culprit. The A board is infamous for failing with the type of graphics problems you're describing.

 

[SurferGuy420]

I don't know about you, but I desperately need to see video of this goofy Street Fighter behavior.

 

[Big_P Big_p]

SF2 CE normally uses a C board with a CPS-B-21 chip like yours has, only without a suicide battery. Your C board has a suicide battery but then the wire mod bypasses the battery. The bypass wire needs to connect to a +5V source - IC6 can supply that just as well as one of the diodes. The battery should still be removed though - start there.

I was about to reply with something very similar. I just wanted to add that that you should also check the current bypass wire. The IC6 end looks OK but the other end looks a little dodgy but it's hard to tell from a photo.

 

[Big_P Big_p]

that jumper wire looks very shady indeed it looks like it's bridging some of the other pins on the custom, it might be fixing a broken trace, there maybe other broken traces as it looks pretty crappy around where they soldered it.

Opps missed this. Looks like it was already covered.

 

[Pr3tty F1y]

Minor update. I haven't had a chance to make a video, but I don't think that there is any sprite render/rom data issues. With the exception of one potentially flaky pin on one of the rom chips (although I did get it to read on my T56 after fiddling with it and I'll re-burn a copy once I get replacement chips), all roms match the MAME set.

Removing the battery from the C board had no effect.

It seems like all of the graphics data is there. I can select different characters without issue in a 2 player game and while both sprites don't show prior to the "Fight" voice, they both appear after that (but continue to be wonky doing throws and appearing in the wrong place on the screen). I'm definitely leaning towards some sort of game protect/logic issue

The only other A board I have is a 10mhz long board from Pang3, which I know is not a good match but it's what I have. I did mount the SFII CE B+wonky C board on it and, aside from the long A board introducing title screen palette issues - the missing COM player sprite issue persisted and is the same as on the 12mhz CPS Dash A board that came with the SFII CE set.

I did take out my multi-meter and checked for continuity and it seems like a number of pins in that corner with the bodge wire were cross talking. I used some solder wick and re-soldered the best I could and I think I was able to eliminate that issue (it's hard to tell as the pins are quite small for my fat leads), but the issue persists with the missing COM sprites. The Pang3 C board isn't the right type and just won't boot with SFII CE, so that also was a no go.

So I'm not sure if the C board chip is fried and something is shorted so that is why I was getting pin cross talk.

I'm not particularly good with fine soldering, but I was thinking of using my hot air station to lift the chip and, clean up all of the pads, and re-solder - but that scares me as I'm much better at being clumsy and bridging pins than I am soldering such fine connections. I'll see if I can get a video up of what's going on.

 

[Big_P Big_p]

Running SF2CE on a 10mhz long board should cause no issues. I have seen lots of conversions done like this and I am running a chinese multi with both SF2CE and SF2T on a long board just fine.

It sounds like it is almost certainly a C board issue and you have identified the two most likely areas based on your debugging. It's either the c board mod of the IC itself

If you feel comfortable that you have done your best with the bypass wire and fully checked for continuity across the rest of the mod, a $50 new C board may be the easiest way to get it running. I would check around for any broken traces or bad connections. To fix the IC on a C board you are going to have to destroy another C board so I would just buy one remembering $50 is about an hour or two of your time.

 

[Big_P Big_p]

I'm not particularly good with fine soldering, but I was thinking of using my hot air station to lift the chip and, clean up all of the pads, and re-solder - but that scares me as I'm much better at being clumsy and bridging pins than I am soldering such fine connections. I'll see if I can get a video up of what's going on.

All I will say here is looking at this issue from where you are now is about 10 times easier than looking at it with a lifted IC.

 

[Pr3tty F1y]

All I will say here is looking at this issue from where you are now is about 10 times easier than looking at it with a lifted IC.

I did end up lifting the chip and re-soldering it and all I got for my effort was nothing but a black screen For the size of the chip, I don't feel like I applied excessive heat or applied heat for too much time and I definitely didn't lift any traces. I'm just going with that the chip was going bad already and I likely pushed it over the edge.

That being said, I did pick up a cheap replacement C-Board, and now my SFII CE is back in business! No more missing sprites, glitchy game play, or resets. Thanks again for the advice/help!