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Strikers 1945 II not saving settings

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wabbylegs

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I have a Strikers 1945 II board and when you go to change the game settings and hit yes to confirm it freezes. I'm guessing this is an issue with the EEPROM? The start up diagnostic says OK but not sure how reliable that is. Has anyone encountered this and what's the fix? Solder in a replacement? All I want are factory defaults. Would I have to use an EEPROM programmer and load a bin from a MAME dump before installing it? Sorry in advance for the newbie questions, I'm still very new but willing to learn.

This board in general is weird. I'm guessing it's a conversion with the hot glue, wires and blacked out rom chips based on a similar thread I've seen here. Controls are wonky too, I have to leave the board running for about 15-20 minutes for them to start working...
 
The P1 Start and Test didn't work but holding A and Test did bring me to the Maintenance Mode. There's additional entries but unfortunately no option to erase the EPROM. Damn that would have been sweet.
 
Just had a thought, if I remove the EEPROM chip the game should be on default settings on boot correct? Is it required to run? This is a PS3-V1 board btw.
 
So I removed the EEPROM but the game settings in test mode are the exact same. I don't see another EEPROM on the board, am I missing something? Could it be stored somewhere else?
 
wabbylegs said:
This board in general is weird. I'm guessing it's a conversion with the hot glue, wires and blacked out rom chips based on a similar thread I've seen here. Controls are wonky too, I have to leave the board running for about 15-20 minutes for them to start working...
Click to expand...
wabbylegs said:
So I removed the EEPROM but the game settings in test mode are the exact same. I don't see another EEPROM on the board, am I missing something? Could it be stored somewhere else?
Click to expand...

Got a photo of this thing?
 
IMG_1730.jpg

I'm terrible with photography let me know if I need to take another snap. The EEPROM that I removed is the one at the top left of the photo at U48.
 
Hooray jumper wires!

That is the eeprom you removed. Do you have a programmer? I wonder what code is running on the two 27C4096 chips labeled ROMH and ROML.

Also curious what game settings it is loading that aren’t default. at this point I can think is the game is hard coded for whatever settings it’s using. But the rom dumps would confirm.
 
The only settings that aren't default is difficulty (set to Easy) and number of lives (set to 1). It does make sense that it was hard coded and I'd love to take a look but I don't have a programmer. I'm on amazon right now taking a look, this looks like it can do the job right?

https://www.amazon.com/PRG-112-GQ-universal-programmer-Adapter/dp/B01212KD74

So let's say the data in the roms are hard coded to have these settings. I'd then have to erase the chips with UV and then use the programmer to load a mame dump correct?
 
I just ran some tests in mame.

Looks like an empty eprom file (all 0's) -- or a missing eeprom as all lines are low -- will produce your settings of Easy mode, one life. If you want to recreate it, load up s1945ii, change the settings to what you see on your pcb, save, and quit. Then load up /nvram/s1945ii/eeprom (the binary file, no file extension). You'll see it's empty. With default settings there are a few bytes set:

Code: 
0002 0001 0000 0000 0000 0300 0000 0000

If you have the skills, I think the only thing you'll have to do is re-install a new eeprom. You don't need to write it, it just needs to be working i.e. write-able. Then you can restore defaults from the test menu, and the game will write & store the values on the eeprom. If you don't have the chip or the skills, let us know what part of the US you're in as this is a pretty simple job for anyone with the tools & the part.
 
Wow I just confirmed it myself as well, that's a cool find! So the most likely reason it's freezing when trying to save new settings is because the eeprom was broken? And a broken eeprom is the same as a missing one... interesting I would have assumed if it was at least missing it would go to the "factory defaults" of 3 lives/normal difficulty. I live out in the Phoenix area of Arizona but I thiiiink I can pull this one off. I'll find a replacement chip and solder it in and see what happens. My biggest worry is that it still freezes when trying to save the settings but this seems like the best path forward.

Thanks a ton for looking into this! I'll keep the thread updated.
 
I appreciate the offer! If I run into any issues I'll reach out but it should be pretty simple, I'll just do the opposite of removing it :)
 
wabbylegs said:
a broken eeprom is the same as a missing one...
Click to expand...
An empty eeprom is the same as a missing one (all data reads will be low signal, 0/gnd).

A broken eeprom may still have some data on it, so it would probably be stuck on some settings or corrupt in another way.
 
And I'm guessing over time the eeprom will eventually become dead and/or empty right?
 
They do have expected life spans and read/write cycle limits. Though according to the current datasheet I'm looking at, one should survive 1 million writes and hold data for 200 years! But yeah, I’ve seen several of them fail and specifically the ones on Psikyo boards, so anecdotally I feel like it’s pretty common part that needs replacement. Maybe the part Psikyo used was not as robust... The good news is it's an active part and commonly available.
 
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You know what? I actually ordered 93lc56 chips because that's the model I removed from my board. Will they work or should I get 93c56c chips instead?
 
LC is just tolerant of lower voltage. Shouldn’t matter either way
 
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