I give up on trying to troubleshoot my personal CPS2 kit - time to ask the forum.
This one is my personal A/B board (model 7, 1944 Jap) which I have hardly used since installing the multi-kit. I decided to pull it out and play it for probably the first time since I got it maybe a year ago (from the batch previous to this most recent batch which became available around march/april 2020). I did not play it when I bought it, well for more than a minute. I basically got one game to boot (tried a few times) and put it back in a box and didn't think twice about how I had to load the game a few times before it would work.
It most of the time will not boot games. It either gets stuck very early on,, usually on the ram check screen, or the CPS2 boots to a blank screen (not coloured, just black/blank). I have been testing with misc encrypted roms (have attached wires) and most of the time it gets stuck on the ram check screen, right where it would next check the QSOUND ram. The other 5 RAM checks above are all OK, then the game basically freezes on that ram check screen.
If I load the same game again via the LCD selector, it will normally do the same thing. Sometimes, it will actually boot the game and work fine for hours. Turning off then on the CPS2 doesnt help, still games dont load. Same thing with other games I have tested, however I seem to have more luck with some games like AvP which will boot a higher percentage of the time, but still suffers from the same maybe-will-load maybe-wont-load problem.
Someone sent me their new CPS2 multi kit recently and their A/B to install and this gave me an opportunity to test my A and B boards again with a new kit. It worked fine on my CPS2 A/B with that new kit. Have tried different known-working PAL-G chips too.
I've pulled the kit off the B board, checked all pins (none broken), cleaned all pins on the multi kit and all DIP slots on the B board. After cleaning I very carefully put it all back together (as always) and confirmed all pins look well seated. I am testing without the B board shell on, so I can confirm the connections between the A and the B board are all good too. Have reseated the whole thing a few times, doesnt make any difference. The pins are all looking good.
I have changed SD cards, tested with decrypted romset instead of the usual "KEY'd" sets. (avalaunch set as opposed to smokemonster set).
Then, I was able to get my hands on a discovery programmer. Programmed the bootloader then the other firmware via the SD card, no problems there.
Same problem but now worse - it mostly wont load a game properly, the LCD screen does not complete the "*"s thus it never finishes loading the game onto the darksoft kit's memory. I have to choose the same rom lots of times for it to finish a game, then I get the same problem with the ROM loading screen freezing (just before QSound roms).
Previously, I have had to fix a different cps2 multi kit (thanks a lot to
@Darksoft and
@xodaraP) for helping me to diagnose the exact same fault as level shifters.
@xodaraP had my kit at the time so he desoldered, then sent it back to me, I resoldered new shifters and that kit works perfectly now.
Do I try the same thing on this CPS2 multi kit (replace level shifters, if so which do I start with) ? I am happy to test anything anyone can recommend. I have 3 spare (new) level shifters from the last one.
Thanks for any help ! I have been away from playing for a while as I had family commitments. Now I have some time to play again
Thankyou
@xodaraP for the guidance thus far with this fault. I have installed approx 7 CPS2 multi kits, just for background, including the one which needed repair.