Ok 4 wires added and gave the rom pcb a push and I have a little progress. I'm still getting the white/gray screen, but when I change games and it's writing the new game, the screen now goes black. Then once the write is finished, the screen reverts back to white/gray.
I pushed a bit more and was able to get the side attached to the rom pcb down a bit, but I can't get the other side down any more. Does the connector need to be flush in the socket on the large pcb too? Unfortunately it's still doing the same thing where it's a white screen when playing and a black screen when writing.
Could you post a picture of the key writing wires so we can verify them? Also, you'll want to hook up a reset wire. Without one you'll need to power-cycle the board after a game is programmed in order to play it.
More progress! I pulled the GPal that was included with the kit and replaced it with the original FPal. Now I'm seeing game graphics when I load each game, except for they look like this:
PA only sold less than 20 GPals and all of them were blank, you think they could of gotten in touch with all the customers that purchased one and sent them a working one or atleast warned them so 20 poor customers didn't have to go through this confusing mess of troubleshooting.
Even @Mitsurugi-w and Darksoft were stumped by it at first so what chance does the average consumer have?
Here is a little update. I've requested a new pal from paradise. Could that be causing the graphic issue? I currently have the original Fpal with a jumper from pin 7 to J17 on the main kit pcb. I just removed and reseated the rom pcb several times thinking that could be the cause of the graphic issue, but no luck. If you look at these images you can see that the sprites are fine, its all the background and text that's banded if that helps troubleshoot. Thanks!
Started to put together my darksoft with a dead Alpha 3 board, I've gotten as far as getting the purple screen whenever I power it on so I tried remounting it a few times now but haven't had much further luck.
The jumper layout was just about the same as in the instructions so I didn't test the ones already in the right order but when I tested jumpers 22-29 they were all closed connections, wondering what the easiest way would be to deal with that issue and if that would be the main problem.
Did you shortcut EXC5 to make sure that there are no keys stored anymore?
I see that you don't use the functionality to write the keys back so that's the most probable issue. Also I cant see a reset wire. If you add the 4 wires for CPS2, then one of them is already the reset.
Not trying sound snarky or anything but are links to the instructions being sent out with the latest batch of boards?
Seems to be a lot of people are either not reading the instructions or not being provided with the correct link, they seem to be missing a few of the standard steps of the installation.