Battle Bakraid Issues

[Joe T.]

I recently received a Battle Bakraid pcb and although the game plays fine, much of the text in the title screen is doubled and out of sync and the score is missing from the top of the screen. Has anyone ever seen anything like this and is this something I can fix myself? I'm a little worried that it might be a bad rom or something that I have little experience dealing with. Any help would be very much appreciated!!!

[Dave_K.]

Mods please move to Hardware.

Also Joe, are you playing this on a cab, or supergun? Sounds like just a monitor issue...the sync on bakraid is different than other boards, so you will have to adjust the monitor controls.

[Joe T.]

Yeah sorry for posting it in the wrong place. I'm playing this on an aero city cabinet...

I honestly don't know how to adjust the sync on the monitor.

[worstplayer]

If it was bad rom it would show errors on startup.
Can you see "1UP" and "2UP" on top of the screen when playing?

[Joe T.]

Yeah I guess you're right. The Rom check is always OK on startup.

There is no 1up at the top....in fact during play there is no text whatsoever at the top of the screen.

However, during the attract demonstration there is the Bakraid logo all out of sync at the top.

[Dave_K.]

I honestly don't know how to adjust the sync on the monitor.

Its just the regular monitor controls for Vertical and Horizontal Hold that are under the front housing (I don't remember exactly where on an Aero)..maybe under the control panel? If you could take a picture of the screen that may also show us more if its just a monitor/sync issue or a corrupted game.

[Joe T.]

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately the situation remains the same.

I adjusted the holds without any success.

I don't have a camera of my own to take a picture of it. Perhaps I can ask a friend.

The only way I can describe it is that everything on screen looks and plays fine except there is no text at the top where the score should be and at the bottom, the bomb/ammo meter is doubled and scrambled looking. The text in the title, high score, demo, and test screens look the same way, all scrambled up like the text was separated from itself and glitched out in spots.

[dpful]

Can't think of a reason for a single image to be glitched unless it's a bad rom.

Did you try pressing on the chips and flexing the board? (could be a fine rom but a cold solder joint). Shit on the board goes bad much more frequently than what's inside the chips. If you could locate a solder crack or a loose chip, that would be a great start. Unfortunately, still might not be fixeable- double check the return policy.

Sometimes, also, graphics or layers of graphics can glitch with voltage probs also (usually if the voltage is too low), so you could check that, too. I always thought that raizing boards were pretty sturdy, voltage-wise, but it could be that.
Could it possibly be a bootleg? Bootlegs can require high voltage (I've never seen a bakraid bootleg).

[Joe T.]

I'm kind of suspecting maybe it's a voltage thing. The guy I bought it from said he's never had a problem with this board but had a similar issue with a Batrider and fixed it by adjusting the voltage.

I'm a little scared to jack with any of that stuff though.

Edit:

I adjusted the voltage and the problem was solved. I'm still a little worried about having the voltage too high. I tried to test with a friend's multimeter and it kept reading out 3....So I really don't know if I was testing it wrong or if it is actually set that low.

[dpful]

Power supplies are the things that break the most. If the game works, I'd go with it.

You should double check the multimeter and get the power right, though.

[Joe T.]

Thanks for the tip by the way.....Yes, my friend and I figured the proper way to measure the voltage and it appears that I've got it just under 5 so I'm going to go with it as long as all my games are working.


The power supply looks like it's the original that probably came with the cabinet. It's an Aero city so that should give an indication of how old it is haha. Thankfully it was an easy problem to solve.

[Joe T.]

So I thought I would resurrect this thread out of curiosity. My Bakraid board plays fine but only as long as I have my voltage turned very low like around 4.6. When turned up any higher the text separates again and goes missing from the top of the screen. Maybe I'm just lazy and don't want to adjust my voltage all the time, but could this be an indication of a problem on the board that it requires LOWER voltage to work properly? Really this isn't much of a problem but if I were to play any PGM boards or certain toaplan boards like outzone I have to turn the voltage back up.

[system11]

It's very important that you measure the voltage with the game plugged in. My cabs are set to 5.06v under load and everything works (including a Bakraid).

[Joe T.]

It's very important that you measure the voltage with the game plugged in. My cabs are set to 5.06v under load and everything works (including a Bakraid).

Yeah I'm definitely doing that, and it's anything above 4.6 that messes up the text on Bakraid. Most of the time now, if I've had to raise the voltage to play something that won't run that low, and then plug Bakraid back in, I just adjust until the text goes back to normal rather than testing the voltage the whole time. I guess I'm just curious if the board needing low voltage is a problem really. If so I'd like to look into a fix (no idea how unfortunately).

[Dave_K.]

So with the voltage at +5V you were not able to adjust the screen correctly with the monitor controls?

[system11]

I think I'd try it on someone elses cab too, before touching the board.

[Joe T.]

Yeah, the problem exists on every other cabinet I've played it on (I've tried it on at least 5 different ones now). Every time the text is jacked up until the voltage is turned down to around 4.6 at which point all is fine (I just checked now it's 4.6). Could it possibly just be a crappy rom?

[brentsg]

Yeah, the problem exists on every other cabinet I've played it on (I've tried it on at least 5 different ones now). Every time the text is jacked up until the voltage is turned down to around 4.6 at which point all is fine (I just checked now it's 4.6). Could it possibly just be a crappy rom?

5 cabs? Peculiar neighborhood I guess?

[Joe T.]

Yeah, the problem exists on every other cabinet I've played it on (I've tried it on at least 5 different ones now). Every time the text is jacked up until the voltage is turned down to around 4.6 at which point all is fine (I just checked now it's 4.6). Could it possibly just be a crappy rom?

5 cabs? Peculiar neighborhood I guess?

Four different cabinets between myself and Robert Caldwell AKA caldwert and also on gunbird18's egret II like a year ago. I think I might have tested it out at the game trader as well...so maybe six cabinets.

A pretty exhaustive trial really.

I'll try to take some pictures of 4.6 vs 5v sometime this week for comparison.

[caldwert]

4.6v is legion, 5v is not.

[system11]

Just to bump this topic, but my Bakraid is doing the same thing. It's very minor in the way it manifests and I can't 100% guarantee it hasn't always been this way since I bought it nearly 15 years ago, I get some jailbar additions kind of behind alternating 16 column sections of the text. It's barely noticeable on a smaller, older screen but the NNC shows it up bright as day. Same as the OP, 4.6v clears it up - noticed also that at 4.75 it will speckle the fault, and hitting the Xilinx XC95144 chip with a T stamped in the bottom right makes the problem go away until it warms back up again.

Long shot but does anyone have a pinout or rating for those chips? I suspect they're an off the shelf part, possibly programmed in some way. I'm curious to know what the data sheet says and to work out where the voltage input pins are.

[Unseen]

hitting the Xilinx XC95144 chip with a T stamped in the bottom right makes the problem go away until it warms back up again.

Long shot but does anyone have a pinout or rating for those chips? I suspect they're an off the shelf part, possibly programmed in some way. I'm curious to know what the data sheet says and to work out where the voltage input pins are.

Standard programmable logic chip: Chip datasheet and Family datasheet

[caldwert]

I own this board now from Joe T. It still isn't cleared up and has been in the hands of numerous people. Let me know if you have any luck. I can put you in touch with my repair guy if you want.

[caldwert]

Any luck with this System 11?

[caius]

I suggest you to check the various SMT ASICs on board (they handle graphics), probably some pins are loose or lift.Try to reflow them.

[system11]

Checked those a hundred times on mine. The chip works fine when 4.6v and gets progressively worse the closer to 5v it is. I started wondering if it would be possible to isolate the 5v rail and trim it down but it's not. Solid as a rock at 4.6v for an hour at least.

[caldwert]

Same symptom mine had, and how I broke a PSU trying to get it down to 4.6v. Sometimes the 4.6v trick works, other times it is all haywire. I had it working one time as low as 3.3v. Bugs the hell out of me that nobody can figure it out.

[Unseen]

The chip works fine when 4.6v and gets progressively worse the closer to 5v it is.

Is it a "plain" XC95144 or does it have any letters as suffix, such as XL or XV? Only the non-suffixed version is rated for operation at 5V, although the XL versions can tolerate 5V signals on their inputs.

[caldwert]

I don't have the board, been out for repair over 3 years at this point.

[caldwert]

Back from the grave, but still pursuing this...

The Xilinx XC95144 has no suffix. The additional markings are:

PQ100AEM9829
A1060503A
10C

I saw the XC95144XL listed online to buy but wasn't sure if that's compatible here, plus we'd need to program it. So I'm looking for the dump of that or possibly if anyone else has figured this out. Originally my repair guy thought it was the GPU, but we swapped that from a Snow Bros 2 I had and the same errors persisted. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.