Problems with Progear - flickering all over the place!

Post by **system11** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 7:07 pm

rtw wrote: Did you seem my previous post ? Just to reiterate:

I was referring to the very first board mentioned, as opposed to the one you had which was modified internally.

Naiera · Post by **Naiera** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:36 pm

rtw wrote: Easy test to see if it's a boot:

. Start it up
. When the Phoenix Edition logo appears. Hit the test switch.
. You will be taken to the region menu.
. Does the word cps2shock appear anywhere ?
. Select the original mode in the region selector.
. Does it go back to USA ?

Do it and tell us what you see...

I sadly suspect it is a boot

rtw

Yes, now it thinks it's an american game.

No mention of cps2shock anywhere.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:42 pm

Naiera wrote:
rtw wrote: Easy test to see if it's a boot:

. Start it up
. When the Phoenix Edition logo appears. Hit the test switch.
. You will be taken to the region menu.
. Does the word cps2shock appear anywhere ?
. Select the original mode in the region selector.
. Does it go back to USA ?

Do it and tell us what you see...

I sadly suspect it is a boot

rtw

Yes, now it thinks it's an american game.

No mention of cps2shock anywhere.

Return it to Cosmicco, as a rule of thumb all ASIA Progears which display Phoenix Edition are bootlegs (at the current time). The reason for this is that the ASIA version of Progear has not been dumped by Raz yet. That is the reason why I bought it in the first place so Raz could work his magic on it and complete all the regions.

rtw

PsikyoPshumpPshooterP · Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:58 pm

i lucked out. I recieved a japanese green progear board with A board.lucky me!!! for a great price too..funny..i paid more for guwange than progear!!

Naiera · Post by **Naiera** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 9:41 pm

rtw wrote: Return it to Cosmicco, as a rule of thumb all ASIA Progears which display Phoenix Edition are bootlegs (at the current time). The reason for this is that the ASIA version of Progear has not been dumped by Raz yet. That is the reason why I bought it in the first place so Raz could work his magic on it and complete all the regions.

rtw

I'm NOT returning it again. I'll damn well have them send me a replacement without getting this one back. I've already spent far too much shipping the other damn game back.

PsikyoPshumpPshooterP wrote:i lucked out. I recieved a japanese green progear board with A board.lucky me!!! for a great price too..funny..i paid more for guwange than progear!!

Those assholes told me they couldn't get a fucking green board.

PsikyoPshumpPshooterP · Mon Jun 27, 2005 5:34 pm

is all boards suppose to say phoenix edition when boot because my board is green and japanese and i left the region to japan

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 7:39 pm

PsikyoPshumpPshooterP wrote:is all boards suppose to say phoenix edition when boot because my board is green and japanese and i left the region to japan

Originals do NOT say Phoenix edition.

If you have a region selection screen which does not say 'cps2shock' you most likely have a bootleg.

rtw

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 6:03 am

You guys got my ass scared as shit now. I got a greenboard recently, but have no A-board yet (should be here any day now). Should I be nervous?

What about this Suicide crap? I assume the game's been played for a while... do I just have to power it up every now and again to avoid it suiciding on me? What a fucked up feature.

Dewclaw · Post by **Dewclaw** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 6:07 am

That's right, gaijinpunch. If you were to power the board on for a few minutes every day it'd last forever. Crap, I need to change the battery on my games soon...hope I don't screw em up.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 7:10 am

Well, I jinxed myself. I started it up... no sound. This is very screwy b/c my PGM stuff is the same. It plays fine, but no sound. Single-board games are okay. I somehow think a member of this board is going to get a perfectly working PGM board for pretty cheap.

EDIT: Yes, I turned the volume up on the CPS board.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 8:16 am

GaijinPunch wrote:Well, I jinxed myself. I started it up... no sound. This is very screwy b/c my PGM stuff is the same. It plays fine, but no sound. Single-board games are okay. I somehow think a member of this board is going to get a perfectly working PGM board for pretty cheap.

EDIT: Yes, I turned the volume up on the CPS board.

You mean CPS2 ? Enter the selection menu and verify that the CPS2 is not sending out it's signal over the stereo connectors! Alternatly, connect an amplifier to the phono sockets and see if you get any sound there.

rtw

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:58 am

It has sound no. No clue why. The only thing I did different was not put the harness on so tight. O_o Must've been all my swearing.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 4:41 pm

Dewclaw wrote:That's right, gaijinpunch. If you were to power the board on for a few minutes every day it'd last forever. Crap, I need to change the battery on my games soon...hope I don't screw em up.

The battery is not recharged. However when the system is running no current is drawn from the battery, instead the board uses the power source. So if your board is continuously on your battery will last longer because it will be used less.

Having it on for two minutes each day would make little or no difference.

rtw

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 6:19 pm

The old forum had a link to a site that told you everything you needed to know about suicide batteries. Anyone have that link? I know dick about them.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 6:25 pm

GaijinPunch wrote:The old forum had a link to a site that told you everything you needed to know about suicide batteries. Anyone have that link? I know dick about them.

The Dead Battery Society ?

http://www.arcadecollecting.com/dead/dead.html

rtw

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 11:29 pm

Yep, that's it. Thanks.
So have you done any batter swapping yourself? I'm not too keen on frying my very expensive (and hard as shit to find) board at the moment. Is it really that trivial?

How would you desolder the original batter? With a desoldering strip?

raiden · Post by **raiden** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 5:02 am

the battery is stuck and soldered into the PCB, it´s a kind of battery with wires coming out of it. To remove it, you just need to heat up the solder and pull it out of the holes, one by one. After that, you have about one hour to replace it with a new battery. To prepare that one for the procedure, you should add solder to the wire before putting it into the holes. Then heat up the solder on the PCB to allow the wire passing through. After you´re done, you should cut off the surplus wire so it doesn´t touch anything and check the solder points carefully, because a bad contact there could ruin your board, for example during transport.

It´s not hard to do, but like any solder work, you need a steady hand, so if you haven´t done any soldering before, it´s best to practice on something else before.

zaphod · Post by **zaphod** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 9:06 pm

I'll try and sum everything up.

The suicide battery is designed to prevent poeple getting at the decryption keys stored in low power ram. To read it, you'd have to disconnect the battery, and if you do tha,t you lose the data. however, batteries wont' last forever, though the ones use dhold full current till just before they die out competely. Capcom themselves will revive a dead board if you send it to them (they have the keys, and can repalce the battery and know ohow to repogram the chips)

A legitimate phoenix edition is a board that has been reprogrammed after the battery has died. (if the batery is good, it's better to replace the battery) To create a legitimate phoenix edition, you send your rom chips to Razoola of CPS2shock fame, and he dumps the encrypted roms, decrypts them with the XOR files, then applies his patches to the decrypted rom, reborns them, and sends them back.

They are NOT BOOTLEGS, and that's the only way a phoenix edtiion gets into the marketplace. They have references to cps2shock website in their operator menus, have better testers, and have region selectors, sound tests, etc. Very proffesional jobs, and truyl better than the original. They are also 100% legal.

But now we have bootlegs. Evidently someone dumped one of those phoenix editions (not too hard to do) and started converting older boards into rare games by modifying them.

Every legitimate phoenix edition came from an *original board*. it is thusly not a bootleg.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 9:33 pm

That's tempting to get it de-suicided. I've soldered a few things... my Xbox mod chip, and some buttons/stick to a PS2 PCB just last night. I can do it, but I'm no pro. It's a very ghetto soldering job, and I'm not fast at all. That whole hour thing would just scare the shit out of me...especially with a $350 board!

I figure the oldest Progear board still has at least a year on it... I'll figure out what to do by then. Maybe my fingers will become thinner by then and I'll be better at soldering.

zaphod · Post by **zaphod** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:37 am

If the "hour" thing really scaresyou you can solder in the new battery before removing the old one.

PsikyoPshumpPshooterP · Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:39 am

zaphod wrote:I'll try and sum everything up.

The suicide battery is designed to prevent poeple getting at the decryption keys stored in low power ram. To read it, you'd have to disconnect the battery, and if you do tha,t you lose the data. however, batteries wont' last forever, though the ones use dhold full current till just before they die out competely. Capcom themselves will revive a dead board if you send it to them (they have the keys, and can repalce the battery and know ohow to repogram the chips)

A legitimate phoenix edition is a board that has been reprogrammed after the battery has died. (if the batery is good, it's better to replace the battery) To create a legitimate phoenix edition, you send your rom chips to Razoola of CPS2shock fame, and he dumps the encrypted roms, decrypts them with the XOR files, then applies his patches to the decrypted rom, reborns them, and sends them back.

They are NOT BOOTLEGS, and that's the only way a phoenix edtiion gets into the marketplace. They have references to cps2shock website in their operator menus, have better testers, and have region selectors, sound tests, etc. Very proffesional jobs, and truyl better than the original. They are also 100% legal.

But now we have bootlegs. Evidently someone dumped one of those phoenix editions (not too hard to do) and started converting older boards into rare games by modifying them.

Every legitimate phoenix edition came from an *original board*. it is thusly not a bootleg.

how do i k now if my phoenix board is an original phoenix board and not the bootleg of it

EDIT:Letter from Queenie of Cosmicco:

Sorry that supplier may use their technical to remave
the
battery system since CP2 always with problem on the battery.
But the board is not repair board, it work with good condition and we
will provide you warrenty if you get problem on it.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 5:47 am

zaphod wrote:If the "hour" thing really scaresyou you can solder in the new battery before removing the old one.

I guess I should open it up to look.

I get a cheap ass CPS2 board to practice on.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 5:48 am

PsikyoPshumpPshooterP wrote:
how do i k now if my phoenix board is an original phoenix board and not the bootleg of it

EDIT:Letter from Queenie of Cosmicco:

Sorry that supplier may use their technical to remave
the
battery system since CP2 always with problem on the battery.
But the board is not repair board, it work with good condition and we
will provide you warrenty if you get problem on it.

Four options:

. Open the 'B' board if the insides look like the pictures at http://www.cps2shock.com you have a bootleg.

. If your board claims it's the ASIA region and it says Phoenix Edition it is a bootleg. The reason being that Razoola has not yet dumped and XOR'ed the ASIA version. Actually he is looking for an ASIA board

. When it says "Phoenix Edition", hit the test button. If you see no mention of cps2shock it is a bootleg.

. When you select "return to original region" in region selection and it goes back to USA you have a boot. ASIA is still not dumped.

rtw

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 6:02 am

zaphod wrote:If the "hour" thing really scaresyou you can solder in the new battery before removing the old one.

How ? You can't fit a new battery in the same holes if they hold the existing battery.

Do you suggest wrapping the wires around the battery terminals of the existing battery and then snipping off the old one ?

Easiest way to do it (I have changed one on my D&D2) is to do the following:

. Buy a desoldering wick and a desoldering pump, they don't cost a lot and they will make life easier. A needle nosed plier is also good.

. Open the 'B' board

. Snip off the battery leaving the wires. Make sure they are not shorted.

. Turn the PCB on it's side

. Gently grap the protruding wire with the pliers, while you heat the solder point on the other side. It should loosen easily.

. When it's loose, use the desoldering wick to clean up the solder pad and if the hole is still clogged use the desoldering pump.

. Solder in the new battery

. Relax for 4-5 years

rtw

MKL · Post by **MKL** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 12:00 pm

rtw wrote:
zaphod wrote:If the "hour" thing really scaresyou you can solder in the new battery before removing the old one.

How ? You can't fit a new battery in the same holes if they hold the existing battery.

There are other more convenient points where you can solder a helper battery in parallel with the old one:

Actually, I use the helper battery method only when I work on other people's boards. Sometimes I also install a battery holder. It's for people that want to keep their boards in the original condition (i.e. no Phoenix), that can't (or don't want to) use a soldering iron but still want to be self-sufficient when it comes to replacing the battery.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:04 pm

MKL wrote: Sometimes I also install a battery holderIt's for people that want to keep their boards in the original condition (i.e. no Phoenix), that can't (or don't want to) use a soldering iron but still want to be self-sufficient when it comes to replacing the battery.

That battery holder looks sweet, can you please tell me where I might purchase such a device ? What type of battery does it use ?

rtw

MKL · Post by **MKL** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 7:55 pm

The battery holder is Keystone brand, in the US it can be bought from Mouser (# 534-108, snap-on cover #534-108A).

However, the battery holes on the CPS2 board are too small for the holder terminals and need to be widened a bit. This can be done with a saw like this (not sure what it's called in English):

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:05 pm

MKL wrote:The battery holder is Keystone brand, in the US it can be bought from Mouser (# 534-108, snap-on cover #534-108A).

Thank you!

MKL wrote:However, the battery holes on the CPS2 board are too small for the holder terminals and need to be widened a bit. This can be done with a saw like this (not sure what it's called in English):

I think it is called a thread saw, but I'm Norwegian so don't take my word for it

Anyway a simple solution might be to slim the solder legs a bit. I had to do that when adding a battery holder to my SPI board. I used a Dremel to make it a bit slimmer.

Thanks for the info!

rtw

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:25 pm

MKL wrote:The battery holder is Keystone brand, in the US it can be bought from Mouser (# 534-108, snap-on cover #534-108A).

One more question, can one buy the battery from Mouser as well ?
if so do you have a part number ? I'm seriously contemplating buying a few of these!

Edit:
I found a few but this has to be a 3.6V ?

rtw

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:26 pm

That seems more reasonable than the soldering method. I gotta get some more B-Boards first though.