Haunted Castle PCB help please

[dingsbums]

I got a cheap Haunted Castle PCB - and it's the K version .

The board itself looks super clean (no broken traces, missing parts, leakage, dry solder joints, ect.......). I cleaned the three ROM chips (and sockets) and reseated them.


Sound & control work perfectly however there are graphic problems :/
PCB runs at 5,25 volt. -5volt and 12volt are there and spot on.

First my PCB then a MAME shot how it should look like:













As you can see a lot of stuff is missing on screen. Some enemies like skeletons, zombies & bats are visible. All the enemies that are not visible can damage you. The first endboss is also not visible (I can't get past this endboss of course so I don't know which errors occur during the following stages).

I found this video online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xPnIAOOBok

And the good man left his repairs in the description

Symptoms#1 : Game resets in a endless loop (watchdog active)

Fix#1 : Replaced bad 74LS32 @L14.

Symptoms#2 : Now PCB boots but with missing sound effects and graphical corruption.

Fix#2 : Replaced two bad KONAMI MASK ROM 4M-16bit @J5 and @E17 with two 27C400 compatible EPROMs.

Symptoms#3 : Game now has full sound (music+FX) but still graphical issues are present, most of sprites are missing and other have vertical bairs across.

Fix#3 : Replacing both 'M5M4464' DRAM @H4 and @H3 restored graphics competely.

Especially Symptoms 3 and fix 3 looks to be my problem.

Any ideas ???
Help please.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

I don't know off hand how to fix it but a K on Konami roms doesn't indicate Korea version if that's what you thought. It means revision K. ABC...K.

[dingsbums]

I didn't think it was the Korea version (I don't think there is a Korea version) it's just the K version . There are two main english versions - K and M. The better (and rarer) version is the K version. You can see the difference in the first stage - in the M version the bats fly a big arc / in the K version they fly a small arc .

But anyway - I still need help .

[system11]

5.25v is too high by the way... Never go past 5.1, preferably 5.06.

Put it into test mode (switch 3 dip 3) and see if it complains about anything - first step.

[Ed Oscuro]

The better (and rarer) version is the K version.

Gameplay-wise, it's much easier. Don't think many people can handle version M. That said, the bat behavior in version M is more interesting / can trip you up more readily.

Still, version K is more than enough of a challenge.

[dingsbums]

5.25v is too high by the way... Never go past 5.1, preferably 5.06.

Put it into test mode (switch 3 dip 3) and see if it complains about anything - first step.

I tried the PCB at 4,9 & 5,0 & 5,1 volt already. At 4,9 it didn't start and at 5,0 & 5,1 volt it's exactly the same way as with 5,25 volt . But I turned it down to 5,15 volt.

The test mode was the first thing I tried - sadly it's not like the test mode on newer Konami PCB's, it doesn't tell you which ROM / EPROM is bad. Instead you can switch with a button press between sprite/colour, screen geometry, inputs & sound test. I noticed at the sprite/colour test under the colour bars there is a simon sprite on the left and a skeleton sprite next to it but it does look like there should be 4 sprites (and the 2 on the right are not visible).

I just went ahead and desoldered the two M5M4464L at H3 and H4. Just to see what the board will do I turned it on - now there are no sprites at all just the backgrounds.
I ordered a few new M5M4464L chips - I hope they fix the problem .

[caius]

Yes, I can confirm that your issue depends 99% from bad M5M4464L ZIP RAMs (they are used by the two large custom chip '007121'), they go bad very often.I have already repaired two Haunted Castle PCBs with same problem.Here is a video of my repair:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xPnIAOOBok

[IronGiant]

A small bump ...........

Does anyone know if the thirty-odd 27512 mask ROMs (present on the version of the game with a separate ROM board) have been dumped? The only dumps in MAME are for the single board version with five 4Meg 40-pin mask ROMs.

Thanks

[system11]

A small bump ...........

Does anyone know if the thirty-odd 27512 mask ROMs (present on the version of the game with a separate ROM board) have been dumped? The only dumps in MAME are for the single board version with five 4Meg 40-pin mask ROMs.

Thanks

It wouldn't surprise me if they were at some point, then the MAME people at the time threw them out since the data matches the mask ones (probably). This happened to Vulcan Venture which makes it a royal PITA if you have a split version, since the ordering is all screwed up.

[dingsbums]

It's working again .






mikemcbike: http://shmups.system11.org/memberlist.p ... le&u=12216

I have nothing but praise for him - he fixed the PCB for me.
Here is his repair log:
http://www.wolfgangrobel.de/arcadereps2/hcastle.htm

[caius]

As I said missing sprites were due bad M5M4464L ZIP DRAM.It happens very often on this board, this kind of RAM are very sensitive.

[Pofo]

Hi, before all I say that i'm new in this forum but i used to read it since a long time ago (sorry for my basic english).

I had a haunted castle ver k in my collection that have a failure, the sprites seems to have less color and you can see transparence, tomorrow i will put a photo.

I think the problem is a bad prom, maybe 63s141 at i4???.

Does anyone know this issue???

[Hackcell]

I'm getting a RAM BAD error on my haunted house PCB. Below a link to the image.
Has anyone seen this error before?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRDKvPeFWS9 ... =copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRDKvPeFWS9 ... =copy_link

[castlemaniac]

Hello and sorry to bring a post back from the dead. I felt it was unnecessary to open another full discussion for this, unless I really need to I will do so.

My Haunted Castle pcb works perfectly, no glitching or anything. But I noticed that the bass line in the music is missing. Also when the time counter is at 30 seconds, the game music goes silent when it should be playing a dramatic tone instead. Even when I get to the wall with rocks flying at you on the first stage, I get silence and the music comes back once the rocks are gone. I booted the arcade in test mode, and some sounds seem to be missing including this one. What could be the culprit to this?