I've had my Dangun Feveron PCB for about 10 months now and it suddenly started showing severe glitching last night. I've been running it on my supergun for some time now and this problem came out of nowhere. The SG works great with all my other games including Esprade and Guwange which run on the same hardware so I'm pretty damn positive it's Dangun Feveron that's messed up
I am at quite a loss as to how it broke. Some of the sticker over the ROM window is missing, could this possibly damage the graphic encoding within the EROMs?
Anyone have any ideas? I spent about $200 on this board so I'm obviously a little distraught over this problem Hopefully reburning the EPROMs will repair it but I'm at a loss to understand what happened to my board as I take rediculously great care of my stuff...
I doubt its the epoms. How do you hookup the PCB to the supergun? Do you mount the PCB on a board first with PCB feet? or just leave it lying out on a table with jamma connector? Graphic glitches I've seen result from flexing of the board causing the legs on surface mount chips to seperate from their pads/traces. You can't visually tell, but you can test this hypothosis by lightly pressing down on any suface mount chips while the glitching is happening and see if they change shape/color. Locate the SMT chip(s) in question, and bring it to a professional to have it reflowed/resoldered.
I had to do this for a game I bought overseas that was packed very poorly (they packed it in an overnight box with a few rounds of bubble wrap and it came crushed).
I never bend the PCb but I tried bending it a little to see if it was what you suggested. Everything is mounted is mounted perfectly though so it has nothing to do with that :/ I also tried pressing down and nothing happened
segasonicfan wrote:I never bend the PCb but I tried bending it a little to see if it was what you suggested. Everything is mounted is mounted perfectly though so it has nothing to do with that :/ I also tried pressing down and nothing happened
-Segasonicfan
What's the voltage over the 5V when the board is powered up ?
segasonicfan wrote: Everything is mounted is mounted perfectly though so it has nothing to do with that :/
You can't really see the types of bad joints that can cause this. Everything will look like it's mounted just fine. You likely see it under magnification but that's a pretty tedious process.
Could also be the pin connectors on your jamma connector. They tend to loosen up a bit over time (much like the cart slots in a Neo Geo AES system...loose slots = big time graphical glitching).
Try unplugging the board from your harness and replug it firmly. If that shows no improvements, give your PCB edge connector a good cleaning and try a new Jamma connector.
SuperGrafx wrote:Try unplugging the board from your harness and replug it firmly. If that shows no improvements, give your PCB edge connector a good cleaning and try a new Jamma connector.
And the best thing to clean a JAMMA with is an eraser preferably of the white decent type.
Check voltage. Of course if it was fine, and now it's not, then adjusting the voltage isn't going to do anything at all, but you'll find out if you overloaded it over time.
Graphics roms are actually those lovely big mask roms if I recall (with no window). PITA to check and reprogram. Can't remember if the rom test checks them either, it's a common set of roms to skip the check on.
My gut feeling would be that you need to check every single leg of every single surface mount chip. This takes HOURS but I've frequently fixed games with various faults with this method - be VERY VERY GENTLE. As games heat and cool, sometimes the joins crack, similar to if theyve been flexed, as mentioned above. Surface mount technology != win.
It's definitely not the JAMMA harness or connection as I've checked both and already cleaned the edge with an eraser. I take GOLDEN care of this board (and my other Cave games).
I've checked the voltage as well and its correct...works for all my other JAMMA games and I've even tried adjusting it, it made no difference.
I'm having a friend program some new EPROMs for me in hope that they are what got damaged. I've examined all the surface mount stuff but I really can't find any problems. It doesn't make any sense that pins would come connected either as the board never gets very hot and I never move it around.
I'll look at the surface mount stuff again though...would a pic of the glitching help? I can put one up later. It's mostly just screwed up colors on random sprites and a blinking logo. Oddly, the game is still perfectly playable...any ideas on chips I should look for? Thanks again for all the support,
