Boatload of "untested" boards dumped on eBay - ends soon!

[ASK]

http://shop.ebay.com/princessoda/m.html ... ksid=p4340

Not my shop, no affiliation, just came across it randomly, they're all ending in 4hrs. They're shipping to USA only so I can't get in on it ;( Thought I'd pass on the find.

[Ed Oscuro]

Good job trying to ruin my chances of picking up a Three Wonders

I tried to get a Terra Force, ehh, no go. One of these days.

[caldwert]

I bid on a few but didn't win. Went for the Mercs, Tetris Plus, and Super Burgertime listed as just a Data East board. Oh well, didn't want to pay any real money for potentially broken boards.

[Ed Oscuro]

I didn't take the time to dig really far down in the list. But I won Shinobi and 3 Wonders; both boards look legit so I'm good.

Incidentally I always thought that 3 Wonders had an absurdly low ROM count for the PCB (and for the game). I guess there were some new high-capacity ROMs out by 1991...there's 1MB more ROM data than in Mercs from 1990.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The shmup title of Roosters/Chariots presented in the Three Wonders PCB is legendary for it's beautiful hand drawn sprites and lush backgrounds. All this amazing artwork and audio-visual extravaganza running on the CPS1 mobo setup. My local arcade had this particular arcade title in-house for anyone to try out...am glad to have tried it out back in the early 1990s.

If your 3 Wonders PCB has a suicide battery in place, consider it a rare find as it is an original PCB. I've seen bootlegged versions of 3 Wonders PCB but they don't have the suicide battery in place though.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey PC-E,

Some folks have told me that 3 Wonders comes without a suicide battery. Yet other resources have said it came with one. I'm pretty sure this one is legit because to my eyes it looks exactly like what it should - with the mostly-open top layer for ROMs and the large CPU. I'll report my findings for sure.

[caldwert]

I'm pretty sure my Three Wonders has a suicide battery on it. I can check later this week.

[system11]

A desuicide romset exists for it - it's extremely likely that it has a battery. If you can't see it, it might well be on the underside of the C board. Be very careful desuiciding that one - see the info on the Dead Battery Society page.

[Ed Oscuro]

I won't be desoldering anything (no tools for that), but I'll check it out when it gets here finally. May well try to get one of those battery holders put in it.

[system11]

Nah, just desuicide it or get someone else to. Changing a battery on CPS1 is no fun at all, if it loses power for even half a second it's going to need desuicide anyway.

[Ed Oscuro]

Update:

Must've been somebody's stock of parts boards. All the EPROMs on Three Wonders have their stickers removed (!) and it's not booting. Shinobi is the rustiest board I've seen - it looks like it might work but there's some rust on the legs of various ROMs (I might try carefully cleaning those off but I'm obviously nervous something might snap in two) and a lot of the traces look pretty iffy - might be some dirt and then again it might prevent booting. I also didn't realize that it needs a connector for JAMMA, so I'll get one of those off multigame. I'll be trying to get another Shinobi if it doesn't work anyway.

Remind me not to buy any more boards that've been in somebody's rental unit. Indoors only from now on

Still, not too bad for $41 shipped. If nothing else, these are now my parts boards, I suppose.

If anybody needs one for a project just let me know.