Broken Raiden II PCB

[ResOGlas]

Hey guys,
I just bought this board off a member here sold as broken (so no hard feelings .

I cleaned the Jamma connector, removed each individual socketed chip and cleaned the legs with a pencil eraser, and washed and dried the entire board but still no go. There aren't any bent touching pins or broken traces on the board either. I mean, what could be wrong here? There's a 3.6v AA lithium battery on the board that expired January 1994, could that be it? If so, could it be a suicide battery that corrupts the chips when it dies? Since the board has no internal dip settings and only dipswitches, I don't see a purpose for the battery unless it's needed to run the game? Here's a pic from KLOV, my board is identical:





Thanks in advance guys. I'm sure you all are much more educated on this subject than I am.

[kemical]

What is broken with the game? Does it power on to a scrambled screen with moving bits.. a solid blue screen with audio? or are all the sprites garbled but not background graphics?? etc


I actually have 3 broken Raiden 2 pcb's... 1 of them works completely except everything has a yellow tint, probably an easy fix if I can find the source of the problem.
Then another I have powers up to a blue screen but is playable... (the audio tells me its working).. then the other is just totally garbled, because one of the large IC's, closest to the battery has a few of the legs broken off, I can probably fix that but its gonna be hard to solder...

Also, all 5 of the roms on my boards are perfectly fine, since I swapped them out and tested on the 1 mostly working board. Depending on what your problem is, maybe you could just use some of my extra eprom's.


...I seem to see broken Raiden 2 boards the most out of other broken games.

[ResOGlas]

There is sound, but it's really high pitched and squeely. The visuals are really Garbled as well (scrambled up with moving bits). When I give myself a credit and press start, you can tell that the game is working as the garbledness scrolls up and I can hear the sounds of my bullets and bombs when I press the buttons. So changing the battery won't help?

[ResOGlas]

Something I just noticed that is kind of funny about my board is that the battery on it expired 1 month before the board was actually manufactured (according to the manufacturing sticker).

Man, talk about cheaping out on your product.

[kemical]

No, changing batteries wont help it can actually work without the battery from what I've noticed. not sure if it's a suicide battery, have never read that it is.

You might want to try flexing the board when its running, see if it causes any of the garbledness to twitch or whatever, also check around the pins of the 2 large chips (the ones with tons of tiny pins) to see if there is any kind of build up of stuff (not sure what it would be called) or discoloration around and between the pins.

check for any deep gouges on the backside of the pcb too (look for any copper traces showing through)



i'm still really new to trying to fix pcbs or troubleshooting them... so I don;t have any other advice really. The garbled graphics / sound might mean that any type of ram/memory on the board is bad, or one of the chips that unencrypts that stuff isn't doing its job.
Or the eproms could just be bad/corrupt, although I've never ran into that happening yet on any broken boards I've had.

[oxtsu]

So changing the battery won't help?

not sure if it's a suicide battery, have never read that it is.

It's for hi-score saving only. :)

[ResOGlas]

No, changing batteries wont help it can actually work without the battery from what I've noticed. not sure if it's a suicide battery, have never read that it is.

You might want to try flexing the board when its running, see if it causes any of the garbledness to twitch or whatever, also check around the pins of the 2 large chips (the ones with tons of tiny pins) to see if there is any kind of build up of stuff (not sure what it would be called) or discoloration around and between the pins.

check for any deep gouges on the backside of the pcb too (look for any copper traces showing through)



i'm still really new to trying to fix pcbs or troubleshooting them... so I don;t have any other advice really. The garbled graphics / sound might mean that any type of ram/memory on the board is bad, or one of the chips that unencrypts that stuff isn't doing its job.
Or the eproms could just be bad/corrupt, although I've never ran into that happening yet on any broken boards I've had.

I've tapped all around the board, and the visuals change colors if I tap the socketed chip #5. I tried booting up the game without chip #5 and it is still messed up (Of course it won't work properly missing a chip, just curious what would happen). Should I just trash this board or is there any chance of saving it?

[dpful]

There's probably solder cracks somewhere- maybe on one of the square processor chips.

[D]

I have no experience with arcade pcb's whatsoever.

So don't try this at home.
Please let someone else confirm this first.
Can it be that perhaps the board needs a little more power now.
Perhaps because of it's age some components are a little tougher to get operable. PErhaps a just a little more voltage?

Just trying to help.
*Everybody thinking: you wanne help? OK Don't help*

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Okay, I got a Fabtek USA Bios region Raiden II PCB just a few days ago. The top Jamma edge connector was extremely dirty and I had to clean it with a pencil eraser and then wipe it down with some rubbing alcohol to get it "super shiny" clean.

It powered up on the first try with a 100% working & clean Raiden II opening game titles but sound-wise, was a bit garbled. I had to fiddle around with the sound volume pot and that really didn't do the trick. I had to unplug then re-plug in my stereo speakers (I'm using 100w Sony bookshelf speakers) and then, presto, the sound came back on--sounds crystal clear. I noticed that if you hook up a pair of 100w speakers, some of the MOSFETs, heatsink & capacitors tend to get really warm. (Might be better to work with traditional arcade speakers and won't put too much strain on the Raiden II's sound chips.)

The backup battery should be replaced with another one hopefully soon as I haven't done so. I should inquire at my local Radio Shack and see if they can special order this peculiar 3.6v "AA" sized Lithium battery...I've never seen a Lithium battery in that size before. I suppose a "coin-type" 3.6 battery could substituted if the original "AA" Lithium battery can't be special ordered anymore.

PC Engine Fan X!