Area 51 Site 4 color issues

T.2193

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Got an Area 51 Site 4 cab, and I notice an issue with the colors. On reflective or bright areas (explosions), the colors are wrong, and instead displays a small mess of neon colors. All other colors display just fine, and there seem to be no other problems. I've seen similar problems when trying to run certain older games on a modern PC, but never on an arcade game! Beyond that, everything seems good.

Any thoughts? I will try to get a photo, but I'm not sure how it will display.
 
Here is what I could get. The C&C screen is just something I grabbed off the internet that resembles what is going on in the game. Again, it only seems to occur on certain areas (best I can tell it is on reflections or bright areas, like some explosions; also makes the CREDIT text kinda awkward to read).
 

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Ah, the classic DirectDraw palette failure. In that world (PC games) this issue is... complicated, but a software problem.

First take some pictures of the boardset. Let's make sure a previous owner didn't hack in a different card. The big brown slot below the CPU on the main board should be EMPTY.
 
Now with photos. Nothing in the brown slot.
 

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Thinking about replacing the hd... Would that be a good place to start, or does this seem more likely to be a problem with the JAMMA board?
 
I see you don't have any weird mods to the board. That's good, but we've pretty much hit the limit of my knowledge. I wonder if there's a reliable way to test the RAM somehow...
 
you can probably download MEMTEST86 and hook a cd-rom up to it to boot from, hook keyboard and a monitor too. I'd unplug the motherboard from the JAMMIT (I think that's what the JAMMA half is called) board and run it like a regular computer.

MEMTEST86 should then run and tell you if your ram is bad.

honestly, you might even be able to get away with running it JAMMA too, but I'm just thinking of process of elimination.
 
i was looking at my board 2 nights ago and my board has all from ram slots full...???and in your pic you only have 2 of the slots with ram in it.... does that mean someone added more ram to mine? or is your short on ram?
 
i was looking at my board 2 nights ago and my board has all from ram slots full...???and in your pic you only have 2 of the slots with ram in it.... does that mean someone added more ram to mine? or is your short on ram?

The manual seems to indicate that there are only two SIMMs, and they should be in the slots closest to the fan. Not sure how much RAM the board actually needs to run properly.
 
i was looking at my board 2 nights ago and my board has all from ram slots full...???and in your pic you only have 2 of the slots with ram in it.... does that mean someone added more ram to mine? or is your short on ram?

It's very likely that as RAM prices changed, they made two variants, one with lower density RAM on 4 sticks, and one with higher density RAM on 2 sticks. 4x8MB or 2x16MB, it's all the same to a PC.
 
Alright, so I've since tried a completely different Area 51 Site 4 boardset in my cab and...

Same issue.

Any other thoughts on what could be causing this?
 
2 different board sets, same monitor?
No boards between boardset and monitors?

Sounds like a monitor issue. Can you hook up another game and try the monitor to see?
 
THis just came to me....

Verify the rgb wires from the jamma harness to the monitor are pinned out correctly.

I have a nagging hinch. I think you have some colors switched around. If explosions/fire looks neon green, suspect red is swapped with green etc etc

It could be the rgb wire is simply on the monitor the wrong way, flip it around and see if that cures your issue. ALot ofdy later on comes along and sees this isnt right, ops bitd would cram a rgb wire on backwards if it would work and just force it on backwards if it would work... later on somebody looks at is and says this is baskwards letme fix that... next thing you know, bass-akwards colors.


Now if you go through this and it is actually pinned out correctly it could be you have some monitor issue going on as well... but lets check that wiring first, i really think you are going to find your issue there.

ALso.... if all else fails.... dumb question... but you said you tried a new board, did you ever try a new hd *not copied off of the old one?
 
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Have any luck?

I will mess with it some more today.

I have three HD's set up for this game, so I will try swapping them around to see if I see any difference. I'll also throw the PCB into one of my other cabs, see if there is any difference.

The monitor could be at fault, but the way it looks, it really seems like a board fault. It's hard to explain, but the colors seem good on everything save for reflective surfaces or brightly lit things (the open part of the sky when the alien is flipping the bus during attract mode, the blue streak thing also in attract mode, etc)...

Maybe I can get some better photos in another cab. Maybe it is just the way all these boardsets are...
 
Necrobump since it's high time I finally resolve this irritating problem (from a new account since I couldn't figure out a way to access my old one).

I've tried both of the available HDD dumps (September 7 and 11) with my boardset and see the same graphical error with both. Once I'm done recapping the PSU on one of my other JAMMA cabs, I'll use it to test the board and grab some better photos.
Fortunately I'm not alone with this issue, as checking some gameplay recordings on YouTube reveals other boards with this same problem, although the uploaders don't seem to notice.

For anybody else who has an A51 Site 4, I'd kindly ask for you to double check to make sure that your PCB doesn't actually have this issue.
 
Tested the PCB on a different monitor, and the issue was not present. After digging through the forum a bit, I found somebody else who was having the exact same problem:
My monitor is also a K7000 series. Went ahead and recapped it plus replaced the pots on the neckboard just to rule that out, and the issue wasn't resolved. Going to try the adding potentiometers on the RGB lines method that Kino used to resolve his problem.
 
Tested the PCB on a different monitor, and the issue was not present. After digging through the forum a bit, I found somebody else who was having the exact same problem:
My monitor is also a K7000 series. Went ahead and recapped it plus replaced the pots on the neckboard just to rule that out, and the issue wasn't resolved. Going to try the adding potentiometers on the RGB lines method that Kino used to resolve his problem.
I'm still in Lewisville for a few days and have another Site 4 board that I would like to unload. I don't recall it having graphic issues. I capped the motherboard on it.
 
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