area 51 site 4 random resets

pinballer

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what could cause my A51 S4 to randomly reset itself while playing? The previous owner said he replaced the hard drive and the problem is still there. Also theres an error after i defeat the 1st boss, the error message shows and the game reboots.
 
If you haven't tried disconnecting the Watchdog cable on the MB I'd try that, it's not needed for the game to run. Others have had luck with this fix.

I have one that does the same thing. I've recapped the mother board, replaced HD, disabled the Watch Dog, and tried a new power supply with no fix. I thought I fixed it once after re-seating the ram, but that only lasted a few hours. Subsequent attempts at re-seating the ram gave no results.

Chris
 
If you haven't tried disconnecting the Watchdog cable on the MB I'd try that, it's not needed for the game to run. Others have had luck with this fix.

I have one that does the same thing. I've recapped the mother board, replaced HD, disabled the Watch Dog, and tried a new power supply with no fix. I thought I fixed it once after re-seating the ram, but that only lasted a few hours. Subsequent attempts at re-seating the ram gave no results.

Chris

what's the watch dog cable n where's it located?
 
what's the watch dog cable n where's it located?

it's the one that connects between the JAMMIT (JAMMA) board and motherboard. if I recall it has a large black connector next to the CPU fan on the motherboard side and then becomes a 2 pin connector on the JAMMIT side.

more than likely you have bad caps on the motherboard. I just made this repair on mine a couple weeks ago, you could see the 2 green caps by the CPU were blowing open.

I don't understand why you would want to unplug that though after you replace the bad caps... the bad caps will make the motherboard lock up otherwise, the watchdog resets the whole game to give it a kick in the ass to get out of the lockup.
 
It's a 2 wire connector that goes between the jammit board and the pc board. It connects near the jamma connector on the jammit and next to the ram banks on the pc board. Just try disconnecting that and see what happens. The watchdogs job it to reset the board in case of an error or lock up.
 
ok thanks for the info, i'll see if that would solve the issues, if not i will need to recap the board.
 
Does site 4 power the HDD from the game pcb? Maybe its a low voltage issue when its accessing the drive?

you have a janky power supply or dirty edge connector if you have this issue heh.

every hard drive game we operate uses the on-board HDD plug, and I never have issues.
 
Ok so I unplugged the watchdog wires and it fixed the error reboot, but random reset still occurs. I'm guessing cold solders somewhere among the board.
 
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