Area51 Max Force PCB error

dougmanct

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OK, I've been searching high and low and can't find anyone or anywhere that this error has been documented.

Area 51 Max Force PCB..

arrived on my bench with no hard drive.

Had a known good drive image on hand. Burned out image to new hard drive.

Plugged in drive and powered on board, got this error message in red lettering:

info_get_hdinfo() returns OK, but bogus

then it throws up a stack dump, resets, and does the same thing again ad nauseum.

I have never seen this particular error before, and have seen at least a dozen of these boards in my lifetime, some with various issues, but never this one.

I have tried multiple drives I've known to be good, and even tried a compact flash card. Same error.

Have any of the repair gurus here ever seen this? Ideas?
 
8HMM.... cold solder joint at the ide pins or bad trace somewhere on the ide trades perhaps?

DId you verify good +5 and +12 at the molex for the drive?

is there any way to verify and make sure you have the correct security ic? single or dual pcb setup?

perhaps this is just an area 51 or just a max force.. just sayin
 
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Last time I saw stack dumps was when I had the wrong HD image file... Although a RAM problem or CPU problem can cause the same thing.
 
I'm going to confess I made a bush league error. I completely forgot about that tiny 8-pin security chip for MaxForce. I was recalling Area51 "vanilla" which doesn't need it.

So, now I know what happens when you try to run the board w/o the chip.

My next refresher on these boards was how damn picky they are. I swapped in the 4 original vanilla Area51 ROMS and plugged in a drive from stock and the damn board complained with the "too high" voltage LED. (and would boot to self test but not to the main game, which I recall from my own logs is indicative of a board not pleased with the +5 ) . I'll need to hook my adjustable bench power supply up to it instead of my old ATX supply I use for hard drive games.
 
Just FYI, the 8 pin security IC won't do anything until about 10 seconds after coinup. So if it's missing the game will boot up fine and run until that point then it resets and gives you a message that says Three Taps Your Out
Also the 8 pin IC is only for A51 Max combo . Plain A51 doesn't need it.
 
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