Big Buck Safari DISCONNECT message on screen

Rooster78

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First let me say I know there are other threads on this but they are several years old, don't hold the answer and I don't want to necro bump them. Here's where I'm at. I have this Big Buck Safari arcade game that wasn't working. I picked it up for cheap. I am the service manager/ lead tech for a Gameroom/Gametable retail company. I've been doing extensive research on these raw thrills games as I just successfully upgraded a FnF Drift machine. Thank you again to all helped from here. But now I have this BBS machine that displays DISCONNECT when running. At first the Dell Optiplex 740 is uses was giving me the orange light of death on the power switch. I replaced the CMOS battery and it is now green. I set the BIOS settings from Bettson properly too. I also dropped in a back up PSU to make sure it wasnt that. PSU is fine. And the PC is spotless clean. I then ran the restore disc on the dell out of the machine and connected to my bench rest monitor, which was successful and got me to the Big Buck loading screen and then subsequently to the connect I/O board screen. So I powered down and put the PC into the machine and still get the DISCONNECT screen. I've tried connecting an led monitor to the PC with it in the machine and I get nothing displaying, not even the disconnect message. I've even tried to run the restore disc while in the machine, but it doesn't even display the Dell post screen. I tried to hook up a different VGA cable from I/O Board to monitor as well, nothing. Also it doesn't seem to be playing blind as I've flicked the coin switch and tried to start, nothing happens, no sound. So I took PC out of machine and hooked back up to my bench monitor and I get to the connect I/O board screen again. So the HD is fine, that I at least know.
Which leads me to wonder if its the I/O board? All the LED's are lit and fuses look intact. I'm just confused as would it display on the led monitor when bypassing the I/O VGA connection or not? Does anyone have any leads or have experienced this before? All wires seem ok and everything is connected including the small USB memory stick. I've hit a wall and could use the experts again!!!
 
theres a small board on the right side of the cabinet as you are facing it from behind. CHeck those two fuses.

The I/O board in that cabinet gets its voltage from the PC VIA that small board (known as a USB mini fuse/watch dog board).

With the PC in the cabinet is the power LED on the front of the computer yellow or green? You should get an image from the VGA output of the computer if you plug a monitor directly into it regardless of the status of the I/O board.
 
Fuses are ok. I disconnected the power supply dongle for I/O board from MOBO in PC and I get to the connect IO board screen on machines monitor. When I connect power to IO board I get nothing. I even bypassed the board to my bench monitor and get nothing. I have all 11 leds lit red and one in green on the board. I'm gonna try another spare PSU I have and see what happens. Could the watch dog board be bad and how could I tell?
 

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Here is a pic of the boards and pc. The light on front of PC is green. It had the OLOD but replacing CMOS battery fixed that.
 

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That I/O board is Serial IIRC.... I would check again if you have the Serial ports configured properly in the bios of the PC. Try other combinations if you want.

Make sure you have the I/O card on the proper Serial port also if there are 2 on the PC.

3F8/IRQ4 (COM1): Sets the serial port to the I/O address and IRQ normally used by COM1. This is usually the default for the first serial port.
2F8/IRQ3 (COM2): Sets the serial port to the I/O address and IRQ normally used by COM2. This is usually the default for the second serial port.

If there set to auto change to one of those. Also if there is only 1 use 3F8 test it then try 2F8 and test again.
 
Current BIOS
 

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Also I can only power up PC out of the machine with this out of it. And should there be a card in one of these slots?
 

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Thats not right... That is just a PCI PCIe riser card and should have NO effect on it booting unless it is faulty. I never have encountered a bad one, and No there shouldn't be anything attached as far as I know.

Matter of fact leave it out and try to power it in the cab and see what it does. If that Riser has a issue it "could" mess with the com ports and all the rest of the system peripherals.

What is that little wire harness on the side for? Is it connected to the game in any way?
It looks like a power header. Never mind I seen in the photo it is connected and it does power something....
That does need to be connected. but the Riser card does not. so I guess take it off the riser and work from there.....
 
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ok, try this.

Connect everything as it should be connected. BTW, the PC wont power up IN the game without that 8 pin connector plugged in and the harness inside the PC connected between the board and power supply. That connector goes to the mini USB fuse/watch dog board. The watchdog board turns the computer on.....

Onto my idea. The video cable running from the PC to the I/O board, remove it from the I/O board and connect it directly to the PC. If you get no picture use the other (the black VGA cable) and connect the PC to the monitor. If both cables check out and the PC is being tuned on by the Mini USB board then you have a bad I/O board or power to the I/O board is messed up somewhere.

I've seen the signal amplifier IC's fail on those I/O boards. Wouldnt surprise me if thats your problem.
 
ok, try this.

Connect everything as it should be connected. BTW, the PC wont power up IN the game without that 8 pin connector plugged in and the harness inside the PC connected between the board and power supply. That connector goes to the mini USB fuse/watch dog board. The watchdog board turns the computer on.....

Onto my idea. The video cable running from the PC to the I/O board, remove it from the I/O board and connect it directly to the PC. If you get no picture use the other (the black VGA cable) and connect the PC to the monitor. If both cables check out and the PC is being tuned on by the Mini USB board then you have a bad I/O board or power to the I/O board is messed up somewhere.

I've seen the signal amplifier IC's fail on those I/O boards. Wouldnt surprise me if thats your problem.

ok, gonna try this again. I'm confused, gamefixer, by your theory though. Did you mean to connect video cable to monitor, not pc? But here's where I'm at. I got a new I/O board from Betson. Cables are good, checked them on other machines and used other cables in this BBS. Watchdog board turns on pc and fuses are good. Bios is set according to manual. Yet, I'm still stuck with the disconnect message.
 
So I figured it out, its either PSU or wire harness for I/o board power. I connected a separate psu to the io and game runs. I'm gonna try and get wire harness and ill report back.
 
Fixed?

I have a similar problem. The only fix i found is to cycle power a minute or so after the consoles starts powering up. The Dell power button light turns from orange to nothing. I then press the power button on the front of the Dell and it boots to green and the game starts normally. If you determined the power-supply was the culprit, that would make sense to me. I assumed that the rest of the machine, including the CRT were drawing the power down and the computer was sensing this low power state. Once some of the peripherals warmed-up and their draw was less the computer would sense a satisfactory condition and boot? I am also having a color problem with the game once it does boot. The game works ok even with the greenish color but it isn't the way it is suppose to look and i was hoping it would play better once the colors were right? From other threads i read looks like Capacitors may be the culprit. Unfortunately the machine is an hour away from here so i can't easily check for indications of bulging capacitors until my next visit to the Shenandoah Valley.
 
My neighbors BBH Pro is doing this and I bet it is something very similar. I don't remember the specifics when I messed with it a year or so ago (maybe 1.5 yrs) and It would randomly work. Now it is back to not working, w/ monitor saying disconnected, but if it was a wire harness that when moved etc "connected" I could see it being a 50/50 on every boot with bad connections.

Is it the harness from the rear plug to the watchdog board?

Or the Y split inside the pc that has the pci/plug at the rear slot?

Post 1 here has the pinout on the rear pci slot plug
 
If you had a flashing orange light on the PC, change your power supply. It's getting old, and it can supply enough current to power the PC alone, but not enough when you add in the I/O board and everything else connected to that.
 
Bingo. It's a computer with a finite life power supply. Replace it.
 
well, or the CMOS battery died. those comps were old enough that if you lose the Power on AC setting in the BIOS, they won't turn on. you can deduce this by disconnecting the pass through harness to the motherboard power plug and plug the power supply in directly. if you can manually turn it on, I guess you can rule out anything else being wrong. the pass through harness disconnects the power button, so on Raw Thrills games such as these you have to run the power supply motherboard plug directly in to power it on, hook a keyboard up and enter BIOS, and fix the AC setting.
 
If you had a flashing orange light on the PC, change your power supply. It's getting old, and it can supply enough current to power the PC alone, but not enough when you add in the I/O board and everything else connected to that.

Ok, update.

The pc when unhooked from game would not show on computer monitor. I ended up taking it home, moved ram a slot over, swapped psu, game comes up. Put stock psu back in, computer works at my house.

I bring the computer back, connect it all back up, no signal. Connect computer monitor, no signal.
I disconnect the Y splitter and serial cable, connect to computer monitor, computer works. Connect vga from pc to crt directly, it works.

When I connect that y splitter it does not work. the pc (dell optiplex 740) power button stays orange (no blink). The led's on the jamma board and watch dog seem fine, so this makes me think the serial cable (has a tight kink) may be an issue OR the power supply when the external game power pulls the computer psu cannot output enough power.

Anyone have thoughts on this?
 
Plugged in new power supply, same issues. I brought the computer home and checked the bios settings. There were some that could cause some issues I suppose. I'll bring the computer down and try with the new settings.
 
These might help.
 

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Issue was resolved with changing all bios settings to be as posted here:
 
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