Buster Bros./Pang... weird graphics issue

RusselMania

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I've got a Buster Bros PCB with some weird graphical stuff going on... thought perhaps someone might have seen this before.

The essence of it is that the backgrounds and text/scores display fine, but the sprites are all confined to the right half of the screen... overlayed with what's *supposed* to be on the right half of the screen. There are also some weird stray graphics in a vertical column, and the title screen looks like a jumbled up jigsaw puzzle.

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IMG_2927.jpegIMG_2925.jpeg
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This is an original Capcom board that I de-suicided years ago. In an effort to solve this I went back and re-did that mod, trying various ROM combinations, to no avail. The graphics changed, but remained doubled up on the right side. The game is "playable" if you can wrap your head around it.

Thoughts, anyone?
 
I just did this de-suicide and I can't really tell from you pics, but I believe you have to remove R33 and bridge the right side to a pin on the CPU:


Next, remove the resistor at R33 shown here and jump the right of the two points the resistor used to connect to Ground as shown here. This makes the Kabuki behave like a normal Z80.

Next you'll want to burn a 27C020 EPROM and a 27C512 EPROM with the correct data for your game. Choose the appropriate link below to download the correct file for your game.
 
I just did this de-suicide and I can't really tell from you pics, but I believe you have to remove R33 and bridge the right side to a pin on the CPU

I feel like I did that and maybe undid it in desperation? I will double-check.

Thanks for the feedback.
 
Here's a pic of mine. It's also possible the Kabuki CPU is failing, which can be swapped out for a regular z80 cpu. It's covered in the link above.

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Here's a pic of mine. It's also possible the Kabuki CPU is failing, which can be swapped out for a regular z80 cpu. It's covered in the link above.

I had actually subbed in a Z80 on mine, hence the difference from your pic.

Today I tried putting the kabuki back in, re-did the resistor/ground mod to make it identical to yours, and to what the instructions indicate. No change.

I then went back and checked all of my roms. I found that my 020 hacked rom didn't match either the files for Buster Bros or Pang... so I re-burned both that and the 512 with the BB files. This got the title screen back to normal, and all the text back to english... but the main issue (sprites doubled up on the right half of the screen) persists.

I also found that roms 9 and 10 came up as unknown in romident... so I burned new ones with the known good BB files. No change.

Any chance I could get a pic of your board around the PAL at 12F? My chip says POKER... like this may have been a Poker Ladies board at one time.
 
Unfortunately there is a good chance the sprite custom (top right corner of your pic - 86S105) has failed. This chip is also used on Black Tiger and 1943 and those games fail in similar ways. In the past I've taken the chip from Pang's to fix the other games.

Your problem is not in the conversion, if you had a problem there the game usually wouldn't run at all.

(Edit - just google '86S105' to see more info on the problem and reproductions)
 
Unfortunately there is a good chance the sprite custom (top right corner of your pic - 86S105) has failed. This chip is also used on Black Tiger and 1943 and those games fail in similar ways. In the past I've taken the chip from Pang's to fix the other games.

Your problem is not in the conversion, if you had a problem there the game usually wouldn't run at all.

(Edit - just google '86S105' to see more info on the problem and reproductions)

Ah... this makes sense. Pretty amazing there's a replacement now available... thanks for the feedback.
 
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