Dead Neo Geo boards - worth getting

Tornadoboy

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Grrrrrr, I wish KLOV allowed one to go back and edit thread titles, "worth getting" was meant as a question, not a statement. :(

Anyway I'm just curious, I see non-working Neo Geo boards on Ebay all the time for relatively cheap and I was wondering if there's something that particular goes on them, and are they typically worth fixing?
 
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Well it looks like I'll find out, I just bought a single slot off of Ebay that supposedly plays with graphics problems and for some reason someone removed a switch from the board and tried to wire it to something else, so it should be an interesting project.
 

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Well it looks like I'll find out, I just bought a single slot off of Ebay that supposedly plays with graphics problems and for some reason someone removed a switch from the board and tried to wire it to something else, so it should be an interesting project.
Definitely let us know how it turns out! I've been curious about the same thing... I've worked on a few MV-1Cs and a 4 slot but mostly just battery conversions and re-caps.
 
Are they regional? In other words, an American board won't play Japanese cartridges? And if so, is there a way to make them region free?
I'm still a little new to these so I could be wrong but I believe the BIOS is regional but only in that it determines the language and a few settings. For instance, my MV-1Cs and my 4-Slot are all USA so when I put a Japanese game in, it plays in English with USA default settings (red banner when blood is turned on, etc.).

Worst case, if you get a board from the wrong region you can put a Unibios on it.
 
Are they regional? In other words, an American board won't play Japanese cartridges? And if so, is there a way to make them region free?

You can play any region cartridge in any region MVS. The BIOS on the board controls what version of the game you are playing (Japanese cart in an American MVS will alter the game to American parameters, which is usually just language and blood/violence options).

Edit: You can order a special BIOS that allows you to pick region and do other cool shit like unlock the AES (Neo Geo console) version menu systems.
 
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Got the board today and already I see a couple of things that clearly need to be fixed. First it's missing the stereo/mono switch, but I already knew that from the pics, and second it was worked on by someone whom clearly DIDN'T know what they were doing.

Fortunately, I DO. :D

Well, sort of... :(

Anyway, there's a lot of piss-poor soldering that I've got to redo, and a gouge in the circuit board that severed maybe 10 traces, they're tiny so it's going to be a challenge to jumper but it looks doable, this is probably where (fortunately) the previous owner gave up trying to fix it. I've got some new solder rework equipment coming so this and my Namco Classics with the bad caps me be its first victims.
 
Definitely worth repairing the single slots if you can get them cheaply. The multi slot boards are an absolute nightmare to work on as far as I'm concerned.
 
Funny about the bad soldering - my 2 slot had some big solder blobs around all of the audio controls sliders and some related stuff. Mine was actually working, but it looked like hell when I went to change the battery.
 
Are these boards standard JAMMA? I thought I heard somewhere that they're a little different even though they're listed as JAMMA, and someone is selling adaptors for them on Ebay.
 
The single slots are all JAMMA, the 2, 4 and 6 slots are MVS (a slight bit different than JAMMA).

You can get a lot of information about the various Neogeo boards at www.hardmvs.com, including the pinouts of an MVS wired setup.
 
The multi slot boards also have giant metal plates over much of the top of the board that have to be removed before you can do anything to them. Probably why they are such a nightmare.
 
The multi slot boards also have giant metal plates over much of the top of the board that have to be removed before you can do anything to them. Probably why they are such a nightmare.
Removing the metal shield is no big deal. The amount of logic chips on the multislot boards is why they are a nightmare.

6 slot top board:
neo6slottopv1s1copy.jpg
 
I'm going to start a thread on this under the repairs section where it belong once I start working on it in earnest, but what is normal behavior for this board when it boots without a cartridge installed? Also is there a schematic for it downloadable from somewhere? I don't think the KLOV one has schematics.
 
Normal behavior without a cart looks like this........................
 

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