Electrical Problem? Board got fried..literally

Shredder565

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Hey all,

Here's the current situation. Although I think the board may have problems with it to begin with since there was no sound...


Yesterday I canabalized some wires from control player 1 to use as extra ground wires. I tied 7 altogether onto one ground wire. I then put those little crimpers on them and properly connected them to my joystick. Joystick control on the top goldish connecter, ground on the bottom greyish one.

I powered up TMNT 1 yesterday wich had no sound but otherwise worked. A few seconds after power up and I heard an electrical buzzing noise. Then a pop and smoke. This little section of the board went up in a puff.

http://www.heroesinahalfshell.org/Game1.JPG

http://www.heroesinahalfshell.org/Game2.JPG

Any ideas? All the wires are the same, so they SHOULD be able to be used as an extender for a ground wire, right?

Now I'm afraid to plug it in to my 100% working board for fear of the same issue. Any help for further blunder preventions is appreciated
 
Add on,


I undid the custom ground wiring and despite the turtles board still smoking, it still works when plugged in. Still no sound, but no smoke or buzzing noises. Now I'm not sure what to do.

Any help appreciated
 
Where's the smoke coming from? The sound chip under the heat sink?

If so, your audio wires are messed up and you'll need a new amp chip.

Are you plugging this into a Neo Geo cabinet? If so, the speaker wires are wrong for the board as most Neo Geo cabs are wired for their special stereo connections.
 
For question 1, those two little black 'squares sticking out by the volume knob. The one on the right, or at the very top, was the one that was smoking up a storm.


Could it be the RCA cable I hot wired to the speaker output wire that is causing the problem? I borrowed an old wire from a PC Speaker setup and hooked it in. It gives me no problems on Simpsons, or Turtles in Time and plays audio perfectly. However TMNT 1 I get nothing.

Now, I noticed a new conundrum. When I plug in the audio on the Turtles board, I get no video from the JRok converter. When I take it out, video works.... It wasn't doing that yesterday....

thanks for the reply
 
Bit of an update

- Went back to fiddle with it some more. Noticed the solder area of the wire for the speaker was sitting up against something metal. Could this be an obvious cause for the smoke problem?

- I'm not sure what those two black squares are where the smoke was coming out of. But when I un-did my custom ground job (Which didn't work the way I intended anyway), and re-hooked up the speaker wire a different way, I once again get picture with both audio and video RCA plugged into the TV and those black squares no longer seem to be heating up.

I'm not sure what's going on, so I think we're going to have the arcade expert of a friend come over again and figure out how we can wire this thing the way I want it.

But any other suggestions you guys might have are appreciated.

Cabinet building stars in an hour :).
 
Another update:

could it be the Jamma Harness also got fried?

Player two controls are now messed up. I can get player to lives to come up fine, player two to appear on screen. but when I touch ground to attack, he charges. When I touch ground to jump he charges. When I touch ground to left,he jumps, same with right, up and down. Player 1 appears fine and as mentiond my speaker wires don't seem to be transmitting sound anymore.

Would a new jamma harness do the trick? I tried it on Turtles in Time Board and same thing as TMNT 1.

Double update -
I removed my second try of ground wiring and player two controls worked perfectly again, as did sound. So TMNT 1 seems to be a problem board, but I just can't figure out how to wire the ground so the controls work, and I hope that small fire on TMNT 1 didn't damage anything on the Jamma/Power Side. Any idea how it can be checked?

Thanks
 
Last edited:
This is just my casual observation..take it as constructive criticism or a learning experience or a little of both.

You need to be more patient and make sure things are done properly...For example..soldering and heat shrinking connections so they dont short out on things, making sure wires are connected better then twisting them together...I watched your youtube video and that illustrates what I am talking about...the whole setup is strewn about on the bench, connected up with wires, and in the first video you were touching bare ends of the wires together so you could "play" the game. While shorting a input to ground cant specificallly cause damage, it may not be good to have the other inputs touching each other..ya dig?

Im not going to criticize you about what you are trying to do by making the half cabinet, because its your PCB's, your time, and your house.....

However I think a much better vidoe would be showing it all completed, rather than laying across a workbench and touching wires together..

Also, to wire your grounds properly, youshould have one ground wire coming from your JAMMA harness. That wire should start at one of the control directions....the wire then needs a jumper to pick up that ground and go from joystick switch to joystick switch, to joystick switch, to button, to button. Which means that almost all of your crimp connectors will have two wires in them..I know I am not doing the best job explaining...so i am attaching a picture....

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take your time..and be sure everything is doen right...preferably...wait til everything is in the cabinet before powering it on again...
 

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Were you intending for every button to be closed i.e. ON? If not then you shouldn't use the top most tab. When you connect a wire to the top most tab and the lowest offset one this closes the circuit.

If you want the button to work as a momentary switch you need to connect your signal or ground to the middle tab and then the other wire to the offset lower one. This is probably why your controls are screwy.
 
Yeah, I believe i may have mixed that up in the rough sketch...unless you were referring to how the original poster has his hooked up. My diagram was just a crude description on how to daisy chain the grounds....

Bottom line is signal wires should go to Normal Open (N.O.) terminals on switches and the ground should be daisy chained as shown in the diagram to the COM terminals.
 
Yeah, I believe i may have mixed that up in the rough sketch...unless you were referring to how the original poster has his hooked up. My diagram was just a crude description on how to daisy chain the grounds....

Bottom line is signal wires should go to Normal Open (N.O.) terminals on switches and the ground should be daisy chained as shown in the diagram to the COM terminals.

Thanks for the diagram. I am such a newbitic idiot that I'm figuring this out as I go along.
I knew there had to be a reason why there where two non silver prongs on it, just wasn't sure why. But that would explain why when I had the up connected to the NO one the character always moved up.

'Who needs instructions' at it's finest right here...Dumb central :).

Thanks for the help, they work perfectly now
 
Perfect, one good thing about working in an electricians warehouse..


we had some in the back, although it's copper wire...it still works.

Any idea for a speaker solution to hook it up to a TV? I dunno if the wire I'm using might be causing problems....
 
I would think your local radio shack may be able to get you the prper RCA style connector....
 
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