mecha
Well-known member
"franken" MK1 T-unit resets (TL;DR WARNING)
I can remove an item from my bucket list... sorta. before anyone chastises me for bidding on a semi-working MK1 T-unit board on ebay, know that I only got it for like $12.49.
if I'm understanding its description properly, the seller had a non-working MK T-unit board and I guess an MK2 board that didn't work right, and he swapped the MK roms over and generated a board that works perfectly fine until you get a Game Over. I compared the little ICs part #'s to the manual that came with it and found that the numbers matched... just in case it was like another Y-unit debacle I had a couple weeks ago.
the game's "problems" were listed as scores missing from the high score table and the character intros being messed up. my family previously owned a 5.0 T-unit back in '93-'95 and also did this, but as I came to discover, it's not the same symptoms.
I hooked the board up and played it sans-kick harness and got to endurance match #2, lost, and decided to pack it up, but I knew the above-mentioned symptoms (as I remembered them... I played a lot of MK1 back in the day...) would happen after a Game Over, so I watched it. and sure enough, the high score table was missing scores, but 5 of them, instead of the 3 I remembered. and after that the comic book offer page was solid black with a little trim of the background on the left side. and alas, the resets began.
the seller mentioned that a reset would clear the problem, so I hit the reset button. and it continued to reset, rug pattern looped over and over. so I powered the machine off, and waited. turned it back on, same shit. so I turned it off again and waited longer. this time it powered on and I got the CPU board test, which passes, and then the game resets on the "MIDWAY PRESENTS" screen. Test Mode didn't look any better, I got to the Diagnostics page and the game would freeze up and reset again.
after that I said piss on it.
so I have questions:
1) does the T-unit utilize a protection scheme like the Y-unit's 8-chip PAL, albeit in a different way?
2) if #1 is a NO, can I just drop swap this into an NBA Jam board and be on my merry way?
3) do I start scalping my existing MK2 and swapping roms to see if the problem goes away?
also, in case anyone was truly wondering, YOU CAN USE A MK1 Y-UNIT SOUND BOARD ON THE T-UNIT WITHOUT ANY CABLING MODS. (however, the manual outlines that there were different amplifier chips or something on the sound boards)
I can remove an item from my bucket list... sorta. before anyone chastises me for bidding on a semi-working MK1 T-unit board on ebay, know that I only got it for like $12.49.
if I'm understanding its description properly, the seller had a non-working MK T-unit board and I guess an MK2 board that didn't work right, and he swapped the MK roms over and generated a board that works perfectly fine until you get a Game Over. I compared the little ICs part #'s to the manual that came with it and found that the numbers matched... just in case it was like another Y-unit debacle I had a couple weeks ago.
the game's "problems" were listed as scores missing from the high score table and the character intros being messed up. my family previously owned a 5.0 T-unit back in '93-'95 and also did this, but as I came to discover, it's not the same symptoms.
I hooked the board up and played it sans-kick harness and got to endurance match #2, lost, and decided to pack it up, but I knew the above-mentioned symptoms (as I remembered them... I played a lot of MK1 back in the day...) would happen after a Game Over, so I watched it. and sure enough, the high score table was missing scores, but 5 of them, instead of the 3 I remembered. and after that the comic book offer page was solid black with a little trim of the background on the left side. and alas, the resets began.
the seller mentioned that a reset would clear the problem, so I hit the reset button. and it continued to reset, rug pattern looped over and over. so I powered the machine off, and waited. turned it back on, same shit. so I turned it off again and waited longer. this time it powered on and I got the CPU board test, which passes, and then the game resets on the "MIDWAY PRESENTS" screen. Test Mode didn't look any better, I got to the Diagnostics page and the game would freeze up and reset again.
after that I said piss on it.
so I have questions:
1) does the T-unit utilize a protection scheme like the Y-unit's 8-chip PAL, albeit in a different way?
2) if #1 is a NO, can I just drop swap this into an NBA Jam board and be on my merry way?
3) do I start scalping my existing MK2 and swapping roms to see if the problem goes away?
also, in case anyone was truly wondering, YOU CAN USE A MK1 Y-UNIT SOUND BOARD ON THE T-UNIT WITHOUT ANY CABLING MODS. (however, the manual outlines that there were different amplifier chips or something on the sound boards)
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