Gauntlet Dark Legacy not booting

[mfrohs]

Heh yeah that's what I'm going through at this point, although the board wont boot again so I need to figure out what exactly is going on. I have a feeling it's the jamma edge connector now, sometimes I get error LED's and sometimes not just be replugging it.

I'll be testing out some button/joystick wiring tonight if I can get the board working, but if not I guess I'll find some of the 49 ways.

 

[demogo]

The problem with going back to the 49-ways is that there's almost no games that use them. They're good joysticks but it isn't so great if you want to run other games that use 8 ways.

Sorry to hear about your jamma connection issues.

Edit: I actually have the 49 way sticks I pulled out of my game if you decide to go that route.

 

[mfrohs]

What a horrible tease. I get to play the game for about 15 minutes (just running into monsters to swing as I had no buttons!), disconnect it to clean things up and redo the fan mounts, and it hasn't turned back on since. I had my button setup all ready to test too!

Well I tested the voltages going in/out of the harness, the 5v in is 5.11v / out is 4.97v on the player controls. The 12v is about 12.2v both ways. The video wires have no voltage on R, G, or B, but sync does.

I also tried running a ground strap to all of the mounting screws just in case. Yes it was a pain... and it didn't help.

 

[demogo]

I recall reading that the Vegas boards are famous for burning up the power leads on the board. Mine has a bit of solder on one of the jamma fingers that carries power, probably for this reason.

 

[mfrohs]

Ok found out some useful but probably not good information. I checked all of the jamma harness wires to the traces on the board and they all have continuity through the edge connector.

I was talking to my dad tonight and he suggested that it could be a capacitor, and it might work if I leave the board on for a while and let it build up a charge. I'm going to do that now and see if I get any change.

The only change I see during all of this testing is that sometimes LED7 on the I/O board is on, and sometimes it's off. The function is to show Linking Data, off is Not in use (no game linking) and on is Sending Data. I don't think it should be doing any linking unless I misunderstand the meaning of linking data, so it seems weird that LED7 would ever turn on.

EDIT: Ugh we're up to 5 pages on this, I hope I find a solution so this thread can be useful for someone else down the road.

 

[mecha]

brutal.

you wouldn't happen to have another power supply laying around by chance would you?

your voltage seems good, maybe a tad low on the I/O side though. what's your test point, are you doing on the JAMMA harness or the actual fingers on the board? as stated above, the power section of the JAMMA edge has a tendency to get nuked on these, which had me concerned when I pulled my Sportstation board out that was listed as a "working pull" and saw that. it worked though, and it's apparently normal on these.

I think the target +5 voltage is 5.10, or maybe 5.15. they're pretty picky I'm told, I'm very fortunate my install was a direct drop-in and I didn't have to fuck with anything.

if it means anything though, the Road Burners (also Atari Vegas) at my family's arcade had a power supply that was probably NEVER adjusted, and it wasn't until one night I was playing my KI that was next to it that I noticed RB resetting and posting an error like "3 strikes and you're out!" signifying a disk read error. when I metered the +5, it was running at 4.86V -- it ran like that for a year! after adjusting it within proper range, the game never errored again.

so, I guess you can go under... but not over?

the good news thus far is it seems your drive and all your roms are intact, it's just looking like trying to get the bastard to "start" is the problem.

btw, does anyone know if the VGA cable is unplugged, would it prevent the game from starting? much like if the video card is bad, the game won't load either. did you try reseating all the boards? I think you said you did, but that was 4 pages ago.

 

[mfrohs]

Well none like the one in there, but I have a crazy amount of PC power supplies. They're probably not great for this though without the adjustment. Maybe the drop in voltage is from resistance on the edge connectors, because it sits at 5.11v going into the board then drops to about 4.98v at the controls.

That video card idea makes sense, either that or one of the boards is bad. I've reseated the boards quite a few times and that could have something to do with it, I just can't tell. The voltage LEDs show OK still on the CPU and I/O boards so it could be video, but then in that other thread the guy fixed his problem just by turning the IDE cable over.

So maybe next question is if I replace a board, which to do first heh. What a pain, I just want to get drunk and play some GDL now!!!!

 

[Peale]

I have to share this story. It may or may not be of use to you, but it had us chasing ghosts for months, and the "fix" was a big "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!"

Machine was on location at a campground. When collection time came it was found to be not working. Pulled the boardset and promptly sent it to New England Coin Op. They promptly shipped it back, stating "it works on our end."

Installed it back in the machine...no go. Wasn't working. Since this wasn't a "priority game" (eg a game that earns major cash) it was allowed to slide. The boards were shipped back to NECO. This time they had them for a while as there was a backlog, plus they wanted to give them a onceover.

Finally the end of Summer came and the cabinet came out of the campground and back into the shop. Boards were back, so I decided to pop them back in. Nope! Not working. Okay...it's got to be a cabinet issue, but what?

Since the whole assembly mounts on a board, it was a pretty simple matter to move it to another machine (gotta love the JAMMA standard). At that time there were only two games in the shop that were "compatible" (eg JAMMA and medium res monitor) Cruisn' USA and our monitor test bench. The Cruisn' was easier to get to, so I tried that first...same result. Hmmmmm...got me thinking. Tried it on our monitor test bench (had to fix a monitor first to do so) and...huh! It came right up!

Thinking a bit more, I tried to think of what the two had in common, and I came to this: inputs. Even when its not in use, the inputs on Cruisn' are always engaged. What if it was something about the inputs it didn't like?

Put the board back in the Gauntlet cab, and disconnected all the inputs...sure enough, it booted right up! I reconnected them one-by-one until suddenly it wouldn't boot.

You know what it was? A stuck button. A freaking stuck button had the game down all season. It was stuck with soda. As soon as I cleaned it out, it didn't have any issues.

A stuck button kept it from booting...and there were no warnings when it booted that something like that was wrong.

 

[mecha]

that's rich. would a dedicated GDL with 8-ways connected have anything to do with this or what

 

[mfrohs]

Oh when I read that about a button sticking I about sprinted out to the garage to see if it was something like that. I didn't have any luck so far by disconnecting inputs, but I like the suggestion and that made me think about some other things. The top of the PCI connector between the CPU and I/O boards was corroded in some spots, so I've been testing through that connector now to make sure all of the pins have continuity to the board traces.

I'm really not seeing any changes no matter what I do, with the boards unplugged I get the same LED's, so I'm starting to think one of these boards is just shot, or has some really bad carbon issues. It bugs me though that the voltage LEDs are always OK. I'll keep cleaning on these things with a plastic brush for a while and see if there are any changes. Maybe I was just delirious when I thought I was playing the game before and it was dead all along lol. Sigh...