Ok, not really a full repair log, but…
I've been working on a Data East The Real Ghostbusters pcb for a client who has been very patient. The symptoms were a screwed up title screen, and lots of messed up sprites (background tiles were OK).
I narrowed the problem down to a surface mount chip on the video pcb, TC17G042AF at 12M, with good active inputs but dead outputs (I used Gondomania schematics as a reference).
Not having the tools for SMD work or the replacement chip on hand I was going to send the board back. But then I did a little reading and found some info that the Gondomania video pcb was very similar. I have one in my multi-rotary cabinet, so I pulled it just to see if this was true. I swapped roms on the video pcb, plugged it in to the cpu pcb, and the title screen and most of the sprites were fixed. This also helped me to isolate the SMD chip as the culprit above, as it had same active inputs but also active outputs.
The owner of the board and I then decided to split the purchase of another Gondomania PCB off eBay to pillage the video PCB, fix the Ghostbusters, and give me a spare 1/2 working set as a backup to my Gondomania (and maybe someday get around to replacing that SMD chip).
The new PCB arrived, but it was an older version of the board style, and was missing some jumper locations. The video PCB worked but had a lot of missing background tiles.
I ended up adjusting jumper settings on my original Gondomania video pcb to fix the Ghostbusters, and used the newly acquired video pcb to get my Gondomania back working.
It turns out there are different revs of the CPU and Video PCBs for Ghostbusters and Gondomania, so I am going to use this thread to document those as best I can. Here goes…
I've been working on a Data East The Real Ghostbusters pcb for a client who has been very patient. The symptoms were a screwed up title screen, and lots of messed up sprites (background tiles were OK).
I narrowed the problem down to a surface mount chip on the video pcb, TC17G042AF at 12M, with good active inputs but dead outputs (I used Gondomania schematics as a reference).
Not having the tools for SMD work or the replacement chip on hand I was going to send the board back. But then I did a little reading and found some info that the Gondomania video pcb was very similar. I have one in my multi-rotary cabinet, so I pulled it just to see if this was true. I swapped roms on the video pcb, plugged it in to the cpu pcb, and the title screen and most of the sprites were fixed. This also helped me to isolate the SMD chip as the culprit above, as it had same active inputs but also active outputs.
The owner of the board and I then decided to split the purchase of another Gondomania PCB off eBay to pillage the video PCB, fix the Ghostbusters, and give me a spare 1/2 working set as a backup to my Gondomania (and maybe someday get around to replacing that SMD chip).
The new PCB arrived, but it was an older version of the board style, and was missing some jumper locations. The video PCB worked but had a lot of missing background tiles.
I ended up adjusting jumper settings on my original Gondomania video pcb to fix the Ghostbusters, and used the newly acquired video pcb to get my Gondomania back working.
It turns out there are different revs of the CPU and Video PCBs for Ghostbusters and Gondomania, so I am going to use this thread to document those as best I can. Here goes…













