How long has it been? 10+ Year long repair...

EagleTG

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There was another thread on the forum recently that was in similar tone to this, but I can't find it right now. It was relating to how long you had been working on your longest project...

So, I've just recently started working on a Michael Jackson Moonwalker board that I've had for a really long time. It worked when I got it, it is one of the Sega suicide boards (which I didn't realize at the time). It eventually died while on the shelf, I found it dead once I read about the suicide board issues and saw that it had the dreaded FD1094 suicide chip. It was too late.

I decided to start repairing it. Swapped out the FD1094 with a 68000 that I had. Burned the ROMs from MAME and got nothing out of it. I started working with one of the guys from the Dead Battery Society websites, he eventually escalated my issues to one of the MAME devs. We started sending ROMs back and forth, to no avail. For some reason, the stuff in MAME wasn't working/compatible with physical boards. Likely due to the work-arounds they had for the encrypted ROMs. While working with the Dead Battery Society folks and MAME devs, we tried all sorts of variations of the ROMS including different forms of splitting, combining, etc. Months and months working on a board that was really only worth about $35 at the time. It was education, experience, determination, stupidity, and mostly just the principal of the thing. I also had the idea that once I figured out a working solution, I'd share the unencrypted ROMs with the community.

I never got the board working. I put it back on the shelf where it originally died. I thought about parting it out, I thought about working on it again one day. Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I am working on another Sega game and stumble across a website that has a bunch of unencrypted ROMs for Sega boardsets. Hmm, there's a Moonwalker ROM on the site. I decide that I'll break out the board again and start working! I found the same 68000 processor I had originally used in a parts box, the original ROMs and my replacement ROMs were nowhere to be found. Ordered up some ROMs, and got to business!

First, I burned the 2 unencrypted ROMs to undo the suicide. It "kinda" booted. Graphics corruption all over the place, but a result is a result!!

I'm not 100% up and running, but I figure I am about 75% at this point. Turns out that the board has been sitting for so long that it looks like some of the original Sega "Mask" OTP ROMs (I think that's what they are called) have gone bad. I found two that didn't check-out compared to the MAME ROMs. (Those are the same in MAME, there are only two ROMs that are encrypted and I already had those re-burned as mentioned above.) I'm one ROM short, otherwise I think I'd have it 100% working, but replacing one of the Sega non-erasable ROMs with standard 27C2001's that I burned from MAME has cleaned up a bunch of the graphics corruption, probably about 90% working! I think once I get the other re-burned, everything will work perfectly!

After that long tirade, the point of my story: I looked at the binaries that I had been working with from the last time I worked on this board. They are dated 2000 and 2001. Absolutely ridiculous, it feels like it was just a few months ago, and it's been over 10 years since I worked on this board last.

The funny part is (not that this board is for sale), but there are price gougers on eBay charging TOP DOLLAR for these MJ Moonwalker boards and cabinets. Jumping on the "MJ is dead" bandwagon I guess. So it's apparently worth a little more than $35 now. Even at the falsely-inflated rates, I'd still not recoup the labor I've put into this board.

P.S. - I had another one of these events recently... Decided it was time to replace the suicide batteries on my CPS2 cartridges. The date I put on them from the last repair was 10 years ago. Again, felt like it was maybe a year or two.

TL;DR time flies. How long has your longest repair been? It's this type of thing that makes me wonder if I've been doing this for too long. Time for a new hobby! :)

Edit: Wow, found my original repair thread on Google Groups. http://groups.google.com/group/rec....read/thread/89f831b86c616c01/c85ed13cab02e21f (By the way, don't go to the website that's linked in my sig on the Usenet posts, I no longer own it, and don't trust the people who do)
 
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I dragged a Williams 8-Ball home from Pin-A-Go-Go '99 and still haven't found playfield plastics.

not a brain twister like your rom adventures but anyway.
 
Three years for an Asteroids CT and four years for a Tempest CT. It took so long because I trusted a local con man who didn't know what he was doing. I got them back and still had to work on them, but the good part is that con man motivated me to learn how to solder and start working on games myself.
 
I own a couple of Sega 16 boards and I thought I should share this with you, I've used this service before. If you would have left your board alone, it sounds likely that a $40 kit would have fixed your problem. Since you have an EPROM burner you might be able to get it back to where you started with the right rom set. Check it out under the system18 section:
http://www.segaresurrection.com/
 
I own a couple of Sega 16 boards and I thought I should share this with you, I've used this service before. If you would have left your board alone, it sounds likely that a $40 kit would have fixed your problem. Since you have an EPROM burner you might be able to get it back to where you started with the right rom set. Check it out under the system18 section:
http://www.segaresurrection.com/

About how much does shipping end up being on that, with it overseas?

I have a Turbo Outrun board I might try that on someday. Thanks for sharing, $40 isn't a bad price for that, although it would suck to buy the kit then find out the board didn't work anyways.
 
That's an awesome story that you almost have it working after all these years. Way to persevere!

I haven't been in the game long enough to have any prolonged fixes. My biggest one was my battle with the amp board in my DK Junior that I battled and fixed recently. That was only 4 months or so, which pales in comparison to your story.

I look forward to reading the thread when you have the thing completely working.
 
Well...I'm 3 years into a Tempest boardset. Started out dead and now "nearly" works. Passes self test, but I still get incorrectly scaled graphics that come and go and the board resets. But I'm closer! Great to hear about your long repair!
 
I own a couple of Sega 16 boards and I thought I should share this with you, I've used this service before. If you would have left your board alone, it sounds likely that a $40 kit would have fixed your problem. Since you have an EPROM burner you might be able to get it back to where you started with the right rom set. Check it out under the system18 section:
http://www.segaresurrection.com/

Yep, wasn't around back in the day. And I've got so much invested, it seems like a cop-out to use this service now. LOL

It's all good, I have the right ROM set... It will live once I get one more blank (it's on the way, part is ordered!!!)
 
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