Kangaroo issues

jgeiger

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Picked up a really cheap kangaroo tonight. Cab is really good, components and monitor are all clean. Monitor powers up but not game sounds just a garbled screen. Disconnecting the board the monitor is nice and white. Tested the power at all the test points on both boards and the power board and they look good.

Any ideas?
 
Drat, cannot upload images from my iPad apparently. Well, it kind of looks like a tight close up of a mimes shirt.ill post an image tomorrow.
 
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don't know if the game has a test mode, but garbled screen usually means the CPU is not executing anything which could mean any of the following (assuming power is already checked)

system clock circuitry not working- often the case easy to check rudimentry with a logic probe or look to see if the cyrstal is broken, often they are missing entirely on the old boards
CPU bad - replace with another to see if there is a change
ROM bad - easy to check if you have a ROM burner, though vary rarely "the problem" in my experience
RAM bad - common fault, not easy to check without a fluke but if the system has only a few RAMS, can shotgun replace.

any of the circuitry dealing with the address decoder or address bus - common but, very hard to check without more advanced equipment (like a fluke), schematics, logic probe and understanding of digital logic and basic CPU architecture.

-brian
 
Thanks. Heres the image. The secondary board has a lot of rust on the legs of a good number of chips. Suspect that one or more might be rusted through. Looking for a cheap boardset now as opposed to messing with those chips.
 

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Someone on the for sale thread had a few kangaroos for sale yesterday
 
Ok, picked up a known working board and similar results. Checked power again and it seems ok. Checked the test points on the AR and they are close enough. Might try to swap in another AR board and see if theres something there.
 

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Try swapping monitors too. That pic looks like it might be a sync problem
 
Is the monitor a TM202? I recently picked up a cheap Kangaroo and that monitor caught on fire. A friend gave me another that also didn't work. Was told here those monitors are crap so I ended up putting in a Go7.
 
Thanks guys. I tried dropping a G07 on it (it still had the connectors all wired in) and same results. Which, I expected. Theres no sounds and garbage on screen so Im suspecting the AR board which are known to fail.

Yes, its a TM201G which I also read are crap. However, I have good colors (even if its just the rug pattern) and syn and all that so I'll stick with it right now.

Anyone know how to bypass the AR and use a switching power supply instead? How do you get the 22VDC from the switcher?

Thanks again.
 
Tried doing the sense mod on the ar board with no change. Double checked the voltages on the board and the test points on the ar and everything seems fine. Still no sound, garbage on screen (with a slight roll to it), and the start buttons are not blinking.

Could there be other problems with the ar even though the voltages seem ok? Ill prob end up doing the rebuild kit on it this week to see if that has any effect.
 
Check the continuity of the ground, and both syncs from the game board to the monitor plugs
(you can do this when it off) maybe you have a bad cable running from the board to the monitor. it looks like a sync issue and if you have a known working board that still does that, and you've tried swapping monitors...
it's down to power supply or cabling.
 
Check all the connections to the monitor and hooked the monitor up to another game to make sure it was working. So, at this point, I think the monitor is ruled out.

I did notice one strange thing. The garbled display in the pic a few posts ago has a roll going through it from right to left the height of the screen that is really noticeable. When I disconnected the coin door the roll went away. Not sure what that means at all.

Check the voltages again going to the boards and they are close enough. Prog going to go through with the AR rebuild kit from Bob and see if that helps at all.
 
After checking all the connections again and getting ready to try a switching power supply on it, magically the game came up perfect. Still doesn't come up if I have the coin door connected. So, ill comb the wiring and rebuild the AR to make sure it's solid but for now I'm punching monkeys.

Thanks for all the help.
 
After working intermittently for a few months my Kangaroo went down again. I picked up a working ARII-06 from Local413 a few weeks back. When I went to put it in I noticed a couple things. The power brick had blown fuses F4 and F5. I also noticed that it had an ARII-02 in it and not the 06. From what I read the 02 and 06 have similar wiring and voltages. The 06 does not have an audio amp.

So, should the 02 have been working at all? What sort of issues could it have caused?

Also, since the 06 does not have an audio amp can Kangaroo be run with just a switcher or is there additional voltages that are provided that a regular switcher will not?
 
Did some more work on this.

Checked all the voltages into and out of the ARII. Everything looks good.
Checked all the voltages at the edge connector and they look good.
Checked all the voltages at the test points just past the edge connectors on both boards.
Reseated the ribbon connector between the boards.

I have two different boards and have seen both work. One gives a colorful pattern that looks like a rug pattern and has some movement to it (see the earlier pics). The other has white, 1 inch or so stripes horizontal.

Any suggestions on how else to test and isolate this?


Thanks.
 
Bumping this with some new info.

With both edge connectors off of the board all voltages seem to be good. As soon as I hook the edge connectors up the +5 drops on both lines. This is from P7 pins 5 and 6. I have two separate boards both of which I have seen working at one point. One drops to 1.0 and the other drops to 0.9. I have done the rebuild on this AR board.

Any ideas on what would cause the power drop?

Thanks.
 
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Are you still blowing fuses 4 and 5? I won't provide too much help, but F4 and F5 kept blowing on my Centipede and all traced back to the AR board. Here's the help given from Brien:

The 36V AC goes through the Diodes (CR5-CR8), which converts it to DC. This voltage is then stepped down to +12, +22, and -5V from there. So when the fuses blow, you lose all those voltages.

The +5V is generated from the +10.3VDC line which comes off the Power Brick.

Don't know if that helps or not. Good luck!
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

I checked out the voltages at the test points on the AR board again.

The 36 vac is good.
The -5 is coming in at -6.5.
The 10.3 is up at 14.
The +12 is good.
The +/-22 is at +/-24.

Not sure if the high voltages are causing the issue or not.
 
Im getting a graphic glitches. Pulled the very clean board and resat the roms, still same result. I can play it but graphically it's still messed up. Ill post pics here for future kangaroo trouble shooters
 
It's probably one if the many 4116 rams on the lower board there are 24 I think?

Feel for ones that will literally burn your finger if you touch it for a second (litterally will blister) and replace those (there might be many)
Crazy gamers sells 4116 super cheap or you can hack it to use 4164 which he sells even cheaper.
 
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