Konami Police 911 2

blimpey

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I am new to this forum, but have been collecting arcade games and pinball machines since 1989.

I recently scored a nice Police 911 2 on Craig's List in the SF Bay Area for $250. As an unexpected bonus the flash card for the original 911 game was inside the coin box. The rotating beacon did not work. The gears were stripped. I was able to find a $20, 110v replacement beacon at a Mall Store, "Spencers Gifts". It is an almost perfect fit.

Now to my problem:

The seller had disclosed that the gun had issues, and would work on and off. I had great success with the game for the first week, but now the problem the seller spoke up has returned. The gun is not registering on the screen. I have checked all of the cables and connections to the gun, cleaned the monitor, glass, and gun lens. The seller seemed to think it may have something to do with the game board. He had prevously replaced the Konami gun with a Happ gun in an attempt to fix the problem. It has gotten progressively worse and now is nearly unplayable. When in gun calibration settings the gun will only occasionally register a hit on screen.

I was hoping someone had encountered a similar problem, or might have additional suggestions I have not tried. As a case of last resort I was looking for a referral to send the PCB out for repair/diagnostic.

Thank you, John
 
yep had the same problem with my first police 911. hate to tell you this but its the board. they are not easy to find either. i found this out the hard way.

no matter what gun you use it wont work. no one repairs them except for betson who sends them to china. youd be looking at about $200-$500 for repairs that are probably simple
 
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Thank you for the info. That is exactly what I feared. I remember sending a Sega Model 3 board stack through Betson for repairs a few years ago and it was around $250 then.

I have read some conflicting things as to weather a viper board is simply the mother board, and the game is only on the flash card, or that the PCB and flash card have to match. Do you happen to know?

If the PCB is generic to all viper based games I might have a slightly better chance of find one than if I only can use a viper board from a 911 game.

Thanks again, John
 
the viper pcb and cf must match. the code is stored in nvram on the motherboard. they have been dumped, but are incorrect so you could not find a random viper board and make it a police 911.
 
I'd check the simple things first... make sure the voltage (5V) to the gun is good, maybe try bumping it up a little bit if it's not too high already. Also, if it worked for a little bit, it seems it's not fried, but has a marginal component... I'd try hitting parts of the board with freeze spray to see if you can isolate what's causing it not to work.

DogP
 
I'd check the simple things first... make sure the voltage (5V) to the gun is good, maybe try bumping it up a little bit if it's not too high already. Also, if it worked for a little bit, it seems it's not fried, but has a marginal component... I'd try hitting parts of the board with freeze spray to see if you can isolate what's causing it not to work.

DogP

silly question, how does that freeze spray technique work?
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I sent the board off to Betson yesterday. I spoke with Betson's in -house Konami repair guy. He seemed pretty knowledgeable about that particular board problem. He quoted me $230 to fix it, and a one day turn around. Could have been worse.
 
silly question, how does that freeze spray technique work?

If you mean, why does it work... typically semiconductors that have marginal problems work better when cold and fail when warm... by freezing them, you can easily cool them to a working state, then they heat up and fail again. Since freeze spray is very pinpoint, it narrows down to the bad chip easily.

If you mean how do you do it... I usually look at the schematics (if available), or at least get familiar with the circuitry, to guess where the problem would be. It takes a lot to freeze the entire board, since if you just step back too far and spray, it just wastes the stuff (doesn't cool enough to be useful). Then just have someone watching for the glitchiness to go away while spraying components on the board. When it goes away, I usually wait for it to come back as it warms up, then spray it again to make sure I've found the component.

One time when I didn't have freeze spray available, I stuck the entire board in the freezer, then made sure it worked when cold, then took a hair dryer to heat parts of the board to isolate the area that fails when heated... that didn't work as well, since the hair dryer isn't very pinpoint, but it gives you a general idea where to look closely. Of course you have to watch out for condensation when doing that.

Thanks for the suggestions. I sent the board off to Betson yesterday. I spoke with Betson's in -house Konami repair guy. He seemed pretty knowledgeable about that particular board problem. He quoted me $230 to fix it, and a one day turn around. Could have been worse.

Cool... be sure to post back with what the problem was (they should tell you, or maybe you can see the repair)... if they seem that certain about being able to fix the board in one day, and only charging $230, there's probably one chip that commonly fails, causing this problem.

DogP
 
Any updates on this? I have a Police 911 on location right now that seems to be having very similar issues to the ones described here, so I'm very curious about what could be causing them. So far I've re-pinned all the connectors, replaced the sensor in the gun, cleaned everything (lens/glass/monitor) and upped the brightness/contrast in the monitor to no avail. I've checked continuity in the wiring and it all seems good, but I suppose it could have an intermittent connection/break in one of the wires somewhere. In my case the gun either works fully (in which case the gun is totally accurate and registers all over the screen) or doesn't work at all. Sometimes it will work for a day before cutting out, other times it only lasts minutes. It's driving me nuts!
 
I am new to this forum, but have been collecting arcade games and pinball machines since 1989.

I recently scored a nice Police 911 2 on Craig's List in the SF Bay Area for $250. As an unexpected bonus the flash card for the original 911 game was inside the coin box. The rotating beacon did not work. The gears were stripped. I was able to find a $20, 110v replacement beacon at a Mall Store, "Spencers Gifts". It is an almost perfect fit.

Now to my problem:

The seller had disclosed that the gun had issues, and would work on and off. I had great success with the game for the first week, but now the problem the seller spoke up has returned. The gun is not registering on the screen. I have checked all of the cables and connections to the gun, cleaned the monitor, glass, and gun lens. The seller seemed to think it may have something to do with the game board. He had prevously replaced the Konami gun with a Happ gun in an attempt to fix the problem. It has gotten progressively worse and now is nearly unplayable. When in gun calibration settings the gun will only occasionally register a hit on screen.

I was hoping someone had encountered a similar problem, or might have additional suggestions I have not tried. As a case of last resort I was looking for a referral to send the PCB out for repair/diagnostic.

Thank you, John


Hi, I just read that you're having a 911/2. Are you able to dump the NVRAM for me (look for the M48T58Y-Chip) ? Mine's gone and I'm looking after that already some months.
 
I got my Police 911 pcb back from Betson today. They charged me $100 and told me it was unrepairable.

Here are their notes, Repair Performed: "Gun issue traced to a known problem with main processor chip #U38 (BGA). KONAMI factory has determined this to be a non-repairable chip failure. RETURN-TO-CUSOTMER-UNREPAIRED."

I'm getting ready to throw in the towel realizing that unfortunately these KONAMI viper based games have a life of 8-10 years, and then become useless since no one can repair them. It's really too bad these are fun games (mocap boxing and 911 and 911 2).


John
 
Can you post what is written on U38?

I don't do BGA repairs, but maybe the chip could be identified as one that could even be replaceable?
 
thanks blimpey for letting us know.

should have know that it was the main processor in viper motherboard. i guess my 4 viper games are dead with same cause. i remember one of them running okay if i press that main chip hard. it is surely a BGA package common problem, mainly because of it's own heat. stranglely, there is no heatsink installed in that chip.

i wish i can do bga repair here :(
 
I got my Police 911 pcb back from Betson today. They charged me $100 and told me it was unrepairable.

Here are their notes, Repair Performed: "Gun issue traced to a known problem with main processor chip #U38 (BGA). KONAMI factory has determined this to be a non-repairable chip failure. RETURN-TO-CUSOTMER-UNREPAIRED."

I'm getting ready to throw in the towel realizing that unfortunately these KONAMI viper based games have a life of 8-10 years, and then become useless since no one can repair them. It's really too bad these are fun games (mocap boxing and 911 and 911 2).


John

WTF??? What a scam! They told you "yeah, we know the problem, we'll fix it for $230 with a one day turn around"... then they send it back with "yeah, we know the problem, we charged you $100 to determine it's the problem we knew was unrepairable".

So... is the chip itself bad, or is it just the BGA chip coming loose?

DogP
 
That's good... it looks like it's an obtainable part (some of the surplus electronics places sell them, though you have to do an RFQ). I believe it's just a PowerPC based processor, not a custom ASIC, and I don't think even custom programmed.

DogP
 
Not custom programmed at all! The data sheet is out at http://www.datasheetarchive.com

The MPC8240 combines a MPC603e core micropcessor with a PCI bridge. The MPC8240 PCI support will allow system designers to rapidly create systems using peripherals already designed for PCI and other standard interfaces. The MPC8240 also integrates a high-performance memory controller which supports various types of DRAM and ROM. The MPC8240 is the first of a family of products that provide system-level support for industry standard interfaces with PowerPC microprocessor cores.

Do we have a member here that can do reflow of that BGA chip to see if it's a heat related popping of the solder connections instead of a bad chip?

If it's heat related popping then things can be done such as heatsinks or active cooling (fan with heatsink)...
 
IMO, I'd just have someone press on the chip while playing and see if the game gets better/worse. And who knows... Betson may have no idea what they're talking about either... it may not even be that chip. And they claim that to be unrepairable, yet there's plenty of places that can reflow BGA... so to me, it sounds like they're claiming the chip is bad (or just wanted a free $100). If anyone would like to send me some boards, I'll gladly ship them back to you for $100 ;) .

But yeah... I've reflowed BGA with my hot air tool, but I wouldn't do it on a Police 911 board. There's way too much chance of it not working/making things worse/unrepairable. Unfortunately, even at work we send out our BGAs to be installed/replaced :/ .

DogP
 
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