Marble Madness graphics vertical bar

kstillin

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It's getting closer and closer!

Actually, I bought a LSI cartridge, but it didn't work. But was able to swap the chips into another LSI daughterboard- Peter Packrat. Still didn't work, but brought it home and found a bad EPROM. Back to the machine--

soooo close:

The marble still doesn't display, but the rest of the maze does. Big improvement.
A vertical black bar appears at the horizontal position of the marble. As you roll the marble to the left or right, the black bar tracks your movement. You can't tell where vertically on the screen the marble is.

I guess it's where any Motion Object is- in the first shot below, there is a bar where the black marble is rolling along also. Same with the 'pieces' when the marble rematerializes after getting dropped.

So, you still can't play :)

Next plan is to swap all the socketed chips back over to the LSI board that these came out of and retest. Any help is appreciated.

Here is an older thread showing a previous problem:
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=138211&highlight=marble+madness

And a 10-second shot of the current issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x6rpPO10Y8
 

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Hah!

It's those LSI chips on row 5!
I was about to swap the chips over to a Road Blasters and switch some jumpers when I thought I'd swap around those row 5 chips.

KaBAM!- symptoms change! I haven't got it perfect yet, but then again, I'm not sure which of the custom chips fully work. It's playable- just need to clean up some artifacts. I'm sure I've got a good set of four of those SLAGS/CUSTOM chips between the several boards I have!

I don't know why I hadn't thought of those before. I've got two Road Blasters boards with graphic problems and I never suspected those custom chips.

Oh well. I'll post a final picture when I get the Player 2 control reading on both axes.

Maybe someone else will read and find a clue to their problem.

K
 
Hah!

It's those LSI chips on row 5!
I was about to swap the chips over to a Road Blasters and switch some jumpers when I thought I'd swap around those row 5 chips.

KaBAM!- symptoms change! I haven't got it perfect yet, but then again, I'm not sure which of the custom chips fully work. It's playable- just need to clean up some artifacts. I'm sure I've got a good set of four of those SLAGS/CUSTOM chips between the several boards I have!

I don't know why I hadn't thought of those before. I've got two Road Blasters boards with graphic problems and I never suspected those custom chips.

Oh well. I'll post a final picture when I get the Player 2 control reading on both axes.

Maybe someone else will read and find a clue to their problem.

K

I would be interested in seeing a MM on a Rev B board. I can get it to run on a Rev A board no problem, but the Rev B doesn't like it.

Have you done this before or was it something you were just going to try?
 
Are you asking about me putting the MM chips into a Road Blasters daughtercard?

Yes, they are different revisions
No, I have not tried this before
No, I haven't swapped them over since I got positive results with the other LSI board

Yes, I will try though!

What issues did you get? Did it run at all?

I am psyched up about being able to play MM, even with glitches! This has been a long time in the works for me.

Kerry
 
Are you asking about me putting the MM chips into a Road Blasters daughtercard?

Yes, they are different revisions
No, I have not tried this before
No, I haven't swapped them over since I got positive results with the other LSI board

Yes, I will try though!

What issues did you get? Did it run at all?

I am psyched up about being able to play MM, even with glitches! This has been a long time in the works for me.

Kerry

It's been awhile, but I think it came up, but the graphics were mostly missing.
 
Just for the record, I tried the MM LSI chips in the Road Blasters later revision board.

I could set jumpers for the program and sound code, so the program actually ran fine. You could 'play' through a maze and hear all the music and sound effects.

The graphics are another story. First off, I won't say I'm positive about putting the correct 'Plane 0/1/2/3/etc' chips into the correct sockets.

Also, I changed some jumpers to handle the X256 ROMS I had versus the X512 ones that RB uses. You can't 'jumper-down' to X128 for the smallest ROM in each plane though.

Anyway- the graphics were just whacked. You could make out where the ball is, but there was no playfield or background. I may try again some other time, but for now I'm excited that my Marble Madness is UP!

Oh- one more thing- I noticed a section of the RB board near the upper right where the slapstick is has some silkscreening that looks like you could install some jumpers that would in effect change the other option jumpers from selecting 512/256 to 256/128. There is no header populated there though. The MM daughtercard has the 256/128 option jumpers, so that would probably be something to look into to play MM on the RB card.

Oh- you also need the slapstick and the two small graphics plane proms.

K
 
Just for the record, I tried the MM LSI chips in the Road Blasters later revision board.

I could set jumpers for the program and sound code, so the program actually ran fine. You could 'play' through a maze and hear all the music and sound effects.

The graphics are another story. First off, I won't say I'm positive about putting the correct 'Plane 0/1/2/3/etc' chips into the correct sockets.

Also, I changed some jumpers to handle the X256 ROMS I had versus the X512 ones that RB uses. You can't 'jumper-down' to X128 for the smallest ROM in each plane though.

Anyway- the graphics were just whacked. You could make out where the ball is, but there was no playfield or background. I may try again some other time, but for now I'm excited that my Marble Madness is UP!

Oh- one more thing- I noticed a section of the RB board near the upper right where the slapstick is has some silkscreening that looks like you could install some jumpers that would in effect change the other option jumpers from selecting 512/256 to 256/128. There is no header populated there though. The MM daughtercard has the 256/128 option jumpers, so that would probably be something to look into to play MM on the RB card.

Oh- you also need the slapstick and the two small graphics plane proms.

K

That sounds like what I got.

It might be a simple matter of just redoing the graphics ROMS in different slots or doubling up images, etc... Just haven't had the time to play with it.
 
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