MK2 without expansion board?

mschwartz01

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Maybe one of the MK experts can assist here.... I recently acquired a MK 2 board that is missing the expansion board....

Can new roms be burned to make the board work without the expansion? Or does anyone have an MK2 expansion board laying around?

Thanks for any info shared!
 
Despite having one, I'm not exactly an expert, but according to this thread, it would seem if you flip the dip and use 3.1 ROMs you can get away without the expansion board. It's not confirmed in the thread though...so I'm not 100% on that.

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=107266

I'd check mine if I could, but I'm sure someone will chime in and say yay or neigh.
 
I have a fully working board in my MK2 cabinet... This is a second MK2 board I am planning on using in my multi MK...

Only issue is I don't have a ROM burner... Hopefully someone here can help me out!
 
Ah sweet, a multi-MK. :) Yeah I'm sure someone can chime in on the 3.1 ROMs needing the board and burn or sell you some 3.1 ROMs.

I'd burn you a set, but I don't have any ROMs on hand. :(
 
you need the expansion board.

no you can not put 8mb roms in a 4mb rom board
 
Thanks Broodwich. :) I knew someone would come along and give a definitive answer.



funny thing is the game will boot but not run without the memory expansion board.

it will get all the way up to the "Midway Presents" screen then reset.
 
funny thing is the game will boot but not run without the memory expansion board.

it will get all the way up to the "Midway Presents" screen then reset.

Ah I see, very interesting. Maybe that's why some people were saying you could do with out it. :D
 
You can. You have to change the jumpers though. I've done it.. remember my single board and how I diagnosed the Rom socket as bad?

yea i remember that, wasn't it a nba jam tho that you converted to MK1? i don't see mk1 being an issue as it's 4mb chips.
 
Single MK2 to NBA Jam. NBA Jam and MK1 are a Rom and graphics chip swap. Lol

Ah I didn't think it was a MK2 board hence my NBA to MK1 statement. still jumpers and lots of them right? sounds like more work than it's worth IMO as main boards are fairly easy to find.
 
...as main boards are fairly easy to find.

You ain't just whislin' Dixie. Hey schwartz, still need an expansion board? Pm me your address and I'll get one out to you.

SAM_0343-1.jpg


(Don't worry. These are all non-working)

.
 
I had an MK2 pcb that I used in a MK2 I restored for a charity auction. It did not use an expansion pcb and it was populated with mask roms instead of eproms. It was factory and it worked 100%.
 
I had an MK2 pcb that I used in a MK2 I restored for a charity auction. It did not use an expansion pcb and it was populated with mask roms instead of eproms. It was factory and it worked 100%.

yeah, that was one of the later runs with 8 mb roms. and also in case there was any weird speculation about what the "1 board" "2 boards" dipswitch does, that determines if it reads off the expansion board or not. if I recall I think it's particular about whether you run 8 mb roms (1 board) or 4 mb roms (2 boards) though I may have run my 2 board with the 1 board switch set and it worked fine, however if you go the other way with 2 boards switch on an 8 mb setup, it won't boot.

why I mentioned that? I don't know. so you don't have to try it lol. oddly in MAME it doesn't matter which setting you use, it never errors out or anything.

meanwhile, the jumpers I refer to:
388308_10100329330106929_373313508_n.jpg


the ones that say J22, J23, etc. if you move those from one setting to the other it will enable running 8 mb roms on a 4 mb board. I'm kind of confused right now, but I think you can run 4 mb roms on a board jumpered for 8 mb roms, but not the other way around. they will just all come up red.
 
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