Mortal kombat 2 Game over!

MKplayer1start

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Mortal kombat 2 Game over! (updated please read)!

Ok so my mortal kombat 2 pcb boots up no problem, all the roms check out ok and game starts up. I credit up, and as soon as i press strart i get a game over screen. Sometimes the screen will get garbled graphics and board will reset. Anybody have experience with this?
 
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yes, very common problem. the roms need to be reseated. if you have the memory expansion board on yours, you'll have to pull the one end out of the white pushpin (sometimes you might need needlenose pliers to do this, if so, be careful you don't slip) and then rock the expansion board forward and back while pulling it out of the sockets.

just press down on all the roms firmly, do this on the sound board as well. the solder pins on the back are very sharp, so I recommend setting it on bubblewrap when you do this. :)

then rock the expansion board back in, making sure it's in firmly, and then snap the other end back onto the pushpin, hook it all back up and hopefully the problem goes away.


I have had a multitude of problems with my MK2 board due to this, and the same exact thing happened on my family's machine back in 1994, so it's not the age, it's the design I'm afraid.

except back then we sent the whole game out for repair... you and I at least possess the know-how to fix this for free.
 
Thanks my board is actually not the one with the expansion board so re-seating the roms should be even easier. I just finally mounted the board into my cab today, did some re-wiring and moved stuff around so I could fit it in to this cab with another pcb. guess I have to pull it out and reseat the roms now lol

good times. I'm aware how buggy these mk2 boards are so can't complain.
 
re-seated all the socketed roms and still have the exact same problem. Gonna try again tonight maybe clean allthe rom pins wirh alcohol and give the edge connector a good cleaning with alcohol too. Will also try the board with another power supply incase that may be the issue
 
yeah, I've seriously ran up to 5.20 on those before. was one of the rare instances I tested +5 at the ICs, lol

also have to consider that damn sound board going to a draw too. I had things stepped up high enough that the +12 was around like 13.6V :)

easily the worst of all Midways boards though (T-unit). the Y's were rock solid and the others that came after were just very easy to break with all the surface mount stuff they started using later on, but never gave me any grief.

honestly the only way I was able to rid myself of my repeated baby crying problem or the game over resets on mine was to PULL every rom out, and manually straighten the legs tighter on each rom and then put them back in.

won't be as bad for you since you don't have the memory board. at that point you're probably better off cleaning the rom legs with an eraser too.
 
Okay I cleaned the jamma edge with alcohol = no change
Cleaned all the rom pins with alcohol and re-seated them (again) = no change

so I started messing around with the power supply. I have a switching power supply with a digital display. (it was set at 5.0)

5.1 and 5.2 does nothing so I started dropping the power just to see what would happen

the game shuts off once you get to 4.6 here is where it gets really weird. If I set it to 4.7, 4.8 or 4.9 the game will run but with random weird errors like health bar dropping at the start of the round, and automatically switching to the next round, and changing characters randomly.

so what the hell can I do now? 4.7, 4.8, 4.9 works with random weird things happening and anything 5.0 and above just gives me Game Over screen once I press start after crediting up.

I should add that I do not have the sound board power cable plugged in yet since I'm waiting for some molex pins to arrive so I can make the power cable. knowing how weird this board is that might actually make a big difference. hopefully the pins come in the mail tomorrow so i can test this board with the sound board connected. I do have the ribbon cable connected to the sound board and the roms check out ok for the sound board.
 
honestly the only way I was able to rid myself of my repeated baby crying problem or the game over resets on mine was to PULL every rom out, and manually straighten the legs tighter on each rom and then put them back in.

Looks like I will have to give this a try. I will tighten the rom pins up so they get really good contact into the socket. damn board will be the 3rd time I re-seat these chips.

one questions for you though, when you had these issues did the roms check out okay and green in the startup or diagnostic test?
 
I always had intermittent problems with it. in fact, the very first time I powered it up I got a random Custom Chip error. couple power cycles later, it worked fine.

then the shit with the roms happened later. the game worked perfectly fine one second, then started going apeshit the next.

the Sound Test yielded a SOUND IRQ NOT DETECT, despite all the cabling being installed right.

so I popped every rom out, and put them back in. since then, I haven't really fucked with the board, it's been sitting on a wooden shelf, waiting for my Multi Kombat project's completion.
 
based on my recent experiences with my Donkey Kong, a point I never really considered was whether or not there was corrosion on the chip legs for the roms on MK2.

certainly there's way more roms on an MK2 board than a DK, but the procedure I followed on DK was using sandpaper on the chip legs to get the shit off them, and naturally the game wasn't locking up anymore. then again in the case of DK it was probably socketed RAM chips instead, probably causing my input problems, but..... yeah, I'm rambling here.

inspect the roms for any kind of dark residue. if it looks suspect, I say break out the sandpaper, make them shiny, reseat, try again.

/my worthless contribution for the week
 
try yanking the battery for a power cycle. I guess NVRAM corruption could also be suspect. never done it on mine... I still can't really figure out how I fixed mine when I had the game over problem.

I had babies crying over and over for every sound effect and the Wasteland music would keep repeating. lol

even though the sound hardware was all hooked up right and was actually working perfectly fine until the problems started while playing, the sound test yielded a SOUND IRQ NOT DETECT error.

some more food for thought. mine also has an intermittent "CUSTOM CHIP BAD" error as well. I haven't powered that damn board on in over a year though, maybe sitting will help it. ;)
 
Guys thnks for the responses, but it was corrosion after all. I took a very small screwdriver and scraped a tiny layer of metal of each pin until they were shiny again. Then i made sure with some white-spirit that no metal flakes remained and tada it works
 
My MK2 started having the exact same issue today (goes directly to Game Over screen) after I tilted the cabinet to add some leg levelers. Guess I'll take it out again and try reseating everything. Sigh.
 
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