What was the problem with the main board and what were the fixes? Just wondering
from the instant I pulled the board out of the box, it threw up a Custom Chip UE13 error. what was extremely infuriating that I learned after the fact was I grossly overpaid for this board, from Canada no less, and it didn't even work. the graphics were scrambled and the game would reset. I reseated the roms, and it worked for a little while. then the sound would go out, only to be replaced by the Wasteland music playing and ending and the babality baby cry sound over and over. eventually, I just shelved the game in favor of running Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and it sat for about a year and a half.
by this point, I had one of those Showcase 33 cabinets, so it made pulling the board in and out a lot easier, and I learned a trick from fixing my Donkey Kong where if your roms are covered in a lot of corrosion, you use sandpaper to grind all the shit off until the chip legs are shiny. upon doing this, the random UE13 errors and baby crying sound issues all went away -- it was a communication error between the game roms (UG12 and UJ12 if I recall) and the socket, cause the corrosion was blocking data transfer essentially. it would work sometimes, but others it was just not enough to work.
the next issue sprung up where all the graphics were distorted and the text was blocky. one of the PLCC chip sockets was broken, meaning a whole row of pins going to the chip weren't making full contact. this solution wasn't as aesthetically pleasing, but it worked: I wrapped a ziptie around the socket and pulled it as tight as I could. problem solved.
between when I was first breaking into the hobby in 2008 and MK2 was my first JAMMA board I bought and by that point last year, I'd also learned how to adjust power supplies very well... so, yeah. I made a lengthy write-up about my exploits with various JAMMA-based games over the last few years, you can see it here:
http://www.organizedmassconfusion.org/williamsmidway-y-unitt-unit-mknba-jamothers-guide/
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