MVP repair log (Sega system16B)....

ifkz

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I bought this board from a well intentioned member here and it arrived a couple of weeks ago. It had some work done to it that I did not know about prior to the sale, but we worked out a happy solution for both of us.

SYMPTOM: Game had some obvious work done to the surface mount EPROM board custom chip, there was solder flux over half the chip. Game ran correctly for only about a minute before locking up.

FIX: I first removed a solder bridged connection on the custom surface mount chip mentioned above. This did nothing.

Next, I pulled an identical EPROM board from my parts box that was almost snapped in half. I rebuilt it, bridged bad traces, replaced EPROM sockets, beep tested the bad areas, and added a few wrenched out capacitors. At power up the game still hung after about a minute.

Lacking any other option, I went through the process of burning an unprotected set of chips to get rid of the suicide FD XXX-XX CPU. I pulled a standard 10Hhz 68000 CPU from my parts box. After this work, I reunited it with the original EPROM board and found I had a solid working game.

Ah, a happy ending! I thought when this model of board suicided it would only boot to a blank screen. Now I see that is not the case. Helpful knowledge for those that are fond of this hardware....it is my favorite arcade game platform.
 
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Just wait for my next logs, you will really like them, two more system16b logs are on the way....

I also diagnosed some simple fixes for two other system16b boards but those will not be the ones covered as these two were too simple. A friend's ESWAT had a smashed up custom just like the board I mentioned here but the fix was to carefully bend the pins back. His Shinobi has some kind of bottom board fault, but I pulled the EPROM board and CPU to confim those were still okay. Like I said, too simple for their own repair logs.

Oh, and this MVP was advertised as working when I bought it, so good thing the seller and I came to an agreement. It all turned out okay in the end even if I had to do extra work. Like I said, I love this platform! Pretty rare game, the only one for sale I've seen. It is a large game too, almost every chip is 2MB and there are 15 or so. I can see why it wasn't popular, it is basically a timed baseball game. One inning for one quarter; your skill at the game does not matter. Very complex control scheme, although very much like Reggie Jackson Baseball on the Sega Master System. It is a game more suited to consoles, really. I do like the shameless self promotion; after every inning the game displays little ads for Sega's lineup back then. Golden Axe, Super Monaco, Crack Down, Shinobi, Galaxy Force, ESWAT, etc. Nice art on them too despite their small size.
 
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Nice work, your board was in the process of suiciding, the data in the encryption table slowly gets corrupted, bit by bit. Obviously there is a point where the board cannot function but early on you can get odd behaviour.
 
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