NBA Jam TE

KidVidiot

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So this is why my motto is "It's never easy."

Picked up an NBA Jam TE cabinet currently running Showtime 2000 Gold/SportsStation. It has 8-way joysticks and a hantarex polo monitor, so I was banking on an easy conversion back to TE. I bought a working TE board from a klov member and installed it today. I'm pretty positive I hooked up all the connectors correctly - the jamma harness, p17, p3 to the sound board, p4 ground, p5 and p6 players 3 and 4, and the ribbon cable to the sound board.

When I turn the machine on, all I get is blips of feedback from the speakers. One of the two LED's on the TE board is lit. Nothing on the monitor, and coining up doesn't do anything, no game sounds, just little feedback blips.

The harness wasn't really hacked up in its conversion to SportsStation - just some extra wires from the power supply were added to take care of the fans, harddrive, etc.

Any other way to test the board or has anyone encountered a problem like this? I'm always worried when I get a pcb in the mail that isn't in an anti-static bag or colored bubble wrap.
 
Try this. Re-seat the revision roms (UJ12, UG12) and push down hard on the PLCC chips (the ones in the brown square sockets) to make sure they are all seated well. If either the revision roms or the PLCC chips come loose, you will have no activity.

If that does not work, Make sure you are getting the correct voltage to the board. The T-Units are VERY picky. Don't hook up anything but the jamma harness, sound board power cables and ribbon cable. Don't hook up any of the cabinet's other little connectors to the main board.


So this is why my motto is "It's never easy."

Picked up an NBA Jam TE cabinet currently running Showtime 2000 Gold/SportsStation. It has 8-way joysticks and a hantarex polo monitor, so I was banking on an easy conversion back to TE. I bought a working TE board from a klov member and installed it today. I'm pretty positive I hooked up all the connectors correctly - the jamma harness, p17, p3 to the sound board, p4 ground, p5 and p6 players 3 and 4, and the ribbon cable to the sound board.

When I turn the machine on, all I get is blips of feedback from the speakers. One of the two LED's on the TE board is lit. Nothing on the monitor, and coining up doesn't do anything, no game sounds, just little feedback blips.

The harness wasn't really hacked up in its conversion to SportsStation - just some extra wires from the power supply were added to take care of the fans, harddrive, etc.

Any other way to test the board or has anyone encountered a problem like this? I'm always worried when I get a pcb in the mail that isn't in an anti-static bag or colored bubble wrap.
 
your board still got the little plastic feet on it? if they've been removed, chances are you have some pins touching on the underside. even if they're still there, check anyway, it's a very common problem with the T-unit boards.

inspect the entire board and using electronic sheers and some fine needlenose pliers or maybe even tweezers, straighten any bent pins and snip them so you never have to worry about that again.

I'd additionally throw out that you should check out my PSU guide link in my sig. clean the JAMMA edge with a pencil eraser (like the fat pink ones) and brush off the fragments from the board. if you happen to have any charred pins, especially where the +5 goes, that can very well cause your problem. use the picture Broodwich posted of a rom on my PSU page and meter the circled legs on 20VDC range and see what you're getting at them. with a clean edge connector, and getting the voltage to 5.10V at the roms, with no touching pins, you should be back in business. (hopefully)

inspect the brown PLCC sockets to verify they're not cracked in the corners too.
 
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And people wonder why I have spares of NBA Jam TE.

As other stated check the power supply.
Check for shorts.
Check sockets.

You might want to check the wiring diagram of the Showtime 2000 vs the wiring schematics of the NBA Jam.
http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/N/NBAJam.pdf

If you want to do a quick check you can check your boards into my NBA jam.

You might want to check the monitor Showtime sometime uses a medium rez monitor. Dip switch at U12 Switch number 2 will tell you if the game was running in medium rez (off) or low rex (ON).
 
And people wonder why I have spares of NBA Jam TE.

As other stated check the power supply.
Check for shorts.
Check sockets.

You might want to check the wiring diagram of the Showtime 2000 vs the wiring schematics of the NBA Jam.
http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/N/NBAJam.pdf

If you want to do a quick check you can check your boards into my NBA jam.

You might want to check the monitor Showtime sometime uses a medium rez monitor. Dip switch at U12 Switch number 2 will tell you if the game was running in medium rez (off) or low rex (ON).

he said it was a Polo. so standard res. probably original with the Jam TE cab.

I don't know about Jam TE, but original NBA Jam used the older style player 3/4 harnesses, but I would think by time TE came out they went with the newer kind found in MK2 and later.. those are the exact same in a Blitz/Showtime/whatever cab.
 
Try this. Re-seat the revision roms (UJ12, UG12) and push down hard on the PLCC chips (the ones in the brown square sockets) to make sure they are all seated well. If either the revision roms or the PLCC chips come loose, you will have no activity.
Did this, no change.

If that does not work, Make sure you are getting the correct voltage to the board. The T-Units are VERY picky. Don't hook up anything but the jamma harness, sound board power cables and ribbon cable. Don't hook up any of the cabinet's other little connectors to the main board.
I'll give this a try in the morning, didn't see any obvious test point on the board.

Mecha - my plastic feet are very small...are you referring to the pins touching the piece of wood the board is mounted on?

I'll do the rest as well...we'll see what happens
 
all the solder side pins. every component on the underside of the board.

I have a T-unit board here (zeno's MK T-unit lol) that I might be able to demonstrate with until I have access to all my games again.

but I won't be able to do anything until tomorrow.
 
NBA Jam and NBA Jam TE were T-unit games. you can swap all the roms out of an original Jam board to make it TE. likewise, you could take a TE board and make it original Jam.

Hangtime was a Wolf unit game however, completely different boardset, so the only upgrade/downgrade route you could go with that would be Hangtime and Maximum Hangtime.

So one would assume the the wiring from an NBA Jam would be same as NBA Jam TE. ;)
 
all the solder side pins. every component on the underside of the board.
Yes, I know what the pins are, I'm trying to clarify what you're trying to make sure they aren't touching

I have a T-unit board here (zeno's MK T-unit lol) that I might be able to demonstrate with until I have access to all my games again.

but I won't be able to do anything until tomorrow.
ok cool, thanks
 
they get bent and touch each other. they then create shorts. and thus the board will do stupid things.

Zeno's posted many videos about this, in his repair stuff. usually it's stuff that makes roms show bad or causes ram issues though.. not complete lack of booting.
 
So one would assume the the wiring from an NBA Jam would be same as NBA Jam TE. ;)

100% correct

so what's your voltage at the board? did you check the solder side for bent pins (caused by no plastic feet in the corners)

you don't need the soundboard hooked up at all, just the edge connector.

have you cleaned the edge connector on the board side?

Personally i would pull every chip and clean every leg (but as zeno suggested, only the game roms should really need to be cleaned).

how about some pictures (maybe you have a missing component on your board).
 
they get bent and touch each other. they then create shorts. and thus the board will do stupid things.

Zeno's posted many videos about this, in his repair stuff. usually it's stuff that makes roms show bad or causes ram issues though.. not complete lack of booting.

Mecha has a great point about this. I had a problem with graphic issues and it ended up being some pins were touching, I bent them back and cut them a little to prevent from happening again. I ended up having to use a magnifying glass to find the pins though but they were indeed touching. As stated before check voltage going to the board. If you put in the original sports station board does it power up still?
 
Mecha has a great point about this. I had a problem with graphic issues and it ended up being some pins were touching, I bent them back and cut them a little to prevent from happening again. I ended up having to use a magnifying glass to find the pins though but they were indeed touching. As stated before check voltage going to the board. If you put in the original sports station board does it power up still?

this along with cleaning the edge connector, pushing on PLCCs and cleaning chips should always be the first thing you should do whenever you get a 90's midway board (hell some of these checks should be done on every board). There's lots of threads covering this and well damn i'm getting sick of typing it.


also i'm assuming you have more than 1 jamma cabinet... simple troubleshooting tip is to well put it in another jamma cab and see what it does.
 
this along with cleaning the edge connector, pushing on PLCCs and cleaning chips should always be the first thing you should do whenever you get a 90's midway board (hell some of these checks should be done on every board). There's lots of threads covering this and well damn i'm getting sick of typing it.
I searched through all the previous threads, but they all dealt with graphics issues or rom/ram errors. Didn't really see any that had my problem.
 
if you haven't tried what has been outlined in about 5 posts in this thread thus far, I encourage you do so and report back. it doesn't fix itself.
 
the voltage on the edge connectors checked out fine

didn't find any pins touching

i cleaned the edge connector and the first time I tried it after it came on and started booting up - the monitor sync was off, and there was a lot of snow/interference on the screen. the boot up said there were cmos errors, maybe some other error. it booted to the title screen but then crashed. Wiggling the harness on the edge connector I could get it to boot back up a time or two but not consistently or keep it there
 
the voltage on the edge connectors checked out fine

didn't find any pins touching

i cleaned the edge connector and the first time I tried it after it came on and started booting up - the monitor sync was off, and there was a lot of snow/interference on the screen. the boot up said there were cmos errors, maybe some other error. it booted to the title screen but then crashed. Wiggling the harness on the edge connector I could get it to boot back up a time or two but not consistently or keep it there

try it in another cab or meter voltage at a rom chip (preferably the farthest from the edge connector)

you'll want to find out what errors there were (cmos is not really an error just means you need a new battery).
 
I threw another jamma board into the cabinet and it booted up fine, went into attract fine, but then the graphics got garbled and it reset...but it played fine after that

then I threw the nba jam board into a different cabinet and it booted right up, the only problem being no sync

so maybe it is a problem with the cabinet's power supply or harness?
 
what was the voltage in the nba jam cab set to?

you should be aiming for the sweet spot of 5.18v
 
I threw another jamma board into the cabinet and it booted up fine, went into attract fine, but then the graphics got garbled and it reset...but it played fine after that

then I threw the nba jam board into a different cabinet and it booted right up, the only problem being no sync

so maybe it is a problem with the cabinet's power supply or harness?

No sync is a big issue. All Jamma boards use the same sync. I had a UMK3 that would not sync and it ended up being some weird surface mount issue that most of us can't fix on our own. This could be something wrong on the board, assuming you tried to adjust you hold pots to get the game to sync and that failed.
 
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