NFL Blitz 99 issues

MmSadda

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Okay, I have two NFL Blitz 99 boards now. The first one worked fine for several months before starting to freeze during the attract mode. I bought a second one, and hooked it up to the hard drive from the first one, and it seemed fine the first time I powered it on. Now, after leaving it on for longer and letting it run through the attract mode, it freezes or experiences a text glitch, similar to what the other one did.

Could my hard drive be the problem here? Am I just that unlucky that I've got two bad boards? Or should I look at other things such as voltage? (several other games have run in this cabinet for hours with no trouble whatsoever. I find an issue with the power supply rather hard to picture, but am open to ideas)

For what it's worth, I thought the first one had died due to the board being flexed. However, this second one has been babied in the time it's been in my possession - I kept it sitting flat, stored away safely, until I was able to mount the PCB on plywood.


I'm open to thoughts or suggestions - please let me know if you have any.

Thanks

-Collin
 
Do you get an error such as "3 taps and your out" before the restart?

Seattle boards need a little more power to work properly so check your voltages and if need be turn it up slightly. If it freezing then restarting i would also ditch the hard drive and image a compact flash drive for replacement.
 
Do you get an error such as "3 taps and your out" before the restart?

Seattle boards need a little more power to work properly so check your voltages and if need be turn it up slightly. If it freezing then restarting i would also ditch the hard drive and image a compact flash drive for replacement.

My thoughts exactly. Test the power at the board, not the power supply. Then wait a period and test the power again in case it fluctuates after being on for awhile. If its still good then I would look at replacing with a flash drive.
 
Sounds like a hard drive problem...

BUT... I'd like to see how to hook a CF card to a Blitz 99 board and make it work. I tried and it sticks on the HD Cache test. There's no cache on the CF card.

RJ
 
Do you get an error such as "3 taps and your out" before the restart?

Seattle boards need a little more power to work properly so check your voltages and if need be turn it up slightly. If it freezing then restarting i would also ditch the hard drive and image a compact flash drive for replacement.
Sorry, but I don't know what you're referring to when you say "3 taps and you're out"...
There's no error message - sometimes the text on screen will glitch, or random white letters will appear on a black background and it'll freeze there during attract mode. Sometimes it will freeze after a quarter of gameplay.

Anyhow, I'm going to check voltage - things are kind of sitting lose in the cab, and the power supply has gotten moved around. That may well be an issue - I'll try to check that tomorrow evening.
My thoughts exactly. Test the power at the board, not the power supply. Then wait a period and test the power again in case it fluctuates after being on for awhile. If its still good then I would look at replacing with a flash drive.
Cool. I will make a point of doing it at the board.
just went thru this with my blitz 2000. mine was a bad hard drive. bought 1 off fee-bay and it works perfect now.
Okay, cool. Am I mistaken in think that it's also possible to take any old hard drive and format it with files I can download?

Collin
 
Okay, cool. Am I mistaken in think that it's also possible to take any old hard drive and format it with files I can download?

Collin

Nope... That's all they are doing on eBay... Taking old 2.x through 10Gb drives and putting the CHD image on it.
 
if there's an issue with the drive image some Atari and midway games with show you that error of three taps and your out.
 
if there's an issue with the drive image some Atari and midway games with show you that error of three taps and your out.

I think only Vegas does that (seen the error on Road Burners with a PSU running at 4.87V!). Seattle just blacks out and resets. or just stays black.
 
Also, interested in this...

I have some blitz 99 / 2000 machines that need hard drives every few months... pissing me off.

Sounds like a hard drive problem...

BUT... I'd like to see how to hook a CF card to a Blitz 99 board and make it work. I tried and it sticks on the HD Cache test. There's no cache on the CF card.

RJ
 
It depends on which board you have. I've had no issues with the Seattle boards using cf but the Vegas boards are very picky with cf.
 
Do you get an error such as "3 taps and your out" before the restart?

Seattle boards need a little more power to work properly so check your voltages and if need be turn it up slightly. If it freezing then restarting i would also ditch the hard drive and image a compact flash drive for replacement.
While I didn't get that "3 taps" thing, the power did end up seeming to be the cause - it was sitting at 4.98 at the board. I cranked it up to about 5.09, and it works fine.

Is 5.09 too high, or is that within a safe range for that board?

I take it the only safe way to use this cab is going to be to readjust the power supply each time I swap games, correct?

Collin
 
The safe power range for 5v digital logic is 5v +/- 5% which is 4.75 to 5.25v

That being said... some boards do not operate at either extreme and yet others will be damaged by running at the upper extreme. It is believed that if you run the +5v power supply at or above 5.20 volts you will damage the 16 bit buffer ICs in the Sega Naomi carts (and probaby DIMM boards too)

RJ
 
While I didn't get that "3 taps" thing, the power did end up seeming to be the cause - it was sitting at 4.98 at the board. I cranked it up to about 5.09, and it works fine.

Is 5.09 too high, or is that within a safe range for that board?

I take it the only safe way to use this cab is going to be to readjust the power supply each time I swap games, correct?

Collin

you can interchange games of same or similar type hardware with no problem. like in my case, I ran all my MKs and KI in the same cab without molesting the +5 on the PSU. a decent voltage for those is between 5.10 and 5.15 at the JAMMA edge. I've run CPS2 games under similar applications.

channelmanic mentioned NAOMI hardware, but in about 97% of all applications, you would be using an actual NAOMI PSU with those... hence not being able to switch other JAMMA games into that.

another exception to the rule is the Atari/Midway Vegas, which I can tell you has worked at low end voltages of about 4.86V, and its optimal safe operating voltage is 5.10.

come to think of it, I swapped my Blitz cabs and never bothered to check the voltage on the one my Sportstation board went into. lol

I also run the Capcom I/O on my MVC2, supposedly that has some kind of voltage handling characteristic to it... I should check that power supply though. lol
 
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