NFL Blitz, why do you hate me?

tinsley

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I need help. I have a NFL Blitz that came with Blitz chips and HD, Blitz 99 chips and HD and I ordered a 2000 upgrade chips with HD. I turn it on, it runs its test, and reboots. Every time, no matter which set I have in. No way do I have 3 bad HDs. What the hell could be the issue? Is it detecting something after those tests and just shutting down? I am so lost. I am trying to run this on a STD def monitor and 8-way joysticks inside my NBA Jam cab. I know the PCB has dips for those settings, which I have checked and checked and I think I have set correctly. This is also the 2nd PCB i have been thru, thinking the 1st PCB was bad. Again, no way I got a 2nd PCB with the exact same issue.... So, what else could it be?
 
I've found the Seattle and Vegas boardsets are prone to burning the +5V fingers on the JAMMA edge. if you get enough power loss from those being charred or lifting, it will cause your resets, regardless of how high you set the power supply to.

fortunately, you can meter accurate voltage at the hard drive power connector on the board rather than testing at a ROM. I've found they're the same on both Seattle and Vegas boardsets. yours is clearly a Seattle, I only reference Vegas cause they're from the same era.

use the pins that would be the red and black wires on the hard drive plug, or you can even jam in there if that's how you're powering your drive (some of the Blitz cabs came with adapters built into the JAMMA harness for plugging the hard drive in).

now if your +5V fingers aren't burnt up, and you're experiencing any major power loss between your power supply/JAMMA edge and the hard drive plug or a ROM that's sending the voltage below 4.9V, you have another thing you can try, and that's pulling the board out and using the pencil eraser trick on the JAMMA fingers (noting that you don't get the rubber pieces lodged anywhere in board components). it's not uncommon for the fingers to get dirty, and the dirt builds up resistance and will result in a big enough power drop to cause resets.

if your +5V fingers are burned up well... whatever you do, don't throw a layer of solder on them. it will only make the problem worse.
 
what kind of a reset are you experiencing actually? where it does the POST screen and it keeps resetting over and over?

I'd check voltages anyway. peculiar that bought new boot roms and drives and it's still doing it. more than likely it's what I already outlined above that could be the cause.
 
checked power to the plug for the HD. 5.0v exactly. anything else i can look for?
 
edit nevermind none work i see...


bump up your +5 to +5.2

also check your 12v and post here. Its gotta be good, the hard drive runs on 12v.
 
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Got it working! After hours of working on this my wife suggested trying a new IDE cable. Holy hell, that was it! I feel like an idiot but whatever. Now I have to figure out why I have to adjust the horizontal hold when switching between this game and NBA jam. Any ideas?
 
eh, normal most likely. They are never perfect. Youd expect the same board to always sync the same but who knows. If it works it works, conrgats! Glad it was an easy fix after all! crank the +5 back to like 5.1...
 
Got it working! After hours of working on this my wife suggested trying a new IDE cable. Holy hell, that was it! I feel like an idiot but whatever. Now I have to figure out why I have to adjust the horizontal hold when switching between this game and NBA jam. Any ideas?

When I switch between NBA Jam and Gauntlet Legends in my cab I have to adjust the vertical size, vertical position, and contrast to get reasonable pictures. Not a big deal, it just takes a few seconds really, as I have the remote monitor adjustment board mounted inside the pop-up CP along with the Jamma cables I use to switch games.

BTW, very interesting thread as my GL boards have a +5 finger that's covered in solder and now I know why.

And yes, my board has been rebooting although quite possibly from a different issue.
 
I agree it is normal to have to do a small adjustment but none of my other boards require changing h pos so I was confused. Gonna make it very difficult to put in multijamma since h pos is only on the back of my monitor with no remote adjustment where all the others are.
 
Got it working! After hours of working on this my wife suggested trying a new IDE cable. Holy hell, that was it! I feel like an idiot but whatever. Now I have to figure out why I have to adjust the horizontal hold when switching between this game and NBA jam. Any ideas?

I have a bunch of Operation Wolf boards that all need repair. Could your wife take a look at them for me :)
 
Honestly, it sounds like that wife is a keeper. glad to see you got this straightened out.
 
Yeah. Think she was tired of me working on it so she enlightened me on how to fix it. It makes sense though. That is the ONLY thing I didn't replace.
 
interesting solution. lol. your wife owns.

the computer geek side of me hates me for not thinking of that to begin with.
 
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