sixteenbits
New member
I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction with a crash I'm having with my NBA Jam cabinet. It's not an official Midway cab, but it's fairly well built.
Here's the problem: During play (or more typically, a few seconds after turning the machine on) the screen will begin to flicker. It looks like a few lines of gray static. A repeated "tick-tick-tick-tick-tick" can be heard coming from the monitor. I lose all game audio too, so it's as if the game crashed outright. Sometimes the game will reset, but lately it's just been hanging at the flickering. I'll turn it off and then on again, and it will either (a) crash again immediately, (b) make the "bong" sound and then crash a few seconds after the splash screen comes on, or (c) play normally and be just fine. However, (c) is happening less and less and (a) is happening more and more.
When it works, everything is great - no issues with video, audio, or controls. Which makes me think it's not the monitor. Could it be the CPU? That's probably the newest (at least in look) component in the system. PSU?
For a while I thought it was perhaps a grounding problem. The ground wire inside the machine wasn't rigged very well. It was crashing immediately upon startup so I unplugged it and futzed with the ground wire. Then, lo and behold - out of the blue, it worked. Played 3 straight games, no problem. Unfortunately, that didn't last. I left in on the attract screen for 20 more minutes and the flickering started again. Right on bootup too. No "bong" sound on startup. I messed with the ground cable a bit, but I'm not getting results like I did yesterday.
The only other thing I did was move the cabinet to access the back. Perhaps something is loose?
Does this ring a bell for anyone? I'm totally stumped!
Here's the problem: During play (or more typically, a few seconds after turning the machine on) the screen will begin to flicker. It looks like a few lines of gray static. A repeated "tick-tick-tick-tick-tick" can be heard coming from the monitor. I lose all game audio too, so it's as if the game crashed outright. Sometimes the game will reset, but lately it's just been hanging at the flickering. I'll turn it off and then on again, and it will either (a) crash again immediately, (b) make the "bong" sound and then crash a few seconds after the splash screen comes on, or (c) play normally and be just fine. However, (c) is happening less and less and (a) is happening more and more.
When it works, everything is great - no issues with video, audio, or controls. Which makes me think it's not the monitor. Could it be the CPU? That's probably the newest (at least in look) component in the system. PSU?
For a while I thought it was perhaps a grounding problem. The ground wire inside the machine wasn't rigged very well. It was crashing immediately upon startup so I unplugged it and futzed with the ground wire. Then, lo and behold - out of the blue, it worked. Played 3 straight games, no problem. Unfortunately, that didn't last. I left in on the attract screen for 20 more minutes and the flickering started again. Right on bootup too. No "bong" sound on startup. I messed with the ground cable a bit, but I'm not getting results like I did yesterday.
The only other thing I did was move the cabinet to access the back. Perhaps something is loose?
Does this ring a bell for anyone? I'm totally stumped!
