Problems with Golden Axe

Sunoo

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I've got a Golden Axe cabinet that has some issues I'm having trouble figuring out what. I took a video of it, and I'm hoping someone here can come to my rescue with some suggestions.

 
Okay, this is a bit embarrassing, but I went and adjusted the monitor and now the game works perfectly (at least, it matches MAME, so I'm assuming it's right). Apparently those screens are white with a greyscale sketch of the character in the middle.
 
Yeh, I was watching your video on the train thinking that everything looked fine to me and wondering what I was missing. You have a healthy Golden Axe there!
 
Does it still have one? A lot these days have already been converted to non encrypted ROMs and a standard CPU.
 
I'm fairly new to these things, but I believe it does. The person I purchased it from said he didn't believe anything had ever been done to the battery, and that he hadn't touched it himself. Is there a way I can tell without having to dump the chips?
 
Yes - if your board has this on it in the large socket on the lower board (about 10cm long) ...

fd1094.jpg


... then it still has a suicide battery - inside that block. If it doesnt have this then your board has already been converted to the non suicide version.
 
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I found this chip on my board, which is fairly close to the chip you posted. I'm guessing that means my board still has the suicide battery on it then.
 

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Yes, that block contains an 68000 CPU core with an decryption system that relies on a decrypt table held in RAM that is supported by a watch battery. The program ROMs are encrypted to the same pattern so that the data is decrypted correctly before it hits the 68000 core. Once the battery dies the decrypt table is lost and the data in the ROMs is just gibberish in its raw form.

To get round this you need to replace the socketed FD1094 block with a standard 10Mhz 68000 CPU and replace the two EPROMs with ones containing the non-encrypted executable code which can be freely found online these days.

Or you could change the battery in the block :)
 
The are legit, but the code they sell is now loose on the net anyway, but if you dont have the ability to burn roms they are a decent alternative to DIY.
 
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