Racing Jam now thinks it has a clutch

SilverDuck

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I finally got around to messing with my Racing Jam machine, and the repair to the RTC chip done by ChannelManiac worked, but now my machine thinks it has a clutch, and a 6-speed manual trans. I assume that the "deluxe" model of this game had a clutch, but I have never seen a deluxe, and the cabinet this boardset came out of did not have a clutch. It just has gas/brake and a up/down shifter.

Why does my game think it's a 6-speed? As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the service menu to change it, and no one seems to know what the DIPS on the boards do. Could it be that I need to change ROMS? If so, which? Could I just have the boards for a deluxe, and there is no cure?

I am at my wits end with this machine...any help is huge here.

Thanks
 
Just got off the phone with him. He's stumped too. Between the two of us, we have 5 Racing Jam machines, with 3 of them working. He has a working pair, I have 1 working, 1 that thinks it has a clutch.
 
It's got to be a setting in the NVRAM. I'm not a programmer so I don't know what those settings are.
 
Just got off the phone with him. He's stumped too. Between the two of us, we have 5 Racing Jam machines, with 3 of them working. He has a working pair, I have 1 working, 1 that thinks it has a clutch.

Swap all the EPROMs and see if that confusion follows them.

It's got to be a setting in the NVRAM. I'm not a programmer so I don't know what those settings are.
Or that.... which would suck. Unless you can borrow a board with the right settings, then send it out to get copied over to you NVRAM.
 
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Is this most likely a socketed chip? There are 4 large socketed chips on the top board. Do we think that is where the data is?

Would the mame data tell us which chip contains this data, and if so, does anyone know how to read the mame data?
 
Is this most likely a socketed chip? There are 4 large socketed chips on the top board. Do we think that is where the data is?

Would the mame data tell us which chip contains this data, and if so, does anyone know how to read the mame data?

If it was that chip, it'd be the one that ChannelMusic replaced for you, I'd imagine. If it wasn't socketed, it's socketed now... on that board.
 
So the Real Time Clock chip is the one that contains the data that tells the game if it has a clutch?
 
Would the mame data tell us anything?

I have a working boardset. Is this something that can be copied from one set to another? If so, how do we know which chip has the correct data?
 
Would the mame data tell us anything?

I have a working boardset. Is this something that can be copied from one set to another? If so, how do we know which chip has the correct data?

If you really need to know and you have another working set... I'd start swapping chips. If the original NVRAM on the other working board is socketed, start by swapping that. If that doesn't effect anything, then move on to the EPROMs try them out one at a time... eventually, you'll run across something that'll do it.

If swapping everything doesn't effect the clutch deal... then no idea.
 
Ok....here is where I'm stumped. What is an NVRAM and what is an EPROM? I can only swap what is socketed. I don't do solder.

EDIT: Wikipedia solved that question for me. Random Access Memory vs. Read Only Memory.

So if I have a board that works, I can have the NVRAM data saved and copied to a fresh NVRAM?
 
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Another clue....I am getting a lot of the menus in Japanese....

It has to be a ROM with the Japanese info, right? Possibly the Japanese machines had a 6-speed and a clutch?
 
NVRAM is the same thing as the battery backup, where all the game's settings are stored. as Laschek said, maybe try a factory restore.

when the RTC was replaced there's a possibility that your CMOS information could've gotten corrupted. happens when you change out roms on games too.

optional approach is to pull the backup battery, unless this is one of those fancy games with some shitty copy protection/suicide mechanism.

is there any kind of Cabinet Type selection like a lot of Sega's driving games have?
 
Well, the game works now, so long as you choose the automatic transmission. Some of the menus are in Japanese, some are in English. I really hate to start yanking ROMS and what not, and end up with a non-working game.

I have a set of boards coming in the mail from another KLOV member, so I will try that boardset. If that boardset works, I won't feel so bad about working on this set. A half-working game is better than a non-working one.

As for factory restore, yes...I did that.
 
I wish I could throw out some more ideas, I've never even seen this game, and the MAME driver doesn't even work. couldn't even get to test mode.

gd newfangled modern day late 90s games!
 
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