hyperneogeo
Well-known member
So about 10 months ago I sent my KI2 Proto board to Chad hoping it could be fixed, unfortunately a few days ago he sent it back with the bad news that it was "not repairable".
The problem was the pcb would start up on a solid grey screen and stay there. The 79R4600 chip was reflowed perfectly, however it would still give the same grey screen.
I didn't want to give up on this board as...well, it's a prototype board!
So I started probing around the 79R4600 chip and noticed it was doing jack crap. IE no activity was coming out of it at all...NOTHING! I compared it to a working KI board on boot and there was activity out of that one. I remembered back to when I got the board and recalled there was no heat sink on the chip, so could the chip be fried?
I took the chance and replaced the 79R4600 chip off a good board (with sound problems) and booted it up. Success! I got a rolling blue screen, however it would always finish with a red screen, meaning a bad HDD. So I changed the HDD with a compact flash and a IDE any boot and still got the same thing. No matter what I did, I would get the same result..so I was like wtf?
I thought, well I might as well try changing the ram as that was the last thing I could try and SUCCESS! It worked and I now have a fully working game.
The difference between a normal KI board and a Proto board is the ram is socketed exactly like regular computer ram sims, so it is very easy to change as shown below.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/djg8alucz7th6q8/20170210_161657.jpg?raw=1
So mental note, grey screen = bad processor, and red screen can mean bad ram on a prototype board...noted!
The problem was the pcb would start up on a solid grey screen and stay there. The 79R4600 chip was reflowed perfectly, however it would still give the same grey screen.
I didn't want to give up on this board as...well, it's a prototype board!
So I started probing around the 79R4600 chip and noticed it was doing jack crap. IE no activity was coming out of it at all...NOTHING! I compared it to a working KI board on boot and there was activity out of that one. I remembered back to when I got the board and recalled there was no heat sink on the chip, so could the chip be fried?
I took the chance and replaced the 79R4600 chip off a good board (with sound problems) and booted it up. Success! I got a rolling blue screen, however it would always finish with a red screen, meaning a bad HDD. So I changed the HDD with a compact flash and a IDE any boot and still got the same thing. No matter what I did, I would get the same result..so I was like wtf?
I thought, well I might as well try changing the ram as that was the last thing I could try and SUCCESS! It worked and I now have a fully working game.
The difference between a normal KI board and a Proto board is the ram is socketed exactly like regular computer ram sims, so it is very easy to change as shown below.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/djg8alucz7th6q8/20170210_161657.jpg?raw=1
So mental note, grey screen = bad processor, and red screen can mean bad ram on a prototype board...noted!

