Sega NAOMI 2/Wild Riders game freezes

mecha

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ok, I come up with lots of oddball stuff on here, that much is obvious. my family bought a closed arcade's inventory, so there's a lot of gremlins lurking in that machinery, myself and 2 techs had to fix them all.

one problem still persists however, and it's with our Wild Riders. someone else posted a similar topic very recently, but after I've dabbled with a few different areas on it, the game still freezes. so here's my list of changes/repairs:

1) adjusted +5V and 3.3V (to 5.20 and 3.5 respectively) -- I did this because at the problem points where the game would lock up, I noticed the 3.3 would dip down to 3.25~ --- can anyone confirm that this is normal or if it will be problematic if I leave it at 3.5?

2) cooling fan wouldn't spin -- with my WD40 magic I was able to get this to work again. since the problem continued after adjusting the PSU, I figured it was heat-related. however, it still continued...

3) I removed the ROM card, and just went into the BIOS test to see if it would lock up at all. it didn't. so I powered down and reinserted the ROM card...

4) I ran the Game ROM test. IC1 and IC2 both came up with BAD messages. everything else checked out...

5) for fun, I wanted to see if this was intermittent -- the second Game ROM test resulted in all GOOD messages for every rom. (I didn't power down or change anything with the hardware itself before doing this)

6) I then played the game, and it didn't freeze up again.


so is this a matter of just poor conductivity between the ROM card and the main board? last year this same problem occurred and sometimes on power up the game would give a "GAME NOT SUPPORTED BY MAIN BOARD" error. eventually this went away, and wasn't an issue for over 13 months.

I'm running out of ideas here. :(
 
ok, I come up with lots of oddball stuff on here, that much is obvious. my family bought a closed arcade's inventory, so there's a lot of gremlins lurking in that machinery, myself and 2 techs had to fix them all.

one problem still persists however, and it's with our Wild Riders. someone else posted a similar topic very recently, but after I've dabbled with a few different areas on it, the game still freezes. so here's my list of changes/repairs:

1) adjusted +5V and 3.3V (to 5.20 and 3.5 respectively) -- I did this because at the problem points where the game would lock up, I noticed the 3.3 would dip down to 3.25~ --- can anyone confirm that this is normal or if it will be problematic if I leave it at 3.5?

2) cooling fan wouldn't spin -- with my WD40 magic I was able to get this to work again. since the problem continued after adjusting the PSU, I figured it was heat-related. however, it still continued...

3) I removed the ROM card, and just went into the BIOS test to see if it would lock up at all. it didn't. so I powered down and reinserted the ROM card...

4) I ran the Game ROM test. IC1 and IC2 both came up with BAD messages. everything else checked out...

5) for fun, I wanted to see if this was intermittent -- the second Game ROM test resulted in all GOOD messages for every rom. (I didn't power down or change anything with the hardware itself before doing this)

6) I then played the game, and it didn't freeze up again.


so is this a matter of just poor conductivity between the ROM card and the main board? last year this same problem occurred and sometimes on power up the game would give a "GAME NOT SUPPORTED BY MAIN BOARD" error. eventually this went away, and wasn't an issue for over 13 months.

I'm running out of ideas here. :(

I wouldnt run those Naomi boards at 5.2 and 3.5, thats just too high for them. Your problem is due to heat/poor air movement. Dumb question, did you clean the dust out of the CPU case when you fixed the fan? Theres also the possibility that its gone so long and cooked itself and you may never get it working right again.

I had another Naomi2 game that would lock up no matter what we did. The tech at Sega told me to swap cartridges and security IC's with a known working Naomi2 game to see if the problem followed the "game" or the CPU. Strangely enough neither game had a single problem after the swap. The way the tech at Sega explained it was that the on board memory gets messed up data from time to time and installing a new game on the main board erases and re writes the memory. So, if you have another Naomi2 game you might want to try that (not another Wild Riders).

Matt
 
I wouldnt run those Naomi boards at 5.2 and 3.5, thats just too high for them. Your problem is due to heat/poor air movement. Dumb question, did you clean the dust out of the CPU case when you fixed the fan? Theres also the possibility that its gone so long and cooked itself and you may never get it working right again.

I had another Naomi2 game that would lock up no matter what we did. The tech at Sega told me to swap cartridges and security IC's with a known working Naomi2 game to see if the problem followed the "game" or the CPU. Strangely enough neither game had a single problem after the swap. The way the tech at Sega explained it was that the on board memory gets messed up data from time to time and installing a new game on the main board erases and re writes the memory. So, if you have another Naomi2 game you might want to try that (not another Wild Riders).

Matt

I did clean the dust out, yes, and I haven't run it long at those voltages.

the memory thing sounds about right. I don't have any other NAOMI 2 games to try this with though. :(

maybe I have an excuse to buy one of those newfangled Virtua Fighter games. :p

I'm not very happy with the situation right now with anything. I have a monitor that I fixed that broke again (a rare Toshiba one) that I'm probably just going to give up on.
 
I did clean the dust out, yes, and I haven't run it long at those voltages.

the memory thing sounds about right. I don't have any other NAOMI 2 games to try this with though. :(

maybe I have an excuse to buy one of those newfangled Virtua Fighter games. :p

I'm not very happy with the situation right now with anything. I have a monitor that I fixed that broke again (a rare Toshiba one) that I'm probably just going to give up on.

Maybe you can do a memory clear and see if that will fix it.

Matt
 
Maybe you can do a memory clear and see if that will fix it.

Matt

like the Backup Data Clear thing? I tried that.

like I said, the ROMs have like intermittent errors and shit too. I almost wonder if that cart is just jacked up.

EDIT: in all fairness, after I did all that, the game did work fine. :p weren't open today though, so I couldn't see if it held up.
 
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I had the same issues with a couple of games.

We went back and forth with Sega on this issue and after all said and done, it was determined the issue was indeed heat related (although your issue may be different).

The only solution that we found worked for our situation was the following:

1) We removed the outer casing of the game cartridge (Left off perm.)
2) The system was dismantled, fan replaced, everything cleaned.
3) We installed 2 4" box fans on the sides (Left & Right) in a manner that would pull cool air from the left over the system & cartridge and exhaust out the right.

In our locations we could not pull the game far enough from the wall for the Sega exhaust fan to have much effect.

We never had an issue with freezing after.

One critical thing with Sega as pointed out above, the 3.3v needs to be 3.3v. For Sega games, this is more critical than the 5v. In our experience, if the 3.3 moved more than 1/10th of a volt, the game would have issues. The 5v was more forgiving.
 
There are a bunch of tiny tiny surface mount 16 bit buffer chips on the board with a bunch of hair like pins on each one. Replace them all.

It's a common problem on NAOMI boards.

And while you are at it, clean the heatsinks and CPU fan off thoroughly and replace the case fan. WD-40 is a temporary fix, attracts more dust, and the fan will die again.
 
I had the same issues with a couple of games.

We went back and forth with Sega on this issue and after all said and done, it was determined the issue was indeed heat related (although your issue may be different).

The only solution that we found worked for our situation was the following:

1) We removed the outer casing of the game cartridge (Left off perm.)
2) The system was dismantled, fan replaced, everything cleaned.
3) We installed 2 4" box fans on the sides (Left & Right) in a manner that would pull cool air from the left over the system & cartridge and exhaust out the right.

In our locations we could not pull the game far enough from the wall for the Sega exhaust fan to have much effect.

We never had an issue with freezing after.

One critical thing with Sega as pointed out above, the 3.3v needs to be 3.3v. For Sega games, this is more critical than the 5v. In our experience, if the 3.3 moved more than 1/10th of a volt, the game would have issues. The 5v was more forgiving.

see, I thought the 3.3V needed to be 3.3. I had the exact same problem on our Daytona USA 2 and that's how I fixed it. I think I said this, I left my meter plugged into the 3.3 on the back of the main box and all the parts where it would lock up is where the voltage would dip down to like 3.25-3.29. is that normal, or could the power supply be suspect as well?

I got other NAOMI games and they never do any of this, so I'm assuming that heat is the issue.


do you want me to pop the heatsinks off the chips too? those heatsinks look like they're really on there, and I don't wanna break the legs off the surface mount chips.
 
well, I think I may have figured this one out..

getting back to my original point, if you turn the game on, and immediately go into Test, and then do the ROM BOARD CHECK, this time almost every single rom came up BAD. as soon as the test completed, I went back in again, and that time every single rom came up GOOD.

and as such, the game worked fine.

nothing with the voltages. looks like it's something with the game board. does it have to like, warm up first or something?

any of this sound about right? :)

right now also, I'm running it with the top covers off, just for better ventilation, but it looks like it's also not an issue with heat either. it's just been this damn cart all along.

I'll see what I can find on ebay, I doubt any of you chaps have anything you're wanting to sell.

EDIT: also from before, it wasn't 3.5 that I set it to, it was 3.35. I knocked it back down to 3.30, and the +5 to 5.10. I measured at the power ports on the back of the main board.
 
Like I said... replace those surface mount buffer chips on the cartridge.

It's a common issue on those when they do the random lockups and show bad ROMs during tests.
 
Like I said... replace those surface mount buffer chips on the cartridge.

It's a common issue on those when they do the random lockups and show bad ROMs during tests.

I take it you're referring to the smallest chips on the top part of the cart?

never mucked around with surface mount soldering before, should be fun! (not)
 
As far as rewriting memory by swapping games you could always use a Naomi 1 cart as the Naomi 2's are backwards compatible.
 
Like I said... replace those surface mount buffer chips on the cartridge.

It's a common issue on those when they do the random lockups and show bad ROMs during tests.

What he said. I just received my Wild Riders mobo and cart back from Ken at ARC. My symptoms were exactly as you describe. The issue was with the cart, and I believe Ken did just as Raymond described. I also had a cap that had leaked and which had started corroding the traces.

Anyway, the problem is most likely in the cart.
 
You need these: 74LCX16245MTDX and Mouser carries them.

http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ds/74/74LCX16245.pdf

I still have a bunch over here as I ordered 30 of them last time. If you need, I can install them for a nominal fee... but I'm not taking on any new projects until the end of the month as I need to catch up on what I have already.

RJ
 
need to learn surface mount soldering sooner or later. I have some potentially shorted input chips on one of my Tekken Tag Tournament boards that are going to need replacing on a rainy day too.

I guess flux is the secret, right? might need a thinner tip for my iron.

for what it's worth, the game's gone batshit even when the roms check out. same problem you think?
 
thread resurrection!

so I replaced the cart with another one, after about 2 months of it not locking up (after letting the game sit stored elsewhere for awhile) the game ran fine, now it's tweaking again.

should I attempt building an industrial cooling apparatus and see what that does? cause another NAOMI 2 board isn't in the budget.

one thing I didn't get to do before was install a different game in it, cause I had nothing else. all the other NAOMI games I had were GD-ROM ones. now that I have my Zombie Revenge setup, I could try that...

what's the likelihood I got 2 bad carts though?
 
Small... Turn the +5 down to 5.1. I have my suspicions that those buffer chips are VERY voltage sensitive.
 
yeah, had it at 5.10 and 3.30. fans all work on it... I think we've already deduced from my other NAOMI thread that if they weren't, it just wouldn't run. :)

if I recall, NAOMI 2 mainboards go for quite a chunk of change, and this particular game doesn't fit the budget. doesn't help that the monitor's not too hot on it either. sad, but I might have to wind up parting this one out.

it ran fine after it was in storage for 2-3 months. zero problems. which component would be most affected by such a thing?

EDIT: what about the power supply too? I've probed my meter on both the +5 and +3.3 and watched the voltage jump and dip like .3V+/-, especially on the 3.3.
 
OUCH.

.3v is a huge jump if you are set at 5.1v and that can cause damage to those silly buffer chips on the carts. Sounds like your power supply is going south. Replace it and see if the freezing stops. Hopefully it didn't damage the electronics.

RJ
 
who knows. every one of these games we got part of a whole lot were total junk until myself and 2 other techs sorted them out. had a House of the Dead that was running at 5.7V, take that for what it's worth.

if you ever wanna learn this stuff quick, do what I did: take on 60 games at once. LOL

and yeah, I recall the 3.3 dipping all the way down to 3.29V on like a certain screen in the game. I don't think the +5 was as bad, if anything it was user error on my part, cause I didn't know the power demands for these boards, I just kinda assumed they sucked a lot of juice like the Model 2/3s.

I've adjusted the PSU a few times now, so what are my options, should I open it up and see if any caps are visibly looking kinda jacked up, seek out another NAOMI PSU (that probably will give me the same problem), or what's your spin on the people that are converting PC power supplies since they have 3.3V rails for use like this?
 
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