Shinobi repair log

ifkz

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This was a welcomed chance to repair one of my favorite hardware platforms: Sega's System16B. Shinobi arrived dead, just as advertised. I was pretty surprised with the bottom of the board, take a look:
HPIM1363.jpg


When this board was in service, someone really wanted it to be "worker."

First off, I hate suicide batteries of any type on any gameboard. This one had the battery backed up CPU Sega used on a lot of their System16B PCBs. It had broken open and killed a repairable Klax PCB when it was in storage. Anyhow, I found a 10Mhz 68000 CPU on a parts board and installed that.

Next was to put together a good set of unprotected EPROMS and burn them using my programmer. This took some time, there was no single good unprotected set I could find. In the end I had to use several sets and a high resolution scan of an unprotected Shinobi board to be able to figure it out. Next I spent the better part of a day (today) erasing and burning 18 EPROMS with the code that I hoped would work (I had no way of knowing beforehand). I think it took around 7 hours.

For those without a programmer, it takes a lot of time for EPROM burns. It takes about 15 minutes to erase them using a specialty UV light box, then you set the burner for the type of chip, then you wait 10 minutes or so to program each chip. The sizes are very small, but this is not a quick process. If you have different manufacturers of chips, you have to reset the chip brand and capacity with each burn. Every burner I have seen so far uses a Terminal program, which is a lot like DOS. Anyhow, a little education for everyone...back to the repair log....

At first power up it worked...mostly. I had some kind of weird sound issue going on and I isolated it to the main hardware board. Yes, the same one above. Lacking any other option at this point, I turned to an ESWAT in my parts box that had damage to the main hardware board and an almost cracked in half EPROM board. This "replacement" main hardware board had a ton of cosmetic damage, but the physical damage was pretty fixable. I had to jumper parts of the broken corner using the other board as a guide. Would you believe it had the exact same spot of damage? I also fixed some ripped out caps and other easy fixes. Since this one was stripped, I just moved everything over an hoped for the best.

After a playthrough to stage 5-2, I pronounce it fulling working!

This now frees up the EPROM board from my original Shinobi, which is a very late model one that takes EPROMs up to 2000Mbit! This particular one will support either Dynamite Dux or...Cotton! Now to find a source for up to 18 1Mbit EPROMS! It's a wish for the future. No way that is affordable unless I'm able to find a game stacked to the gills with 1Mbit EPROMS.

EDIT: It is more like 30 EPROMS I would need...
 
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Nice work! :)

Re: 1 Megabit EPROMs - try Ebay. I believe that you need 27C010 (or equivalents). A quick search found a number of sellers, some stupidly expensive, some pretty cheap.
 
For those without a programmer, it takes a lot of time for EPROM burns. It takes about 15 minutes to erase them using a specialty UV light box, then you set the burner for the type of chip, then you wait 10 minutes or so to program each chip. The sizes are very small, but this is not a quick process. If you have different manufacturers of chips, you have to reset the chip brand and capacity with each burn. Every burner I have seen so far uses a Terminal program, which is a lot like DOS. Anyhow, a little education for everyone...back to the repair log....

Only if you have an old programmer, sounds like you have an old parallel port one which these days are old clunkers. A cheap $150 USB burner will let you burn those roms in about 20 seconds each, and let you chose from thousands of manufacturers and chip types at the click of a mouse. The larger the chip the longer it takes but the largest I have ever written with mine were 8Mbit ones and they took 90 seconds each. The more expensive burner in the product family as mine did those in 15 seconds flat, but that's about $900 so I only had it on loan. Sadly the 15 minute UV erase step is as slow as it ever was. Actually, even for a parallel port your burn times seem awfully slow, have you set the lppt port to the fastest setting in the BIOS? It depends if your burner will support those modes but the default setting for parallel ports on most PCs is the slowest of the 4 options.

Mindmumbingly slow - SPP
Slow - BPP
Good - EPP
Fastest - ECP
 
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It is actually a serial port burner. I have set it to the fastest speed per the manual, but it is very slow. I'm glad it works though and it does the job for $50. I have a thought to get one of the newer TOP USB programmers to handle the newer stuff. This one only goes up to 27512. Now with this ROM board freed up, I have a need to burn about 30 27010's. My friend that sold it to me says it is good to have an older burner (like this one is good to have for the older EPROMS) and a cheap newer one for the newer EPROMS. This one has let me save three boards so far, so it was really worth the money. The more 27c010's I can get the sooner I get a modern USB burner (about another $50 per e-bay's prices).
 
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