mecha
Well-known member
I have a Smash TV board that has numerous graphical glitches, and the game will also lock up to a grey screen after completing the first level. so I will tell you what I've tried with it so far, and share some picture goodness.
another Smash TV board topic suggested that the U99 chip could either be bad or need replacement. I pulled one from my High Impact Football to drop in and there was no change, and likewise, the High Impact board also ran fine, so it wasn't the U99. I also swapped CPUs, no change.
first off, in the picture of the board, while I had the game running I started pushing down on every single IC on the board. I was able to narrow it down to a couple of RAMs I'm guessing between the ROM sockets (circled in red) where if you pushed down on them even gently, the text would clear up and the black lines would go away completely. I inspected the underside of the board a LOT and there was no damage to any traces in that area. the two "RAM" chips I saw had entire halves of their pins where they were barely in the through holes, so I assumed I could just desolder them out and solder them back in flat.
this did not correct the problem, but now I realized I could push down anywhere inside the green box and get the same clearing of the problems. the game's lockup issue also went away. the component side solder joints on all the SR resistor packs (I'm guessing that's what they are) looked a little cracked in several places, so that was my next plan of attack to reflow all the solder going to those.
after doing this, I was no longer able to clear the board up by pressing down on any of the components in the green box. so now I'm back to where I started with no obvious solution available.
what should I try next? channelmanic? anyone?
pictures of what it's doing:
I'll show off my supergun too, lol
another Smash TV board topic suggested that the U99 chip could either be bad or need replacement. I pulled one from my High Impact Football to drop in and there was no change, and likewise, the High Impact board also ran fine, so it wasn't the U99. I also swapped CPUs, no change.
first off, in the picture of the board, while I had the game running I started pushing down on every single IC on the board. I was able to narrow it down to a couple of RAMs I'm guessing between the ROM sockets (circled in red) where if you pushed down on them even gently, the text would clear up and the black lines would go away completely. I inspected the underside of the board a LOT and there was no damage to any traces in that area. the two "RAM" chips I saw had entire halves of their pins where they were barely in the through holes, so I assumed I could just desolder them out and solder them back in flat.
this did not correct the problem, but now I realized I could push down anywhere inside the green box and get the same clearing of the problems. the game's lockup issue also went away. the component side solder joints on all the SR resistor packs (I'm guessing that's what they are) looked a little cracked in several places, so that was my next plan of attack to reflow all the solder going to those.
after doing this, I was no longer able to clear the board up by pressing down on any of the components in the green box. so now I'm back to where I started with no obvious solution available.
what should I try next? channelmanic? anyone?
pictures of what it's doing:
I'll show off my supergun too, lol

