Some Artic Thunder Questions, HDD Bad ? CMOS Battery ?

bsdpinball

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Some Artic Thunder Questions, HDD Bad ? CMOS Battery ?

Hi everyone, I have a customer who has an Artic Thunder. He said when he turns it on he gets a HDD error.

I noticed in the manual there is a dip switch setting to boot into diagnostics. Will I be able to use this to restore the factory settings ?

Or should I have him buy a new HDD for $65 and call it a day ?

Is there an easy way to format the drive, and burn an image to it to make sure the HDD is bad ?

I am not a huge fan of these PC based arcade games !
 
If you got the install disc, you can reimage a drive, or buy another imaged drive.

there is a battery on it, but you usually get a CMOS error if it goes dead...
 
If you're able, it's actually a better idea to replace the HDD with a Compact Flash card -- that way, you don't have to worry about the hard drive dying, since CFs are damn near indestructible. You often also get better load times.

I know it's something possible on Killer Instinct and CarnEvil specifically, so I'd assume that it's do-able on most HDD-based arcade games.

Look here and see if it's something you might be interested in doing: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=82733.0
 
I'm actually working on doing this. I got some SDHC to IDE adapters (cause 16gb of SDHC is way cheaper than flash) ..but the damned adapter doesn't work for crap. Tried it in my Rush and on AT.. no go. I have the Flash Adapters..just gotta get a big enough card (or hex edit the chd file to eliminate all the dead space...I'm just not confident in that scenario)

One thing I did do (cause I had some extra lying around), I replaced the stock 128 mb PC 133 ram with 2 256 sticks (total 512) and the windows boot has been MUCH faster (not to mention it fixed an error I was having on bootup)

bsdpinball, he is referring to the hard drive inside the computer mounted to the back of the game (big black box), remove the top 2 black screws and pull the plate off, and you'll see it sitting to the right. That's what you want to replace. I'm not aware of any install discs for it but you can get the hard drive image (referred to as a .chd file) off the web and use a program called chdman.exe to create a hard drive on 1) another hard drive or 2) on a flash card. As aclbandit mentioned, this is a way to almost bulletproof the game as the hdd is a common point of failure.

Unlike most hdd games, this has a computer inside it so it may react a bit differently if the motherboard's bios doesn't properly detect the hdd or read it's geometry properly. I hope to have a flash card tomorrow to finish this up. I can post my results then.
 
Unlike most hdd games, this has a computer inside it so it may react a bit differently if the motherboard's bios doesn't properly detect the hdd or read it's geometry properly. I hope to have a flash card tomorrow to finish this up. I can post my results then.

Let us know how that turns out. I'm not aware of any list that tells which games the CF replacement will work for, and which it won't, so it's more of a "try it and hope for the best."
 
Cant Find this Arctic Thunder CHD file anywhere ! I did find a 160KB file, but that jsut appears to be the u6 ROM. Can anyone hook a brother up with a link ?
 
Cant Find this Arctic Thunder CHD file anywhere ! I did find a 160KB file, but that jsut appears to be the u6 ROM. Can anyone hook a brother up with a link ?

I have the file, but it's probably against the site rules to post a link. Since you own the game, I won't feel bad sending you a PM, though.

It'll take a while to get it somewhere from whence you can download -- give me a bit. To be sure I'm uploading the right file, is it Arctic Thunder, or Arctic Thunder Ultimate?
 
well... I'll resurrect the dead thread... I never got this to work via flash card. Not sure why, but probably has to do with how the computer bios reads the CF card.

That being said, is it possible to successfully extract a CHD that was created from a 8455mb hdd onto an 80gb drive and have it work on an arctic thunder? (ie: what do I need to do in the bios to get it to read the drive properly?)

Thanks,

Tom
 
It was my understanding that as a security measure of sort arctic thunders were picky as far as the hdd. As in you have to purhase the correct unit from a vendor like Happ. It may be possible to get you hdd fixed and reimaged, but it was my understanding that you would need a hdd image of your exact hdd, some s/n locked to something or other. Just search it here or google I am sure the info will come up!
 
This, or alternatively, if you had the restore disc that re-images a new drive and then "marries" it to your PCB.

It was my understanding that as a security measure of sort arctic thunders were picky as far as the hdd. As in you have to purhase the correct unit from a vendor like Happ. It may be possible to get you hdd fixed and reimaged, but it was my understanding that you would need a hdd image of your exact hdd, some s/n locked to something or other. Just search it here or google I am sure the info will come up!
 
It was my understanding that as a security measure of sort arctic thunders were picky as far as the hdd. As in you have to purhase the correct unit from a vendor like Happ. It may be possible to get you hdd fixed and reimaged, but it was my understanding that you would need a hdd image of your exact hdd, some s/n locked to something or other. Just search it here or google I am sure the info will come up!

OK, found out that Betson apparently bought the rights to continue producing this game when Midway went out of business. Any ATs produced by Betaon do indeed have that security measure. Ones by Midway do not. I have a replacement HDD On the way and will confirm this.
 
This, or alternatively, if you had the restore disc that re-images a new drive and then "marries" it to your PCB.

That is pretty sweet, never knew that. I had heard something wild at one point as to which pcb in the machine the hdd is married to. Not the cpu, but like that crazy I/0 board. Comments?
 
Just an update. I have confirmed that there is no linking between any part of the computer and the hard drive with a Midway manufactured AT. Plugged in the $70 drive I got from ebay and it fired right up.
 
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