Sportstation power

mecha

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few months back I dropped a new Happ Power Pro into my Sportstation. it worked fine until about last week, then the game started resetting. I'm not entirely sure why but the +5 crawled its way up to 5.25 at the 9-pin molex on its own. I had it perfectly dialed in at 5.10 at the IC.

so after tinkering with the +5, I still got resets, but at the lower end. I eventually got it to where the game wouldn't boot, and I turned it up enough to boot it, then fed it another .05, and it's fine now.

I suppose the real question is, is it normal for a power supply that new to have that much fluctuation on the +5 rail?
 
I resolved this with a pencil eraser on the contacts. the +5 fingers were very bad though, so I scraped them a bit with a flathead, then erased again.

I went from 5.40 at the JAMMA edge and 4.79 at the ICs to a 5.15 at the JAMMA edge and 5.10 at the ICs. not bad huh?

I almost wanna go OCD and do this to all my boards now, holy shit.
 
I recently got a sportstation pcb in a nba jam cab. What they had done was connect the power supply directly to the 4 pin connector on the vegas board that usually powers the hdd. They also connected the hdd directly to the power supply.(its using the proper power supply. Maybe they hacked the wiring in the cab, but the 4 pin connectors were coming out of the molex that the power supply plugs into).

I don't think thats correct according the showtime manual. on page 129 they show the vegas pcb powering the HDD. But doing it that way, would make it easier on the vegas pcb..
http://www.crazykong.com/manuals/NBAShowtimeGold.man.pdf
 
I noticed that on mine too. I was like "wtf, is this a power in or out?"

honestly, I can't tell you right now what it was lol. I know that the fans are powered off it... so it must be an output. that's weird how they did it though. I'll have to take a look at it again, I'm groggy right now.

my JAMMA contacts were pretty bad though, so there may be hope for you. lol
 
I would not use it to power fans. why pull more current though the board for fans. Now if it makes a difference to the HDD, then I can see running that through there. but if you can push power in through there, that sounds interesting.. It seems like a better option than soldering wires directly to the pcb..

Another thought is maybe there are some componets that protect the pcb from power coming in through the edge connector. Maybe power going in through that output might bypass that protection.
 
I would not use it to power fans. why pull more current though the board for fans. Now if it makes a difference to the HDD, then I can see running that through there. but if you can push power in through there, that sounds interesting.. It seems like a better option than soldering wires directly to the pcb..

Another thought is maybe there are some componets that protect the pcb from power coming in through the edge connector. Maybe power going in through that output might bypass that protection.

I've learned it is an output. the fans connect to it.

I worked on another Vegas board tonight (Road Burners)... that one was in way better condition, power supply +5 pot just needed an extensive wiping.

however, I think the voltage offset is actually a wee tad lower on my Sportstation board now since cleaning the contacts.
 
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