spy hunter takes 5 mins to boot

oregonarcade

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I have a spyhunter that will sometimes take 2-5 mins to boot up. I have reset all the chips and replaced the ribbon cables. Voltage is good. any ideas?
 
what do you consider good voltage? and where are you checking it?
Have you tested the reset circuit to see whether its low or high when its not booting? What does the monitor show when its booting? is it resetting?
If i was gonna guess, i'd guess the voltage is too low, combined with a power supply that needs rebuilding.
 
I get 5 volts at the pcb and I have bumped it up to 5.3 with the same result. There is garbage on the screen till the game boots. it plays fine with no problems after it boots and does not reset
 
check the voltage at the purple wire on the main pcb. It should go high as soon as the game is powered on. If its not low, then there's your problem
 
at least the reset section - if the purple wire is low, the game won't boot. It'll just sit there frozen.
 
Could you help with my reset circuit problem where is won't reset after a tilt, after switching out of setup mode and if the game should happen to glitch out (which is rare), but as you may have read, I'm using a switcher without the metal hunk. The game operates normally other than above.

At the purple wire, I have about 5.2V when the game is running normally, if I hit the tilt or switch out of setup mode, it dips to about 4.4V for a split second then goes back to 5.2V, and keeps alternating back and forth. I have to press the reset on the sound board, at which point the voltage dips to nearly nothing while the button is held, then goes back to 5.2V and the game resets.

Thanks for your time!

SH
 
Could you help with my reset circuit problem where is won't reset after a tilt, after switching out of setup mode and if the game should happen to glitch out (which is rare), but as you may have read, I'm using a switcher without the metal hunk. The game operates normally other than above.

At the purple wire, I have about 5.2V when the game is running normally, if I hit the tilt or switch out of setup mode, it dips to about 4.4V for a split second then goes back to 5.2V, and keeps alternating back and forth. I have to press the reset on the sound board, at which point the voltage dips to nearly nothing while the button is held, then goes back to 5.2V and the game resets.

Thanks for your time!

SH

put a 1000 ohm resistor in your purple reset wire. Their should already be one in the switcher adapter, but there very well may not be. What's happening is the +5 from your switcher/adapter is not letting the reset signal go low and reset the cpu. The resistor will limit its current to an acceptable level.
 
Great, I'll give that a try.

I see the 1.2K resisitor in the schematics, but it is not in the switcher adapter, the purple line goes straight to a transistor with 1 leg on ground and the other on a tiny capacitor which also goes to ground. So this transistor will switch to ground in certain situations, would that be on bootup? How does it know?

I'm trying to understand in the original schematics / power supply, there is a pump charger and a one shot circuit that get power from the isolation transformer (which I'm not using) and feed into the transistor in question... But in the switcher adapter there is nothing like this, yet nobody is having the same issue as I am...

SH
 
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the way the reset circuit functions is it holds the reset line low for a split second to give the +5 a chance to stabilize, then goes high as long as the power is stable.
Not sure how the switcher adapter works exactly, but i suspect it just charges the cap and the transistor turns on, making the reset line go high, and allowing the cpu to boot.
Now, when you switch out of test mode, there's a circuit on the cpu that causes the reset line to go low. Its only designed to sink a few milliamps of current, and the transistor when providing +5 to the line is providing more current than the circuit can handle, and therefore the voltage isn't going low and forcing the cpu to reset.
Long and short of it to add the 1k or 1k2 resistor, and limit the current that the power supply can send through the purple wire, so the circuit on the cpu can sink enough current to make reset and cpu_reset go low, and let the game reboot itself back in play mode.
You could also add it between the +5v and the transistor in question, or between the transistor and the reset line. whichever is easier, really, that would be better, as your actually fixing the problem with the adapter.
 
I can't believe this resistor is not already there! This is the biggest problem with the switcher setup then, even bigger than the hum that happens to most people. I have the 2007 switcher adapter, mayber they've fixed it in 2009?

It might be easiest to attach it to the entire +5V line, but I'm guessing the rest of the circuits need a full +5V?

SH
 
no it only needs to be on the reset line or purple wire, or whatever feeds it on the switcher adapter. Putting it anywhere else will not help the situation.
 
YAAY! That did the trick! I had the schematics all along and didn't have a clue to check this! Thanks so much for helping me out!

With my limited soldering skills I was able to get it on the board, it's not pretty, but it works dogonnit! It's odd that the voltage actually stays the same with the resistor in place, wish I would have paid attention during electronics class!

This would have to affect all arcades that use this switcher adapter, no? Wonder why nobody has said anything until now? They just weren't that bothered that it didn't work?!?

Steven Gregory from arcadeshop sold me this thing, and when I asked him about it several years ago he said that the reset circuit is built into the adapter. Even though I described in detail what was happening, I guess he didn't get it and just told me that the reset circuit works. You could say that it halfway works, because through the transistor and capacitor it supplies the needed +5V a split second after the game powers up allowing it to boot, however the other part allowing it to restart after tilt and setup mode could not work without this resistor...

Thanks again!

SH
 
I love that my game works 100% now even though it's not using it's original components! You really know alot about these circuits cdjump, THANKS AGAIN!

Am I really the first to ask about this problem?

I've let Steven Gregory and Tom Wisnionski the designer of the adapter know, and they are going to see about putting into the future designs. Would this not affect all MCR based games? It took him awhile to understand that it was the tilt/setup mode exit that I was talking about and not the booting of the game.

SH
 
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