Spy Hunter W/ Issues...

ManiN

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Just picked up a Spy Hunter! Grail for me since I was a kid! So I am happy to finally have one, but there are a few issues.

The G07 needs love, but that's no problem. The lights didn't work, but replacing R19 on the light board fixed that. Now the only issues I can see I'm having are no sound effects, and a video glitch. There is the PG theme music, but no effects such as coin up, guns, etc... I pulled the board set and pulled chips cleaned and remounted. I think I made it worse by putting one video chip in backwards like an idiot. I turned it on and saw right away something was wrong because all the vehicles were white rectangles. I pulled the set, flipped the chip and it works now, but there are red horizontal lines through the 'sprites' (not sure if I'm using that terminology right). Did I fry the chip?? I hope not.. I hate making problems worse... I noticed the ribbon cables are the solid core ones, I hear they cause a lot of problems too.

Could it be the pot for the sound? I wonder if I could put a speaker on the back side to see if there is signal there?

Here's a clip of the video error and lack of sound: http://youtu.be/zgtRhf15s2I

Any help is great!
 
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Another important point to ad is that the voltage from the PS seems very high, like 6.3V, and no matter what I do to the pots on the board, it wont change! Additionally, when I turn the machine on, the damn coin counter clicks like a coin went through? Finally, to actually get the machine to run, I pulled the 'reset' purple line. Any of these problems point to something? Rebuild of the PS maybe?
 
Reset issue is on the power supply board. The inability to adjust the 5VDC line lower than 6.5VDC is an issue on the power supply board (and this one is NOT good for your motherboard stack).

"I think I made it worse by putting one video in backwards"

I don't know what this means......but you later in your post state something about a chip in backwards....Most chips will die from being installed backwards.

Edward
 
Well, if I killed the video chip, can replacements be had? Guess I'll order a rebuild kit for the PS.

Your power supply definitely needs work. Spy Hunter doesn't have a "video chip", per se.....it's got an entire video board. Are there any numbers/markings on the chip (and yeah, you probably need a new one).

Edward
 
That's what I mean. The chip is on the video board. Is see on bob's page he offers quite a bit of chips and programming abilities, so I spose it is possible. What's the word on the replacement 4" SCSI cables bob offers? I've heard there is some grumble about them? Other than it not being an exact replacement, I can't see an issue.
 
That's what I mean. The chip is on the video board. Is see on bob's page he offers quite a bit of chips and programming abilities, so I spose it is possible. What's the word on the replacement 4" SCSI cables bob offers? I've heard there is some grumble about them? Other than it not being an exact replacement, I can't see an issue.

The problem with Bob's SCSI cables is their width. On MCR games like Trom or Satan's Hollow they fit fine. These games are held together with nylon stand-offs. On a game like Spy Hunter (or Tapper, or Timber, etc.)....you've got those big metal plates that separate the boards. The SCSI cables are too wide to properly fit between the plate's leg and the board's header. I've taken a Dremel and ground down the plate's leg...to give the cable enough room to fit. This is a pain in the ass.....and if you grind too far, you destroy the internal threads on the plate's leg. Then your mounting screw will no longer hold. I've also seen people just jam the connector into place. This is also bad. It stresses the connector housing causing intermittent connections....or the housing falls apart.

What chip did you install backwards? A ROM...or something else?

Edward
 
Not sure at the moment, like a fool, I didn't take note of it's position and just corrected it and threw it back in. as far as looks goes, it was one of the ones that was in a row with several like it, and had a tag saying "spy hunter video". Was brown with a layered sandwich look from the end. Its which ever one is related to the vehicles and how they look on the screen. Again, there was no picture wherever the cars were, just white rectangles when it was in wrong. When I corrected it, they were back, but now have horizontal lines through them as seen in the video. Same goes with the machine gun bullets.
 
Not sure at the moment, like a fool, I didn't take note of it's position and just corrected it and threw it back in. as far as looks goes, it was one of the ones that was in a row with several like it, and had a tag saying "spy hunter video". Was brown with a layered sandwich look from the end. Its which ever one is related to the vehicles and how they look on the screen. Again, there was no picture wherever the cars were, just white rectangles when it was in wrong. When I corrected it, they were back, but now have horizontal lines through them as seen in the video. Same goes with the machine gun bullets.

Sounds like one of the ROMs.

Edward
 
The problem with Bob's SCSI cables is their width. On MCR games like Trom or Satan's Hollow they fit fine. These games are held together with nylon stand-offs. On a game like Spy Hunter (or Tapper, or Timber, etc.)....you've got those big metal plates that separate the boards. The SCSI cables are too wide to properly fit between the plate's leg and the board's header. I've taken a Dremel and ground down the plate's leg...to give the cable enough room to fit. This is a pain in the ass.....and if you grind too far, you destroy the internal threads on the plate's leg. Then your mounting screw will no longer hold. I've also seen people just jam the connector into place. This is also bad. It stresses the connector housing causing intermittent connections....or the housing falls apart.



Edward

I got my SCSI cables off the bay and they installed without any modifications or jamming them in.
 
I think the chip was CP7. ID looks like D27128 L4183807S Looking at it again I realized it's the only one with the sticker in the other direction... followed the wrong direction indicator I guess haha (in lieu of the half circle notch). Are those eprom files available? Looks like Bob wants $15 for a programmed one, yet only $2.50 for the chip...

I pulled this one to check and there was no change, so that makes me think it's the culprit. Anyone know the function of CP7? Anybody ever seen the horizontal red lines in the sprites?
 
I tried to set SW3 #1 and #2 on to check for bad rom and ram and the LED did nothing. That seem right? Also, I noticed at one point on the screen, it said "Sound Interface Error".
 
Sound Interface Error means there is something wrong with your SSIO board most likely. when you power up the game does the peter gun theme play for a couple seconds? that is usally is accompanied with the Sound Interface Error message.
 
Sound Interface Error means there is something wrong with your SSIO board most likely. when you power up the game does the peter gun theme play for a couple seconds? that is usally is accompanied with the Sound Interface Error message.

exactly, PG plays for a few seconds and the little message is at the bottom of the screen. I've been sifting through threads compiling related checks I could perform. Wish I had a scope to sense activity. I bet I have a dead processor or ram somewhere. Why doesn't the RAM / ROM test fire anything back? My first step is to rebuild the power supply, the voltages are off, and that can bother many things. Same with the ribbon cables.
 
I think the chip was CP7. ID looks like D27128 L4183807S Looking at it again I realized it's the only one with the sticker in the other direction... followed the wrong direction indicator I guess haha (in lieu of the half circle notch). Are those eprom files available? Looks like Bob wants $15 for a programmed one, yet only $2.50 for the chip...

Yes. All the ROM files for pretty much any game are available, thanks to the good folks who maintain MAME. Just download a MAME ROMset, and decompress the zip archive, and you'll have all the ROM files for the game.

Do you have a ROM programmer?

-Ian
 
Nice! I never knew the mame files were compiled chip by chip. That's great news. I don't have a burner...

I wonder if it could be like micro controller in that you can setup a breadboard rig and program via serial with whatever freeware program is available, I can't remember which it is.
 
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So I swapped z80 on the SSIO and I believe that cured my sound issue! Still have the red lines through the sprites though... Can anyone verify the chip involved with those? It's on the last board set, CPU I believe, a video chip is the one I had in backwards and believe is the one failing. I also re-flowed all headers, but my money is on z80 for the sound issue.
 
Just to close this out, I was wrong about the video chip. It was the one next to it that I put in backwards and fried. I replaced it and all is good.

I still have a loud hiss interference that I am able to suppress about 80% with cap ground filters, but it's still there. Something isn't grounded right somewhere. Have checked EVERYWHERE I can think of.
 
As you check the grounds are you cleaning them? Is the power cord missing the ground prong? I sometimes think that his is partially because the speakers themselves are kinda cheap.. Also check the audio amp boards.
 
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