Star Rider PCB Repairs

I've been busy I guess 😕

Doesn't mean I haven't stopped working on Star Rider. Got all the boards laid up on my bench, I'm waiting on a few pieces right now 😔

One day I'll seize back my thread.
oh I took it as he was fixing your game for you 🤣 thanks for indirectly clarifying LOL
 
I'm not claiming this as my thread, I thought this thread was about Star Rider PCB repair. Hope some of my posts are helpful. And I hope you get your Star Rider up and running.
If I can help answer any questions any one else has I will certainly try. I thought that's what forums are for, exchanging ideas, information, asking questions about the main topic.
 
Looks like the order of the power supplies coming up is important to the PIA. There is a separate powered switcher in this unit. Plugging in 5V switcher last seems to have solved it. Throttle mechanism now operating correctly.
 
Star Rider ran all weekend long. Once in awhile though I found it dead. After leaving the front off it ran flawklessly so I suspect it got too warm inside the cabinet. I'll probably upgrade the exhaust fan. maybe install a couple additional small internal fans.
 
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Okay so, taking back the reins here a little bit, I've been fiddling with Star Rider as well. And finally, there's progress worth discussing.

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I was able to get the CPU board belong to my friend to boot. As it turns out, Star Rider will boot just fine with only the VGG, ROM, and CPU boards (assuming those are working) for minimal testing. I haven't tried hooking up a PIF, Sound, Expander, or NTSC board yet.

So in this case, it looks like I have a working set of those three boards to play with.

I'd really like to be able to get my CPU board working, but this is a huge step in the right direction.

Now, what would be the most efficient way to use this working CPU to fix my broken one? I would love to see if I can figure out some way to get a FPGA catbox config from the working one and apply it to the broken one. That would save me a ton of time probing traces. What do you guys think?
 
Okay, some more Star Rider progress to report today.

*MY* CPU board is finally booting. And what an absolute mess this board is. Nearly every chip was corroded to hell and dead. Several vias were corroded to the point of inoperability. It required a crazy amount of work, but we're nearly there on it. Curses to the AA batteries that plagued this board.

Behold its terrible visage.
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Now, I've been comparing and contrasting these two boards a fair bit, while working on them. They're doing some very different things.
Right now, I only have the CPU, VGG, and ROM boards hooked up. I've been using the same VGG/ROM pair for testing.

When the good board (which has PROTO 3 ROMs) boots up, it will get to the All Systems Go Screen, and then the high score table, and then after a moment, disc error.
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However, when my board (which as PROTO 5 ROMs) boots up, it will get to the All Systems Go Screen, and then go directly to this strange red diamond screen.

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And after a moment, it will then go to disc fault, as the good board does. Which is expected, since I don't have a player hooked up... Or the rest of the boards. But why the difference?

I thought it would be ROMs or something, but even swapping the ROMs between boards, they both did the same thing.
 
The strange red diamond screen is the PIF test.
No PIF board installed = error.
Interesting... So why does the other board go to the high score screen while doing the PIF test? They both are end up with the same disc error, and they both pass all initial tests while hooked up to the same VGG and ROM board.
 
My guess you just need the PIF and LDP connected, as its really trying to figure out why the disc hasnt spun up and seeked whatever start frame at this point. I may be way off and its just different code for the testing between the PROTO revisions.

The PIF test on mine comes right after the ROM test, and its a few seconds.
Right after that I get the "all systems go" message and all is well.

I cant check what PROTO # I have on mine at the moment
 
My guess you just need the PIF and LDP connected, as its really trying to figure out why the disc hasnt spun up and seeked whatever start frame at this point. I may be way off and its just different code for the testing between the PROTO revisions.
Not that I can tell, swapped roms between the boards and they did the same thing so who knows... (They were PROTO 3 and 5)

In any case, I've been making rapid progress, and I've got a whole bunch of boards gone through now.

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So... I figured it was time to turn my attention to the disc player, which was mostly a success (as shown here)

Unfortunately, I'm not getting video from the disc piped through the PCB set. It is definitely playing, but it doesn't get to the arcade monitor.

I have tried two NTSC boards, two VGGs, and two EXP boards.

My guess is that it's the NTSCs as they haven't been recapped.
 
Ah yes, I recall going thru a few NTSC boards to get my game going. Same problem, no video output to the board. I had also changed the old raggedy stock composite video cable to a much better one. It won't hurt to re-cap. A year ago, I re-capped my entire star rider boardset and the crt, in efforts to improve the visuals slightly, and it did kind of. I am assuming the design intent was to purposely "deres" the spooling pristine Laserdisc footage, and "what you get is as good as it will get".
 
Okay, I've got a working NTSC Board! It definitely needed to be capped, but that turned out not to be the problem.

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The problem... Is the Expander board(s).

I am completely unable to get *anything* from any of them. I have SIX of these, and not-a-one does anything. It's not the VGG either. I can't get any output when the monitor is hooked up directly to the expander, but I can if I hook it up to the NTSC Board. So Video is getting out of the disc, in and out of the NTSC Board, and dying somewhere in the expander board.

So, what does one do to begin troubleshooting an expander? It would have helped tremendously to have at least one decent one to start with that I could compare against the others.
 
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Does anyone know if the Expander board, when given power, should output video unstretched automatically?

It's obviously not doing that right now, but I suspect it should?

My intent is to make a bench test setup to just test this one board. I'm wondering if I can pipe in a video signal with my TPG and have it display on the monitor and eliminate everything else. It's wild that none of these six boards work at all, and voltages look good.
 
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Still messing with the expander board with little to no progress. I added in this little extra board with tiny kynar attachments so I can easily measure voltages. They all seemed to be within acceptable bounds, if maybe a little low.

5V (A) ≈ 5.0V
5V (DC) ≈ 5.0V
4.7V (A) ≈ 4.65V
12V (A) ≈ 11.9V
-VR (-1.0V) ≈ -1.1V
-6V (A) ≈ -6V

So... Not power... What then would stop this from outputting video at all?
 
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