System 246 - testing, what am I possibly looking at?

backstagehobbies

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System 246 - testing, what am I possibly looking at?

Bought a Soul Calibur 2 cabinet with a System 246 unit. Everything powers on just fine, screen powers up, drives power up, JAMMA harness has a continuous light, no blinking, everything technically looks great, except I get snow/nothing on the monitor.
Checking it out and originally knowing nothing about the system 246 units I see the PS audio/video plug so decide to try something out and plug in a little tv with a PS2 AV cable to the same result, nothing.

Now, am I seeing nothing on both because something is indeed wrong on the unit or would the PS2 cable simply not work and I see nothing on the TV because it won't communicate and the odds are good something else is wrong elsewhere not on the board? 246 info seems scarce online so I figured I'd just out and ask~ Sorry if there's a painfully obvious answer I missed!
 
Did you happen to change the dip switch settings?.. It should work with the Standard Res monitor via the jamma or VGA straight from the system.

Switch 1:
On - Test Mode
Off - Game Mode

Switch 2 (RGB output level):
On - 0.7Vp-p 0.7Vp-p:As JAMMA (B) PC board is installed
Off - 0.7Vp-p 3.0Vp-p:As JAMMA (B) PC board is installed

Switch 3 (Monitor horizontal sync freq):
On - 31.5kHz
Off - 15.75kHz

Switch 4 (Synchronizing signal output form):
On - Separate
Off - Composite (Switch 4 is not used. Keep it in the OFF position)
 
Have you tried just plugging a regular JAMMA board into the harness and making sure that the monitor actually works? If the cabinet wiring and monitor are all good, then it's the 246 system. Does it have both the DVD and dongle in place? I have two working System 246's with SC2 and Tekken 4. I'm probably going to see one or both of them.
 
OK, updates (because I did get a couple of good ideas out of the thread ^_^)

- Dip Switches; tinkered with them. My test screen is a little LCD so I wanted to check the frequencies and just see if I just had a wrong screen. Nope. Everything works otherwise, just nothing on display.

- Other JAMMA board; don't know why I didn't think of it, threw my Konami X-Men in and, aside from some weirdness with the joystick controls everything worked perfectly; monitor, control board, speakers, etc.

So, its the unit. Everything turns on, lights up, drive spins up, all the dongles are in place and firmly attached as are the data cables. Which means motherboard on this guy?
 
Some of these units were originally made with a game-locked DVD drive (meaning it would only work with the game it came with). Sounds stupid, right? I ran into that with one of mine. It was locked to SC 2, but came to me with Tekken 4 "non-working" I spent forever on that stupid thing til I found a vague reference online. It wouldn't give me anything onscreen even though everything else was fine (and it would work with my SC 2 disc and dongle from my other system.....which also turns out to be locked!). Anyway, that may be the issue for you.

Open up the 246 case, and pull the DVD drive out. See if it has anything labelled on it. Mine actually said "SC2" on the outside. I ended up replacing my locked drive with a compatible one from an old computer in my junk stash, but I kept the SC2 locked one in my shop.
 
Disassembling the case to get to the drive: is an LG DVD drive, no external markings to indicate that is is region/title locked. Manufacture date is 2006, so its a newer drive. My unit is a Rack Assembly "B", A 12112.
The cab came from an arcade, so I assume it was working as a SC2 cab for at least a little bit.
 
have had one before where the mobo gfx output is fried??, either it overheated due to fans getting gunked up, or something, but similar to your issue, and really isnt fixable unless you can do some pretty good tech work
 
Well, looks like best route is a new motherboard; I have the rest and it looks like all of that works just fine, just that motherboard. Anyone have a spare kicking around?
 
Those darn I/O boards..

The I/O boards are a real pain in the ass, and I find that most of the time my issues are due to a poor connection between my JAMMA harnesses and the edge connector on the board.. or a cracked joint on the VGA monitor connection on the I/O board. If I breathe on them wrong it is a disaster.
 
There's a bit of damage to the JAMMA board along the side where the power feeds in, but it seems to be making a good, full, connection. None of the data lines seem affected. Might it be and I don't realize it?
 
That I have, to no avail. But the JAMMA board is connected to feed power to the box. Might that interfere? I do a lot of PC work and see the strangest things like that happen.
 
have you checked the voltages, if they are good, then its getting power, so plugging it direct into the mainboard and setting the dips to output the correct signal then thats all you need to do, if your not getting a signal then I would guess your gfx chip/video chip on the mainboard is fried, maybe got hot from a fan being clogged? or failing? not a tech enough to diagnose the actual board, good luck
 
I'm thinking I'm going to pick yours up if its still handy; worth running down a couple of the other leads but it looks more and more like this is going to be the case~
 
ill throw mine in my cab again (as i think its still got TC3 disc and dongle in it )and fire it up, test it all, but yeah its good to go :)
 
UPDATE!!

I got the replacement motherboard on Monday (thanks a lot!!) and I was a bit surprised to get the whole enclosure.
Finally got to sit down with it today and tinker. Got it in and got a response, but otherwise very little. It WAS a lot more than I had gotten out of my old unit though so this was a good sign. Went through the same series of trials I did with the last unit and got nothing new. After just fidgeting with stuff for a while fruitlessly, I finally remembered something: some drives were locked to particular titles. I read this a couple of places so I decided to try something. I pulled the DVD drive from my old unit and threw it into the new one, followed the direction for the "new" install and...it worked!!! But, much to my chagrin, I had the unit balanced precariously and, in my joy, I rocked the cab and it fell, while the disc was running. I got it out to find a nice, gnarly ring around it.
I DO have an industrial strength resurfacer though, so tossed it in there, buffed it out, tried it again only to have the unit freeze; the drive was damaged as well. A bit of reading suggested I could put almost any DVD ROM drive in so I called all over town and everyone was either closed or didn't carry them anymore. Another brainstorm and I'm tearing through a few old junk PCs we have kicking around the shop, find a DVD ROM drive in one and literally rip it out and run out to the cab to toss it in. Same deal, got it in, got it booted, and the disc hung at the start. Back to the resurfacer for another round and...it worked, perfectly!!

Thanks a lot everyone for the help; means a lot and I'm THRILLED to have this great game up and running!
 
Make a backup copy of the DVD in question. You may need that same drive you placed in the Namco system on the computer for it to actually recognize the disk. I had a hard time with getting one to recognize anything until I tried the namco drive.

I'm currently using a backup Tekken 4 DVD in mine and it works perfectly.

Anyways, glad you got it working.
 
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