Time Killers NO PICTURE

Ironmike20

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I have 2 Time killers boards and both have sound, but no picture. Also, the green light Keeps flashing on both boards. I tried playing with the dip switch settings, on of the switches makes it display a scrambled screen when its on, and just a black screen when it's off. One of these boards was in working condition, then one day I had no picture. I figured with 2 boards, I should be able to make one fully working board. You guys seem to be a lot smarter at this than me, so I hope someone may be able to help.
 
Which switch is it that's causing the scrambled screen? If you don't have a manual handy I can crosscheck it with mine when I get home in a couple hours to see what that dip is. Might be the pos/neg sync switch. Any way to drop a different (other than the 2 tk's) board in there to see if it isn't just a monitor issue? Pretty sure the green light flashing is a good thing, though again i'll have to double check. The difference between flashing and solid I think means there's enough voltage going to it or there isn't. I know my bloodstorm is a bit hungry (needs at least 5.5), I haven't messed w/ the tk boards in that cab too much yet.
 
The monitor works, I tried like 5 other boards on it last night. I have the time killers manual, there are 4 dip switch buttons. I changed the ones that had to do with screen display, but I ether get a black screen or a completely scrambled one with the music playing in the background.
 
Does the audio work only when it's the scrambled screen and not the black screen, or in both cases? A picture or video might be helpful in trying to figure out what's going on when the video's coming up but it's doing the scrambled thing. From the sounds of it could be a rom's gone wonky, could be a bunch of other things, picture or video would narrow it down a bit.
 
I think there is sound in both cases. It's just weird that both boards are doing the same thing. I know for a fact that one of the boards did have video at one point, but that was probably like 7 years ago and it was on a Mortal Kombat 2 Cabinet that I no longer have. I'm using a wrestlefest cabinet now. I'll get you a screen shot tomorrow. Thank you for your help.
 
If there's sound in both cases and it'll coin up reguardless of what the picture's doing, it should (in theory) eliminate an overall board issue and isolate it to something video specific. Granted, I'm not a board repair guy, but hopefully we can get close enough to the source of the issue to either identify the cause or get it close enough that someone who can identify the source more easily will be able to jump in. I might be asking simple/obvious questions, I'm not sure how much you've poked with it so far other than what you've said in the thread, I'm just going through a process of elimination to try to isolate some variables.
 
I tried to take a picture, but it kept coming out poorly because there wasn't much of an image on the screen. The screen is mostly black and there is like 4 of 5 fuzzy white and red lines that go across the screen. When I hit the dip switch it just makes the screen solid black. The music played in the background on both settings. One side of the board has a flashing green light & the other side has a flashing orange light. Both Boards do the exact same thing and they are both slightly different versions. The whole thing just seems really odd.
 
Well the flashing lights are a good thing, they're indicators of power getting to the board/the program running, so it's prob not a voltage issue. Not sure what monitor you have and whether it's multisync or how it's connected, if it's not a multisync double check to see if it's pos or neg sync and change that 1st dip switch accordingly. Could be a bad video rom (they're on the "+5 plane" of the two smaller boards) or that there's an IC that got wonked in storage, you probably have but check for bent pins/not fully sockerted ICs/corrosioin on the pins/etc if you haven't. Might want to disconnect/reconnect the video board as well, checking that rectangular grey connector on the inside to see if there's anything odd there. Probably a whole lot of me suggesting stuff you've already done, but this is the same steps I was going through tonight troubleshooting my TK board that's having issues. Speaking of, is there a chip in socket U27 on your boards? I have to pull my other boards out of storage and check them, but I thought it was a bit odd that there wasn't a chip there, as they didn't seem to engineer with unused sockets like the SFII boards did.

It's also possible (though unlikely) that they're working oddly with your monitor for whatever reason, I'm guessing you already dinked with the hold knob on the monitor for the direction the lines are going (horiz or vert). I put a Soul Edge into a cabinet I had SFIICE Rainbow working great in and it apparently wasn't quite dialed enough in v-hold for that soul edge board. There's a range where the hold will work fine, you may be on the edges of it so that it's going wonky (especially if both boards are doing the same thing), might be worth poking at if you haven't tried it. Also probably an obvious one, but might want to double check whatever cab you're trying them in that the -5 is getting to the board (check at the harness), as TK does need -5, which some boards don't.

That's what my brain's coming up with for the moment, let me know if you've already done the stuff I suggested and I'll give it some more thought.
 
I'll try to play around with the boards and see what I come up with. I've tried swapping parts of the boards since it's in 3 sections, but I keep getting the same result. I don't it's an issue with my monitor, but I do wish I still had access to my old cabinet just to try it out.

I have tried a lot of the stuff you mentioned, but you seem a lot more knowledgeable about these things than I am, so I really appreciate your help. If time killers wasn't such a great game, I wouldn't be going through all this trouble to fix it. Both of my boards are missing the u27 chip, which I always thought was odd as well. I hope you have better luck with your board than I'm having now. I'll let you know how I make out. Thank you
 
Pulled the other two boards out of storage and man do I have a fun family of weird. The board that I was trying, which is the original board I bought over 10 years ago and had a friend do a battery conversion on it, comes up with multicolored snow. Of the two from storage, one comes up and plays great, except the audio seems like it's scratchy/overdriven. The last board comes up, sounds great, looks great, but the image on the screen is upside down, even if I flip dip #2. I may try some mix and match to see if I can get one good working board (probably swap out the graphics board/12 volt plane on the one with upside down video to see if that'll do it, as it works great otherwise), but at least this gives me a nice range of issues to experiment with and hopefully find a fix for your situation.

One thing I did just for giggles was throw the pos/neg sync dip switch on the one with the upside-down video, and the screen changed over to a fast, vertically scrolling signal which had a lot of red & white in it. When I had the dip in a position to match the sync on the monitor, it was just black for about 30 seconds until my monitor warmed up/the signal fully came in/whatever and then it came up. From the sounds of it, you've had it on the black screeen for a bit to check if it plays blind, but may want to give it a couple minutes. If the startup noise "TIME KILLEEERRRRSSS" keeps playing over and over, even though the green LED may be blinking it's not getting quite enough voltage. The one thing I noticed with all of the boards is that they seem thirsty as hell. I stepped the voltage up slowly until they were working, and I had to have the voltage up near 5.5v as measured at the harness w/o it plugged in for the board to be working. When I measured the voltage off the contacts where the harness connects to the board with the board connected, the read voltage was down near 5.2 or 5.3, when the board was unplugged it was showing a bit above 5.6. Board hasn't been exploding at that voltage, though, so I don't think it's above what it can take.

And yeah, the other two boards have nothing at U27, so that's just a random empty IC normally on the board, goo to have it confirmed, thanks for checking. :)

Let me know which of the list of things I suggested you've tried and any changes that happened, if any did so we can continue isolating the issue. Most of what I know, and the stock pcb troubleshooting steps comes from reading these forums the last couple years, part of why I love this place. :)
 
I have a feeling you might be right, it could be just a power issue, or have something to do with that -5V. There doesn't appear to be any damage to either board that I can see. I'm going to pickup a new easy disconnect jamma harness and start playing around with it.

I'm sorry your having problems with all 3 of your boards. I guess that doesn't say much about the build quality on these things. I hope the combination of the 3 can make a working one. Again , thank you for you help, I'll keep you posted on my progress.
 
Yeah if both boards are exhibiting the exact same symptoms, odds are pretty good that it's something else in the cab going on, something specific to TK that wasn't coming up for some reason with the other boards. Making sure that the -5 lead is there and working is the first thing that pops to mind as it's possible the other boards you were testing didn't need -5, there's a bunch out there that don't need it.

As far as my boards go, it's disappointing that not all of them work properly, but the issues seem separate enough that I should be able to get one up and running right. I'm going to check the pads where the volume pot connects on the board with the wonky sound, if it's as simple as a bad solder joint or a short somewhere that's an easy enough fix, if not and the 12v daughters from the other two don't get that one running right, I can probably just replace the volume pot with the one from the colored snow board, which I'm pretty much chalking up to "hosed" at this point. :) I'm actually going to be taking my dad up on an offer he made years ago to scratch build me a cab for time killers since I found a control panel in storage that's in near perfect shape. It doesn't fit the cab I had intended it for (it's a converted Asteroids panel), and his offer's still good, but I have to design the cab and hopefully get the plans into autocad, which for a circuit design engineer of 30+ years would probably beat the hell out of the model he suggested I build so he has a solid reference. Needless to say that's going to take some time, so getting a TK board up and running isn't a major hurry. :) Pictures of the cp here if you're curious:

http://www.coinop.clubseal.net/timekillers/

Yes, I'm going to scan the art when I have the time, as nobody has TK control panel scans as far as I'm aware and I doubt I'm ever going to find NOS stuff. I've since chopped the wiring harness off it (there's a special place in hell for OPs that soldered spade connections) but I'm leaving the rest 'till I have the time to break it down.
 
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