Track and Field Has No Characters

friedfish

Active member
Joined
Apr 10, 2008
Messages
237
Reaction score
27
Location
Newark, California
I bought two track and field boards a while back on another forum, but I cannot get either board to work correctly. One board has no characters. This is a two board stack with two smaller boards in between the two board stack. On these smaller in between boards, each board has a socket but no chip. Does anyone know if these sockets should have chips and if this is causing no characters? If this not causing the character issue, does anyone have any ideas what is?
 
... On these smaller in between boards, each board has a socket but no chip. Does anyone know if these sockets should have chips and if this is causing no characters? If this not causing the character issue, does anyone have any ideas what is?

The smaller boards are not supposed to have chips in the sockets. The smaller boards are the equivalent of a Konami custom chip that would otherwise attach in the slot that the smaller board is soldered to.

For the graphics -- the problem is probably in a ROM on the video board (bottom larger board). I don't know the exact ROM off hand, but you can check the MAME drivers code for this and see what chips have what data in them. Then, I would reseat the ROM chips that contain the character data to start.

Beyond that, you are going to have to do some debugging with an Oscilloscope to get a look at the signals coming / going to these ROM chips and the surrounding logic ICs to determine the problem.
 
Here are the ROMS to begin with:

http://tech.quarterarcade.com/tech/VM.aspx?g=3165&set=trackfld

Then, I'd focus on the GFX1 and GFX2 ROMs on the boards. If your board has labelled ROMS, those should be:

d06 @ location C11
d07 @ location C12
d08 @ location C13
d09 @ location C14
e10 @ location H14
e11 @ location H15
e12 @ location H16

Reseat the ROMs with those labels first to see if it makes a difference.
 
Thanks for the response. I reseated all of the chips over the weekend with no improvement but I will redo the chips you listed. If this doesn't work, I may just take the chips from the other board that I have and replace them on the board with the missing characters.
 
That board can act goofy if the voltage is too low. Check your +5. If it's low adjust it up - do not go over +5.3.
 
There are several versions of Track & Field ROMs. I'm not sure that mixing ROMs will work, but worth a try. Unfortunately, some of the ROMs are PROMs and are soldered to the board, so you can't swap them. Just be sure to remember which ROMs went with which board.

If the game is booting up and doing demo, then the ROMs may not be the solution. Typically if you have a bad ROM, then the game won't load, or the game will hang during boot. Although, it is possible for a ROM to lose connection after it heats up a bit. I was hoping that the jostling of the board during ROM swap might shake something loose.

This is starting to sound more like a logic problem unfortunately, which is going to require some more focussed debugging.
 
Last resort before logic probing

The battery on TnF when low can cause some character glitches. Generally this is on the high score table but I have seen it affect other parts of the board. I personally would do two things:

1. Measure the voltage coming from the coin cell battery - if it's dead or low then replace.

2. Set the high-score wipe DIP after checking step 1 above.

If you've still not got characters after that then it's going to require a logic probe and preferably another working board so you can swap customs back and forth to try to isolate the problem.

cheers
tim

--
http://www.ukvac.com
 
I already turned the voltage up on the power supply and it measures about 5.15V at the power supply. The games boots and demos fine. I left it on for about 15 minutes without any problems except for the missing characters. Do you thing I should adjust the 5V higher?

As for the battery, I removed the battery from the board and have yet to replace it. There was some corrosion, but I do not see any damage to the board as a result of the battery. I neutralized the corrosion and the board shows no signs of damage. I set the dip switches to rest the memory upon start up and the high scores show fine.

It sounds like it might be easier to try and get my other board working. This board works fine, but it doesn't show all colors. One time I booted it up, and the reds were missing. I disconnected and reconnected the board and the jamma adaptor to the harness and rebooted it but this time the greens were missing. I thought it was a connection issue with the harness initially, but since the missing color changed, I am not so sure anymore.
 
Do you thing I should adjust the 5V higher?

No. Your've voltage seems fine if you measured it at the board's edge connector (and not at the power supply).

Bad colors could be a bad crimp / solder on the wires going from your harness to your monitor. Are you using a connector, or just connecting wires with alligator clips between the main harness and the display?

Wish I could help more...
 
Back
Top Bottom