Ultracade game won't boot up

br549autosales

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Ultracade game won't boot up (FIXED)!

Working on an Ultracade and when I turn the game on it makes a single tone (sounds like the sound a Mortal Kombat 4 makes when you first power it up and it is going through all the checks) then repeats the same sound every 45 seconds or so. It will not come up on the monitor (just a white screen) nor can you hear it play blind. I hear the computer running and the cooling fans are running. I have checked and made sure all cable connections are secure. Anything else I can check?

Thanks
 
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Which computer is in the game?

Tower looking PC (actually a Graphite PC)?

Mini slim black case PC?

Open board on a piece of metal?
 
I would not consider it to be a tower type. It actually mounts inside of a black cage and sits inside the machine horizontally. I will get a picture of it and post it later on today.

Thanks
 
Sounds like the Graphite PC. Those things are pretty solid. The only things I've had go bad on them is Hard drive, power supply and cooling fans. I've never had a Graphite with a bad mobo.
 
Make sure the tower is powering up.

Check the battery on the PC motherboard...
 
testing these is not that hard.
I will share some of my pointers and hope they help you out.
First is there a Dongle connected to the Parallel port? (This is for monitor type)
One "should" say CGA another will say EGA and if there is none its VGA

Remove the dongle (if there is one) remove the Video cable from the Motherboard.
Connect regular PC monitor to the motherboard, turn on machine You should see the PC doing its pre-boot post ect...
If not then its time to remove the PC from the game and bench it.
Take cover off the PC, if there is any, unhook the IDE lines to the HHD CD drive and the 34 pin to the Floppy, unhook power lines to those 3 parts, HHD CD And Floppy try to boot again. see if the PC will post now.
If not, there are a few things to try, but you have to remove things to get "down that far" remove the RAM, replace it with some other test again, then Power Supply, its a Standard ATX so just unhook the ATX plug from board and connect another one try it again. Hope for a post screen.
That is the basics.
And as for the person that has never had a Graphite PC board fail, I have several dead ones here that disagree with you. lol.
 
And as for the person that has never had a Graphite PC board fail, I have several dead ones here that disagree with you. lol.

Could very well be that I've never experienced a Graphite failure because I only have a few left (mostly in VR2 cabs). Guess I've been lucky.

Good news is that these are easy to troubleshoot.
 
Single beep like that can be bad RAM. Try reseating and or replacing the RAM. I've also had the Graphite motherboards fail before, but they're not hard to find on ebay used. Graphites also often have the power supply (unique to this unit) fail. You can sub another computer PC power supply by using an extension cable. Whatever you do don't plug the HD into any other computer or into anything other than the primary port on the Motherboard, it will erase the games!
 
It's actually 2 beeps after it powers up and you hear everything running then it repeats every 30 seconds. Could it be something as simple as the coin battery on the motherboard being too low of a voltage and not allowing it to power up all the way?
 
What? have you ever had that happen to you? Where the games got erased? I have swapped drives between systems many times, hooked it to my PC to do winhex reads ect and never ever ever had any games vanish.

The US security is simple it uses the Hard Drive Serial Number that the games were installed to to do a check that the files were not copied to another drive, thats it. And if the "serials" dont match THEN the games will not show up.
If you know you was around the internals of a HHD its not that hard to reimage that to another drive and spoof the serial numbers.
No mystery or magic.
 
It's actually 2 beeps after it powers up and you hear everything running then it repeats every 30 seconds. Could it be something as simple as the coin battery on the motherboard being too low of a voltage and not allowing it to power up all the way?

Thats where it would be nice to actually be able to see (Via VGA monitor) what its doing. If its posting or not.

Yes the Battery could cause some issues, but not to boot at all..... IDK about that. They usually post to a screen and say cmos batt low ect...

Go here.
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/cs-010249.htm
That will give you an Idea what to look for.
From what you said it looks like a video problem.
This could be faulty ram because the video in onboard and uses system ram.
 
Yes. Depending on the revision of the Joshua OS, plugging the HD into the secondary IDE connector will cause the games to be erased. Same thing can happen when plugging an Arcade Legends drive into anything other than the original motherboard. Of course there are ways around this as you described, but avoiding it in the first place is easier.
 
I have every version JOS from 2.X to 3.09 I have swapped drives between systems 50+ times installed games on one system removed the drive, installed into another installed more games ect... Swapped back still everything is fine. I just have never had that happen.
I have even sold a couple of the "extra" drives I had and the new owners have never called to say the games vanished.

What version did this happen to you with? I need to do some investigating.
You Sir have me curious.
 
I'm surprised it hasn't happened to you then. I've also repaired and put together many of these systems, and I've seen it happen a few times. It's an intentional copy protection measure. It can make replacing the motherboard on an AL a pain, but doesn't cause too much trouble on an Ultracade if you're careful.
 
like maxstang said if you plug an ultracade drive into any port that is not the primary ide port it will auto erase the games on the drive. you can swap ultracade drives as much as you want as long as they are plugged into the primary ide port. the games "bond" to the hard drive they are installed onto via serial number of drive. Arcade legends units bond to the hard drive AND motherboard serial numbers and will auto erase if hard drive is plugged into any other motherboard. I have accidentally erased both types myself....ultracade by mistakenly plugging hard drive into secondary ide port and arcade legends by trying to test drive on an ultracade style motherboard. My experience of bad ultracades are ususally cmos battery then power supply then bad ram then bad bad processor. I have rarely seen a bad hard drive. cooling fans are critical in these systems and keeping them clean. I always add one to the cabinet to suck in cool air and on graphites I add one to the area above pci slots to blow out. sometimes after replacing the battery you will have to trick the computer to boot up by using a screwdriver to make contact on the pins on the motherboard that would normally a button attached as a power on button.
 
OK guys. I tried this tonight, just to see. I have a HHD with games on it, MCID is what it should be.
I removed it and just plugged it into the CD cable. So its now secondary IDE master, Still have all games.

Then I plug into IDE1 Secondary I get JoS kern booting and thats it. never goes past that.
K, Power off connect to IDE master, games still there and work fine.

So, what am I doing that you cant?
Matter of fact I will take a video of the swaps and post it someplace just to prove it.
 
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SFBayBeef- Just replaced my CMOS, still nothing, could you explain with a little more detail about your screwdriver trick. (Sorry for kinda poaching your thread but it seems like we might be having similar issues)

PS anyone ever heard of putting the CMOS battery in backwards on one of these 10xx-in-1s and reseting the machine to factory presets?
 
SFBayBeef- Just replaced my CMOS, still nothing, could you explain with a little more detail about your screwdriver trick. (Sorry for kinda poaching your thread but it seems like we might be having similar issues)

There are a set of pins on the motherboard (usually called front panel buttons/connections). After you replace the battery the CMOS usually resets to factory settings. One of those being the auto on feature. You need to find the two pins that are marked "power button" or "on/off" and short them with a small screwdriver. You will also need to go into the BIOS and reset that power option.
 
Here's what I'm looking at, I assume this is what you're talking about... Wondering which 2 to bridge?
 

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