What the heck is this? (Development board?)

goatdan

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Hey everyone - I'm new here, but not new to arcade collecting. I'm actually one of the guys behind the MGC, so you may have met me there. I recently picked up a couple games with a buddy of mine, and I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on them.

The games were purchased ultimately from someone who bought a house from a programmer at Williams. I don't know how long ago this was, but the two machines are both JAMMA four player cabinets. One of them is a prototype (with the "X" in front of the serial number) and it had a working NBA Jam board in it. My buddy took that one.

The game that I kept isn't a prototype, but it has in it a funky board. This board isn't firing up -- it has chips in it that was "WWF Dev Chip" and it also has a bunch of "2-on-2 Open Ice" chips in it. The board itself appears to be something like those two JAMMA boards, except on the side opposite where the JAMMA plug is, there is a little board that seems to be like an interconnect or something. It also is totally filled with chips where those two boards aren't. Off the interconnect board are two extremely long ribbon cables -- so long that I can take them from the back of the machine out to the control panel. They look like they are from hard drives or something similar, but neither Wrestlemania nor Open Ice used those.

Just in case this board has something funky and / or cool on it, I want to be careful about what I'm doing. If I plug in another JAMMA board, it boots up just fine. With this board in, I get the sound "bong" and no picture. Any ideas on how to proceed with this? I'll try to get a picture up in the not too distant future, but I don't have easy access to do that right now...
 
Hey dan its Jake(Dave's Brother), welcome to KLOV. Do you have a pic of what you are talking about. It sounds like a Mortal kombat type board and it the connector is plugged in backwards it make the BUmG sound with nothing else. I can done this a few times. With MK boards it does not hurt them by plugging it in backwards, I just flipped the cable around and my stuff booted up just fine. A Pic of the board and connector would really help.

-Jake
 
Which connector should I be looking for? I'm going to go mess with it a bit, I'll see if I can find anything...

I'll try to get a picture sooner than later. Even if I solve it, it is interesting enough that I think that people might get a kick out of it.
 
It would be the Ribbon cable Gray with red stripe. it is on the bottom of the main board the left side of the sound board.
This is a Borrowed pic from crazykong

MortalKombat2Upgrade.pcb.jpg
 
Okay, so I just took a really good look at this. There is a hanging tag on it that says "NHL (scribble) BOARD W 32 X8 K SRAM" and the board does have all 32 RAM spots filled. It's also in a four player cab, so that makes more sense than the WWF stuff. It does have WWF chips in U45, U47 and a hand labeled "WWF U35" chip, as well as a "WWF DEVEL" chip in U61.

J26 has an after market jumper added to it. I think that the little interconnect board that was attached to it (just above the large heatsink) is to run an external monitor, as I know that at some point this game had one for a short period. It also makes the ribbon cable length make a lot more sense. I don't get why it seems to have an extra 16 SRAM chips, unless the spare ones just sat there "just in case."

And my board looks more like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120871182433+&item=120871182433

No sound board in it whatsoever. The LED lights appear to work properly, however.
 
interesting i'd love to see some pics of this strange wolf unit :D
 
All right, finally nabbed some pictures...

As you can see with them, it looks like a normal board with a bunch of extra chips on it. Any help in trying to figure out how to get this thing to at least show me *something* on the screen would be helpful :)
 

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Here is a link that may provide some information: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=6774

According to the description "Uses same new-style Midway PCB as Ultimate MK3. They had rid themselves of the bulky sound board in addition to the regular PCB and settled on a large size single board."

Which looks like what you have there. If it is, you may be able to debug it the same as a UMK3 board.

ken
 
Yeah - I've already done a bunch of looking through the WWF Wrestlemania and Open Ice. I also looked through MKIII. The problem is that the diagnostic tests that I could find for those are simple things like, "Don't see the picture? Try plugging the board in!" Based on the fact that the cabinet runs other games immediately without any issue, I'm certain that isn't the issue... but I don't know where to start diagnosing a board like this, and with potentially interesting development stuff on it, I *really* don't want to risk screwing something up.

If I could get *anything* on the screen to come up, I think I could figure out if this has something useful in it or if it is just generic.
 
that right there is FUNKY!!!

definitely not a standard wolf unit, definitely not normal, or common.

That thing is LOADED with chips, and i've never seen a connector where that daughter board is. Very cool find.

here's a pic of a standard wolf unit, notice the "Final Test" sticker over where your daughter board is attached.

attachment.php


I have noticed slight differences in the 12 or so wolf unit boards i have but nothing major like what you have there. mainly a resistor/crystal/diode moved or not in a location that it is on another.
 

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btw to attempt to get it running you can:

Try it in another jamma cab

or

Do the standard midway board inspection/tune-up (clean legs of all chips with fine grit sand paper, test 5v at one or more chips, clean the edge connector with a pencil eraser (keep shavings off board), check for bent over solder side legs touching either a trace on the board or another leg), check under chips for dust bunnies/spider nests, and especially on wolf units make sure the brown socketed chips are fully pushed into the socket.)

Also make sure another jamma board works in the cabinet your working in :D (if you haven't tried already) :D
 
btw to attempt to get it running you can:

Try it in another jamma cab[/qoute]

Check!

Also make sure another jamma board works in the cabinet your working in :D (if you haven't tried already) :D

Check!

mattosborn said:
That board will not run on its own. It was made to hook up to some dev rig (which would populate that RAM with real graphics data!).

Well.... darn. I was worried about that. Any value to it, other than for parts? Any way that I could get it functional?

If not, I still got one super nice, HUO four player cab out of the deal, but then I'll need to find some other cheap four player game to stick in there...
 
Well.... darn. I was worried about that. Any value to it, other than for parts? Any way that I could get it functional?

You could probably burn ROMs for it and get a game running on it, but it would be cheaper to just buy an already populated working board. I would leave it as-is... it has some historical value.
 
You could probably burn ROMs for it and get a game running on it, but it would be cheaper to just buy an already populated working board. I would leave it as-is... it has some historical value.

Might any of the chips on it have info that is of a historical nature? I am all for keeping history, but I'm also not the best person to do that with stuff of this nature. Would anyone else have the parts to make this worthwhile, or is it worth something to the people that might have those parts?

Or, is it worth anything as a parts board for other things?

If someone is interested in it, PM me an offer -- I'd *most* like a trade for a 4 player JAMMA board ;)
 
First thing came to mind was the elusive wavenet umk3 board. But it would need somewhere to plug a phone/data cable to go online. I bet its a development board.
 
First thing came to mind was the elusive wavenet umk3 board. But it would need somewhere to plug a phone/data cable to go online. I bet its a development board.

Yeah, I'd vote development board knowing the limited history that I do. It's from a cabinet that I guarantee was never on location. It has a piece of paper on the side with extensions for Midway programmers too. Kinda cool, but ultimately I bought it to play, not to keep a piece of giant arcade history and not play it. I don't have enough space for that. ;)

The cabinet is a cool front loading four player cabinet where you can open a clasp on the front and slide out the JAMMA board on a piece of wood to quickly replace it. It was apparently the standard "multigame" cabinet that Midway / Williams made, but I've only ever seen a picture of another one with some Konami game in it. Mine is a production model though, my buddies that he got in the same deal is a prototype, and it has almost no differences from mine.

Interesting stuff, but I'd like it to work ;)
 
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