why does my mk2 keep resetting?

therealmogwai

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i have a dedicated mk2 cabinet that constantly resets itself. its states the revision...sometimes i can even select characters and play a round. but it eventually resets.

any clue?
this is not the first time i've had this issue. i reseated the socketed chips previously and it had seemed to fix the issue. now its doing it again.

please someone help.

thnx
 
when I start messing with issues like yours, I like to test voltages (coming from the power supply and more importantly, on the board)

for example I was flipping out yesterday because my recently repaired tapper boardset had a graphics issue. I went in, and the power supply measure +5.02 at the power supply. I measured the leg of a rom chip on the top board and it was 4.84.

as soon as I got that leg measuring up to 5.0 it went away.
 
your power supply will have a +5 adjustment on it. this is either a knob, or it's a small phillips head, they both do the same thing. go read the other MK thread, I already outlined how I adjust voltages.

I ran across too many shitty power supplies over the years where you go to adjust them and they just shut off cause the +5 pot's covered in shit. lol

NEVER try adjusting the +5 without a digital multimeter.
 
When pcb's get low voltage, they start doing crazy things. It's probably low like they suggested, works sometimes acts up other times. You need to check and make sure you're getting a good 5v to the chips.
 
The power supply in my mk cab is a pc power supply hacked to shit. I can't adjust voltages (as far as i know). The entire setup is so hacked together, I'm afraid of even changing the power supply.
 
The power supply in my mk cab is a pc power supply hacked to shit. I can't adjust voltages (as far as i know). The entire setup is so hacked together, I'm afraid of even changing the power supply.

lol

don't worry, just trace back from the JAMMA edge. your +5 should be red, +12 should be yellow, grounds are black, forget what -5 is... green? you get the idea. just chop em off, strip, add some fork terminals, slide into the new PSU and be done with it.

or you could go fancy like I've been and crimp together some molex plugs so you can just do an easy plug-in swap later. ;)
 
i installed my MK boardset into a JAMMA converted cab and didn't realize that 1) MK is one of those rare-ish games that requires -5v and 2) the PS in that cabinet didn't supply -5v.

the results sound a lot like your issues: it would play, sometimes for long periods of time just fine then suddenly reset, sometimes once and other times over and over. once i replaced the PS with one that output -5v it worked great.

definitely check the voltages.
 
i installed my MK boardset into a JAMMA converted cab and didn't realize that 1) MK is one of those rare-ish games that requires -5v and 2) the PS in that cabinet didn't supply -5v.

the results sound a lot like your issues: it would play, sometimes for long periods of time just fine then suddenly reset, sometimes once and other times over and over. once i replaced the PS with one that output -5v it worked great.

definitely check the voltages.

ever heard what one of the DCS games sound like without -5??? omg....

honestly the lack of -5 shouldn't cause the resets. you probably just had a bad power supply.

if MK2 didn't have -5, you'd know it. :)

out of ALL the games that I own, I never had as much trouble with any of them as I had with MK2. largely, my MK2 has been either sitting in a box in bubble wrap, or it was mounted to a shelf for a little while (was for a Multi-Kombat) and the game barely has gotten used since about March 2009.

I popped it back into a cab just to see it back around September, or maybe it was October, I don't even know... and the game was pulling its usual nonsense with the "CUSTOM CHIP BAD" or with the no sound (it kept playing the baby crying sound over and over) and the latest and greatest development was the graphic output on it turned into this blocky mess. the game would often work fine and then suddenly would freeze up and reset and then the sound board wouldn't communicate with the main board properly.

after reseating everything, still no dice. I ran across what appeared to be some components that were a little too long that may have been rubbing against other traces... gave those the snip snip.

I know I've told a few people this now, but the problem with my boardset was actually because the game roms (as opposed to the graphic or sound roms ... I'm talking the actual game code) had corrosion on the chip legs. it was a finding that I'd only recently discovered this past summer when my DK would randomly freeze up. I sanded the corrosion off and well, no more problems with my MK2.

I can't remember if all the chips with labels on them had windows or not, if you really want to I can dig up which chips you should pull and inspect. you ideally should do all of them, cause I've found other chips with the dark corrosion (sometimes the green oxidation) on the legs too.

it's two-fold this situation, it can be caused by the power supply, corrosion on the roms, sometimes you need to press down on all the roms too. the memory expansion board can be easily removed by popping it out of the pushpin opposite the interconnect headers and just rocking the board in an up and down motion while pulling up at the same time (you should be able to remove this without bending any pins at all). throw some bubble wrap underneath the board you're working on (to prevent the board from flexing) and take your thumbs and press down on every rom. I'd personally still pull them all (using caution, obviously) and inspect the legs. if they're shiny, you can just reinstall them.

if your voltages are good and you did all your maintenance with the roms, you should have it licked. :)
 
I have a few spare MKII boards simply for the fact that this game is buggy and not friendly.

Some issues I have seen. When running at 4.9volts on the 5volt line it would reset. Check the back side of your board and make sure none of the solder points are touching (I've seen that). Reset all of your ROMS, maybe even clean them. Reset the daughter card (if you can find a single board verison of the game much more stable IMO).

Those are just some issues I have personally seen. The big thing is that board especially the dual board is pain to deal with. And if your 5volt line is off it doesn't like it. Also if it is a computer supply it is possible that even if it is supplying enough voltage it might not be as far as amperage goes.
 
I have a few spare MKII boards simply for the fact that this game is buggy and not friendly.

Some issues I have seen. When running at 4.9volts on the 5volt line it would reset. Check the back side of your board and make sure none of the solder points are touching (I've seen that). Reset all of your ROMS, maybe even clean them. Reset the daughter card (if you can find a single board verison of the game much more stable IMO).

Those are just some issues I have personally seen. The big thing is that board especially the dual board is pain to deal with. And if your 5volt line is off it doesn't like it. Also if it is a computer supply it is possible that even if it is supplying enough voltage it might not be as far as amperage goes.

my bucket list: acquire single board MK2; acquire T-unit MK1. LOL

I never had any issues with the memory expansion, HOWEVER, what's very strange is the amount of black artifacts on like the ninjas in-between animation frames. almost like I have a rom or two that's not making a good connection. I could even have a ram problem with the damn thing too, but I at least got it to work again.

back in 1994 when my grandparents bought the game during its initial run, it actually wound up doing the same thing my board was doing before. I think the game falls victim to "chip creep" .. what's a bitch is they sent it out to get fixed. if only my 11 year old counterpart knew how to do this stuff then..
 
my bucket list: acquire single board MK2; acquire T-unit MK1. LOL

..

Have both in my Multi...I got very very lucky in getting both of them.

The MKII I got from channelmaniac here for just $30.00, so most awesome there. Wasn't expecting it to be a single board MKII turns out it was!

And the T-Unit MK1, my first game I ever bought was MK had it in my apartment I didn't know shit about games then. The monitor was bad the joysticks were bad I was going to work on it but never got around to it, well I had no space after moving from that place, and in taking it outside it was dropped, and well if I knew then what I know now I could have fixed it but...

a friend scavenged what he could out of it hoping to someday build me a cab for it. 8 years later he mentions he still has the boards and wiring...I go and grab it from him one day after spending 3 months looking for a T-Unit board, and lo and behold bam I look at the board and the ROM all say Mortal Kombat Rev5.0 T-Unit

It was like early Christmas! :)
 
yay ...new problems!!

so now when my MK2 is on there is nothing displayed but a line across the center of the screen. The game load and the sound is working but the only thing displayed is a horizontal line across the screen.

any1? any1?

why oh why must this machine give me such troubles?!
 
yay ...new problems!!

so now when my MK2 is on there is nothing displayed but a line across the center of the screen. The game load and the sound is working but the only thing displayed is a horizontal line across the screen.

any1? any1?

why oh why must this machine give me such troubles?!

vertical collapse. it's a monitor thing. don't run it like that, it can get burned in very easily.

now you need to get the soldering iron out. :p
 
If you just acquired the machine, I would change the battery on the board.
 
MK II is an interesting board to work on. If you have RAMs/ROMs that pass their self tests yet you have some graphical corruption or random lockups you should reflow the solder on the custom DMA controller chip that is in the middle of the board.

RJ
 
my bucket list: acquire single board MK2; acquire T-unit MK1. LOL

I never had any issues with the memory expansion, HOWEVER, what's very strange is the amount of black artifacts on like the ninjas in-between animation frames. almost like I have a rom or two that's not making a good connection. I could even have a ram problem with the damn thing too, but I at least got it to work again.

back in 1994 when my grandparents bought the game during its initial run, it actually wound up doing the same thing my board was doing before. I think the game falls victim to "chip creep" .. what's a bitch is they sent it out to get fixed. if only my 11 year old counterpart knew how to do this stuff then..
That's pretty cool that your grandparents bought the game back in the day. Did they have a restaurant or bar they operated games in? Was it a dedicated cab purchased right from Midway? If I had family that owned games as a kid, I would have begged them to keep it and give it to me someday. :D
 
That's pretty cool that your grandparents bought the game back in the day. Did they have a restaurant or bar they operated games in? Was it a dedicated cab purchased right from Midway? If I had family that owned games as a kid, I would have begged them to keep it and give it to me someday. :D

my family's been operating in amusements for quite awhile. it started as a golf range, then as my grandpa bought more of the surrounding land, they expanded to mini golf, batting cages, go-karts, etc. they operated a supermarket that had this like cavernous room (it's where our kitchen is now) that had gobs of video games in it. in the actual store they had a cockpit Star Wars and a cockpit Sinistar. THEN back in the go-kart garage area, there was an adjoining garage that had shitloads of video games in it too. clearly in the early-mid 80s this was where the money was at.

the supermarket became a pool hall/arcade, and the garage arcade was shut down. all this stuff is on the same plot of land, it's just very spread out (family owns 27 acres going out into the woods).

the golf building was where all the new games would crop up annually between like 1991-1994. the games at this point were getting to be very expensive, we weren't like airlifting the damn things in every couple months like we had.

we got Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition in March 1992, was in a red Z-cab, and looking at the release timeline, that game must have been BRAND NEW. March 1993 we got NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat (a 5.0 T-unit kit in a Midway universal cab, hello bucket list!) and then in 1994 we didn't buy a dedicated Mortal Kombat 2, but instead converted our old NARC to it. it still made gobs of money even with that dumbass little 19" monitor.

that's pretty much where the road ended, 1997 they retired. the tenants pulled out after 10 years, so we wound up reopening for ourselves. they owned hundreds of video games, and I was around for a lot of it. that's why I can throw out little odd stories about games we had, and I'm not shitting you all.

as far as keeping stuff, I selected the SF2 CE. had it for about 2 weeks, and then it proved to be a major distraction in my dad's office so they wound up selling it too.

granted I didn't know how to fix the shit for myself back then either. lol

I really wanna see if I can dig up old pictures, I'll have to ask my mom sometime.
 
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