Sidewinder
New member
Hi! First time poster – been lurking for a little while. I'm an educational software systems designer/production manager by trade, but hardware is kind of foreign to me. I'm very willing to learn and try things though.
This past Summer I bought my dream machine – a 6 player X-Men machine. It's original as far as I know. Nothing appears to be a new piece inside. I know several people here have one. It's got a few issues, though, and I'm having a hard time debugging the causes of the problem.
Issue 1: On and off hum in the speakers. More often than not, there is a hum or roar in the both speakers. The audio/music tracks do play fine all the time. When you play the game, the hum will sometimes get louder, then softer. Played it last night and the hum completely went away for about 3 minutes.
I've noticed that the sound of the hum changes sometimes depending on what is on screen (different cut scene image, level change). This makes me wonder if it's got something to do with the video and audio cables being to close together? I've also wondered if it's got something to do with a grounding wire being cut/disconnected somewhere.
I took a really bad video of this with my iPhone today so you can hear the sound. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFJRk46loP8
I think that Issue 2-4 are all related to the same problem.
Issue 2: Occassionally the game resets. Sometimes, usually within the first three levels, the image on screen will freeze for a second, then the screen will go to black, and then the image will come back for maybe a half second, then the RAM boot test screen will come up and the system has restarted.
Issue 3: The game resets when you beat it. I've had this happen the last three times I've beat the game. It either resets right as Astroiod M explodes in the cut screen or when the credits come up.
Issue 4: Things seem to reset worse when someone plays Cyclops. My thought is that since his controller is over the mother board, that the jarring is wiggling a wire and causing it to reset. The guy I bought the game from said that sometimes it wouldn't boot up and he just jiggled the wires going from the main cabinet to the motherboard and it would usually work. I'm guessing that it's something loose somewhere, but I don't really know how to debug it. Is it proper to clean connectors? What would I use? Should I use a volt meter? I'm not even sure if I volt meter would help me with this.
Thank you in advance for reading this and for any help.
Christopher
This past Summer I bought my dream machine – a 6 player X-Men machine. It's original as far as I know. Nothing appears to be a new piece inside. I know several people here have one. It's got a few issues, though, and I'm having a hard time debugging the causes of the problem.
Issue 1: On and off hum in the speakers. More often than not, there is a hum or roar in the both speakers. The audio/music tracks do play fine all the time. When you play the game, the hum will sometimes get louder, then softer. Played it last night and the hum completely went away for about 3 minutes.
I've noticed that the sound of the hum changes sometimes depending on what is on screen (different cut scene image, level change). This makes me wonder if it's got something to do with the video and audio cables being to close together? I've also wondered if it's got something to do with a grounding wire being cut/disconnected somewhere.
I took a really bad video of this with my iPhone today so you can hear the sound. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFJRk46loP8
I think that Issue 2-4 are all related to the same problem.
Issue 2: Occassionally the game resets. Sometimes, usually within the first three levels, the image on screen will freeze for a second, then the screen will go to black, and then the image will come back for maybe a half second, then the RAM boot test screen will come up and the system has restarted.
Issue 3: The game resets when you beat it. I've had this happen the last three times I've beat the game. It either resets right as Astroiod M explodes in the cut screen or when the credits come up.
Issue 4: Things seem to reset worse when someone plays Cyclops. My thought is that since his controller is over the mother board, that the jarring is wiggling a wire and causing it to reset. The guy I bought the game from said that sometimes it wouldn't boot up and he just jiggled the wires going from the main cabinet to the motherboard and it would usually work. I'm guessing that it's something loose somewhere, but I don't really know how to debug it. Is it proper to clean connectors? What would I use? Should I use a volt meter? I'm not even sure if I volt meter would help me with this.
Thank you in advance for reading this and for any help.
Christopher


