The Punisher CPS1.5 (desuicided) issues

[wigsplitta]

Anyone have a suggestion or two of what might be the cause and resolution to some issues I'm having with The Punisher?
Board has been decuicided, and was working perfectly fine up until a week ago - and needless to say it literally hasn't been touched/moved since the last time it was working perfectly!

Graphics and sound all appear fine game plays smoothly. I've re-seated all boards and checked roms are firmly in. Output from loom is definitely 5v. Extra wire on base of board seems good, and the trace between 30-31 is definitely cut (i can't fully test with a meter though)

During gameplay, the following issues are showing:

Settings screen comes up fine, and everything is good apart from the System Configuration menu that shows "GAME DIFFICULTY" repeatedly, and I'm unable to exit from it.

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Game freezes at the start of the stage one boss Scully
ILLEGAL INST. 0043978

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Lives show up as alphabetic, rather than numerical! Start with t lives, then s then r

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Memory checks are good

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Hardware pics:

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[leonardoliveira]

Are you sure the roms you have were the same as the roms you have in the machine now? (as in same revision)

That game uses three EPROMs for CPU program and you replaced only two. The article at dead battery society mentions that the rom at socket 21 "may be identical to your existing set". But if it's not, you will have problems as the patched ROMs expect the 21 ROM that is on the zip file. Check that up.

[wigsplitta]

Thanks for the reply Leo. Yes, they're definitely the same as before.
I bought it already desuicided, and nothing has been changed by me since i've had it. It's been working perfectly since I got it back in March, and it's not come out of my cab or even been touched in the past couple of months. Sadly, when I turned it on last week, the glitches started.

[Asayuki]

Yet this looks like a typical f***ed up code rom issue.
Would you have the possibility to dump the eproms and check that the SHA1 matches?

[wigsplitta]

Yet this looks like a typical f***ed up code rom issue.
Would you have the possibility to dump the eproms and check that the SHA1 matches?

Thanks Asayuki. I don't have the hardware to dump the roms at the moment, but i'll looking into getting the relevant stuff in the near future and send an update once completed

[leonardoliveira]

The CPS-A and CPS-B chips are more than just graphics chips. They also arbiter the 68000 bus. I've seen both A and B chips go bad and cause weird faults on the board. I recently repaired a faulty CPS1 A board with bad sprites. I went straight to the CPS-A-01 chip and replaced it. Instantly it started to work properly. I didn't even bother with diagnosing.

[Asayuki]

Gosh, the rate at which these friggin customs fail is really scary.

[leonardoliveira]

It isn't so horrible though, because you can kill a CPS2 to fix a CPS1... Each CPS2 has a CPS-A-01 and a CPS-B-21 so, there's a complete CPS1 in every CPS2 A board...

[wigsplitta]

My brother kindly lent me his GQ-3X eeprom programmer so I've had the chance to check a few of the existing eproms.
Interestingly, the 27C020 eprom on the QSound board checksum didn't match, so I was hoping that was the cause. Got a replacement eprom, wrote and the checksum now matches. Sadly it didn't resolve the issue.

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I was also able to check eproms 21, 22 and 23 on the B Board. All checksums matched up nicely. Back to the drawing board

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Time to get another eprom programmer to try and read some of the other roms.

[leonardoliveira]

The 27C020 eprom on the QSOUND board is the program for the Kabuki and since you have sound, it could not be the issue.

[wigsplitta]

Does anyone know what this chip is for, on the B board?
Labelled PS63B

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Couple of other updates:
Completely changed the A motherboard
Changed all 8 mask roms on the B Board
Completely changed the C Board

Sadly, none of these changes resolved the issue.

[geotrig]

hope you get it working mate, maybe im going blind but it looks like the pal chip ? i thought if its bad you just get a black screen

[leonardoliveira]

The PS63B PAL is there to adjust the memory ranges for the graphics data.

[wigsplitta]

Thanks chaps. Someone on AP mentioned the graphics would be screwed if removed.
I removed it and the the graphics were indeed completely corrupted. Sadly the issues were still showing
I think my next course of action will be to replace the B Board. If that doesn't resolve them, just about the only thing left to change is the Q-Sound board itself...

[leonardoliveira]

That PAL is actually unique per game. PS meaning the game designation and 63B the board type it's meant for. not 100% sure on the second part of it but definitely the PAL is per game basis and PS means it's for The Punisher.

[wigsplitta]

I haven't got round to replacing the B-board, but I have managed to produce a similar issue in mame whilst playing about with the ARpiCADE
Copying and re-copying into different folders meant the zip files no longer check ok.

Time to re-check/burn some roms...

[geotrig]

Oh fingers crossed

[wigsplitta]

Glad to say it's finally sorted
I can only think that the data saved from the configuration (lives, difficulty...) onto the eprom (not sure which) somehow got corrupted.
I loaded the USA version onto the eproms in the hope that the config would be slightly different, ignore the corrupted info and reset to default.
The USA version worked nicely, and loading the Japanese version back on also worked. Played through fully, and no more issues.
Thanks for the suggestions y'all

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[bloodhokuto]

Glad to say it's finally sorted
I can only think that the data saved from the configuration (lives, difficulty...) onto the eprom (not sure which) somehow got corrupted.
I loaded the USA version onto the eproms in the hope that the config would be slightly different, ignore the corrupted info and reset to default.
The USA version worked nicely, and loading the Japanese version back on also worked. Played through fully, and no more issues.
Thanks for the suggestions y'all

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Great News ... However, I think that I will have to test this for myself - just to be sure.

[geotrig]

excellent stuff glad iy got sorted !!