I received a Final Fight board today with a weird problem. On half of the screen is displayed. The top half of the screen is displayed on the lower half of the monitor. From what I can see, the graphics are perfect with the only weirdness being on the continue screen. The portraits of each character has screwed up colour.
I kind of knew what the issue was before I received it and tried to find something about this issue on google. I came up with zilch. I wanted to see it first hand before I made a post so I knew exactly what the issue looked like.
The board is 100% original with all authentic CAPCOM ROMS amazingly enough. It is a CPS-DASH board though which I suppose may or may not be original. I swapped the B+C boards with a Carrier Airwing I got along with FF, but it was the same. Sadly the CA A board has graphic corruption which the seller did not see when tested before sending it to me. I hope it is something simple I can fix
It may be one of the graphics ROMs chips going bad. If the graphics fault was consistent on all screens it could be a bad PPU chip but what you're mentioning smells like just one of the ROMs failed. CPS1 reads graphics from the chips in pairs (32bit) so each bank has two of the (the larger chips organized in two rows) ROMs active at a time. Check them against the matching MAME set with a chip programmer. (they read as 27C4096 EPROM even if they're MASKROM type)
Thanks for the advice! If it is a MASKROM, can they be burnt? I was under the impression that they cannot be burnt. Is that correct? That is one of the things I like about the Jp boards. All ROMs. I also have a slightly faulty Jp FF board coming soon which was included free with a Blast City along with a new CPS 14-in-1 multiboard.
So one CAN replace a MASKROM with a copy? I just have to wait fir my burner to arrive. What ROM chips should I stock up on? I have a Captain Commando and Wonder 3 on tge way which have been de-suicided but looks like the unencrypted ROMs have not been burnt as they seem to have all original CAPCOM stickered ROMs. I am hoping the de-suicide process was done correctly and they just need the ROMs added. CC has scrambled graphics but does boot. Wonder 3 I am not sure about.
Yep, there are jumpers / solder points near the roms that switch from one type to another I understand. I'm pretty sure that's how my Daimakaimura conversion was done.
WTD: Rolling Thunder pcb, ANY Dino King / Love & Berry / MushiKing spare parts!!
Good to know! Thanks for the tip. I am a complete noob with this stuff. I've repaired/modded loads of MEGA-CD, MEGA DRIVE, SFC, Saturn and PC Engine systems but this my first foray into the world of arcade PCBs. So everything is a learning experience, it is great to have so many experts on hand
I was comparing my Final Fight board to one posted on this site in the for sale section. I noticed that the resistors on the B board are all different. On my board, all of them are set to the far left and far right where as the ones on the working board shown on here, are all diagonal. Could these cause a problem like I have described?
I figured they were the jumpers. They are original MASKROMS on the board so I guess they are fine. I tried the board again tonight after giving it a good clean and now the title screen is discoloured. It has a small amount of colour that sort of moves up the logo. It seems to pass the ROM/RAM test from what I can make out.
Try disconnecting and reconnecting the C board (the board with the PPU B chip) several times to try to "shake out" any rust from the pins. Like if you were trying to fit a NES cartridge on a old NES deck. Just DON'T BLOW ON IT.
Going by memory the jumpers on CPS1 B boards are only going to affect the ROM types used for program and sound, not graphics. For replacing MASK ROM graphics you're generally going to need 27C4096 for Japan boards or 27C4000G for export. You can read the MASK ROMs out as these type to see if any are bad.
