GTI Club: Supermini Festa

[matt]

Here's a video from today's session. A personal best for all involved.

[Scoutp]

i know this was an old thread now but i was looking for some information if anyone had any to spare?

Recently my dad bought a GTI Club arcade machine in non-working order.

We've restored other machines before, but this one is throwing us for a loop.

These machines are Konami taito based PC Hardware, running a core 2 duo, an ATI X1600Pro and 2x 1GB sticks. Fairly off the shelf hardware.

The issue is the TEM100-01B motherboard, i can find no documentation, nothing on this board, and im pretty sure its this board being dead thats the issue.

(Small context, i've been a PC builder and repairer for about 10 years now, so this is my part of the project. My dad has been an engineer for over 30 years, so the cab and IO is his part)

The PC's both of them at the moment have the same issue:

Power on

singular beep

reboot

I've tried plugging all of the IO boards in, i've tried a new power supply, 1 stick of ram, a full deep clean with isopropyl alcohol.

Both of these PC's have the same issue, i know its doubtful that both motherboards are dead, but both of them have the same issue.

The Northbridge, Southbridge, CPU, and GPU have all been cleaned and re-pasted but still nothing.

Any ideas or documentation or has anyone dealt with this before?

Thanks in advance

[nem]

It's a PC. You need to get it booting into BIOS before delving further.

Try a different GPU.

How do the capacitors on the motherboard look like?

[aerobert]

Replace the battery on the boards.

[Scoutp]

It's a PC. You need to get it booting into BIOS before delving further.

Try a different GPU.

How do the capacitors on the motherboard look like?

Managed to get into the bios once, now it won't have it.

The other board just instantly shuts off, from what I can tell from the cooler, it's been overtightened too many times and has likely cracked traces. So that's DOA.

The other board (the one with the singular beep) has been deteriorating.

2 caps are showing signs of death, but looking at the board layout and some multi meter poking they're not important.

Looking through the raw game files, I can't see any hardware dependency outside of drivers, so I've found a board replacement that's coming to try and validate.

Also this hard drive layout and the way the game takes over windows looks incredibly simple.

I'm going to try and make a new windows 7 or XP install, and re-create the drive partitioning and startup programs and see what it do. The way the konamis self test boots and starts the game is extremely simple

[Scoutp]

Replace the battery on the boards.

Done on both, still no joy, CMOS was replaced prettyuch as soon as I got hands on

[nem]

Managed to get into the bios once, now it won't have it.

Did you try it with a different GPU? Card doesn't have to be anything specific, the more barebones the better.

I would remove everything except the processor, one stick of ram and a GPU that is known to be working. Then connect to a LCD on a bench (don't try to trouble shoot it inside the cab).

If it still doesn't boot, then a last ditch effort is replacing the caps. Bad ones won't necessarily bulge. I have fixed Taito Type X1 and Namco N2 motherboards by doing this, and Supermini hardware is more or less the same age.

[Scoutp]

Managed to get into the bios once, now it won't have it.

Did you try it with a different GPU? Card doesn't have to be anything specific, the more barebones the better.

I would remove everything except the processor, one stick of ram and a GPU that is known to be working. Then connect to a LCD on a bench (don't try to trouble shoot it inside the cab).

If it still doesn't boot, then a last ditch effort is replacing the caps. Bad ones won't necessarily bulge. I have fixed Taito Type X1 and Namco N2 motherboards by doing this, and Supermini hardware is more or less the same age.

The core2duo has an iGPU, so tried off that still no luck.

I've had it outputting graphics twice but nothing after that now I'm afraid, machine won't stay on long enough.

If these replacement boards fail then that's my next bet is to try repairing the caps, but I can't see anything looking at the game files and konami applications that prevents any form of hardware swap.

[nem]

The onboard GPU could be turned off in BIOS, that's why I suggested a card.

I don't know anything about running Supermini on different hardware. It's entirely possible there's no issue.

[Scoutp]

The onboard GPU could be turned off in BIOS, that's why I suggested a card.

I don't know anything about running Supermini on different hardware. It's entirely possible there's no issue.

I've dug through the drive and the dependencies.

The game itself is complied in D3D9 So the game itself, will entirely not care what it's running on.

That said, konami's software is entirely different.

From what I can tell it does check the system hardware, but I can't tell if it's just referencing or performing a validity check.

I'll know more once I have the drive duplicated and feel safe decompiling stuff with Ghidra, then be able to see exactly what is/isn't possible.

For now, I know it's not performing a reference check against the Motherboard, so that can entirely be swapped out.

[uncletom]

This is a PC issue. Sort the motherboard out first. Strip it of most of its unnecessary stuff, make sure the caps are fresh and look good, and check that the battery is good. Also make sure your PSU is good with fresh caps and clean connectors and delivers the proper voltages.

Use a new HDD and known working video card of simpler type, perhaps even another temporary CPU, and minimal RAM. Connect a CD/DVD device and start installing any WIndows XP or Windows 7.

Before going deeper into toubleshooting, can you get the PC to work from there?

[Scoutp]

This is a PC issue. Sort the motherboard out first. Strip it of most of its unnecessary stuff, make sure the caps are fresh and look good, and check that the battery is good. Also make sure your PSU is good with fresh caps and clean connectors and delivers the proper voltages.

Use a new HDD and known working video card of simpler type, perhaps even another temporary CPU, and minimal RAM. Connect a CD/DVD device and start installing any WIndows XP or Windows 7.

Before going deeper into toubleshooting, can you get the PC to work from there?

I've tried a new PSU, still no joy, my new mobo's are coming tomorrow/Friday, so I'll be taking a trip down to my dad's to test it all then.

The Windows install on the drive looks dead as it's just blue screens after a few seconds on the custom "GTI Club" boot screen.
(To be expected from a 15 year old HDD)

the drive is currently replicating on an SSD, and if that still fails I'm going to try and make my own windows install matching the scripts that konami is running.

All they're doing from what I can tell is they've dropped a batch file in their startup folder to run their konami self test program.

That program then contains a batch file to open another test.

And that other test, contains a batch file to open GTI club.

Once I've got all that set, I'm going to make a disk image of just a "stock" drive.

Then I'm going to look into the possibility of removing the hardware key check, and make an image of that too.

Shouldn't be too bad, going to spend some solid time on it over the next few days.

[arcnl]

What happens when you install the game on a normal pc? I'm assuming it uses a security dongle, connect that too. Does that work?
The game is also on teknoparrot, that version works on any pc, but i'm not sure the original IO would still work on that version.
If all fails i guess you could as a last resort convert the cabs and run the teknoparrot one.

[Scoutp]

What happens when you install the game on a normal pc? I'm assuming it uses a security dongle, connect that too. Does that work?
The game is also on teknoparrot, that version works on any pc, but i'm not sure the original IO would still work on that version.
If all fails i guess you could as a last resort convert the cabs and run the teknoparrot one.

I haven't duplicates the drive and made an image yet, once that's done I will post results.

But the gti3.exe is complied in D3D9X so in theory, without any security checks, it's just a standard PC game

[Scoutp]

Small update:

Drives are backed up and I'm able to look through everything and test.

Only issue is windows won't boot due to ACPI boot errors, I'm hopeful this is just because my test hardware is too new.

This can be triggered by hardware changes, so I may get this same error on my new board despite being period correct.

As I'm still waiting on the board, and the above may cause issues, Im going to try and recreate the drive in a VM (physical mounting it as pass through isn't working because windows XP) that way, I can prove that if these ACPI errors persist, I can just make a new install tired to that machine, re-create their partitioning, drop the files in and we are away!

I did play with booting GTI3 and it looks to check konami's software is booted and passes the checks.

Once I've validated it boots in the VM and executes normally, I'll upload the disk image and drive contents as well as re-creation steps as I can't see anyone anywhere that's done that.

That way, if your drive in your machine suddenly dies, you can just re-create it easy as pie

[Scoutp]

Update: managed to re-create the drive layout in a VM.

I believe that error is because the security key is not present. Once im further down the line i'll look into decompiling that program and look into removing the check.

All thats needed for the konami stuff to take over is a few small files:

konami folder in c:/
000ROM.TXT in c:/
ELOTouch Systems in c:/programfiles

and start.bat in c:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/Start Menu/Programs/Start-up

Video attached



Saturday we turn the lights on and go for gold. But this proves that essentially, you can make a clean windows install, throw those files at it, and BAM! you're set

[Scoutp]

The new motherboard worked! And then swiftly died during the XP install.

I think something is wrong with the power supply of the machines and it may be killing the other power supplies and/or machines, as it's a bit too coicidental for me that that's the case.

The board was last than ideal anyway so maybe a blessing in disguise

I'm going to test using vista or 7 in a VM because XP is just extremely problematic, not only to find ISO's for, but for driver support for something as simple as ACHi to use drives without issues.

I'll be doing this while I look for and wait for a new board replacement

[nem]

There is no power supply that powers other PSUs. The PC PSU runs on AC. Is there a transformer inside? Can you measure the AC voltage going into the PC? I doubt that it is high enough to damage equipment, but it is best to check.

[Scoutp]

There is no power supply that powers other PSUs. The PC PSU runs on AC. Is there a transformer inside? Can you measure the AC voltage going into the PC? I doubt that it is high enough to damage equipment, but it is best to check.

So the PSU in the machine powers the IO boards, and splits off to power the PSU in the machine as well.

My dad's going to check all of the voltages to make sure it's not dumping power anywhere.

For now, I've bought another new board that's more standardized, coming next week, and some better cooling.

While I wait for the board, I'm going to be working on building a vista VM or injecting ACHI support into the windows XP installer. the main limiting factor with these machines is finding a board with a dedicated SATA IDE controller, because windows XP totally lacks ACHI support. If you're in the OS or installing windows you can inject it, but I don't have access to do that, as I don't have a board with a native IDE controller.

So solutions are:

Patch a windows XP installer for ACHI
Mount that physical drive to a virtual machine and patch unofficial SP3 to XP to add ACHI
Remove windows XP and "update" the machine to vista. As windows update process should just take over an update the OS, leaving all of the Konami programs and scripts (which are replaceable and re-creatable) untouched

Option 3 is likely the best bet, and that's what I'm going to try to do on a real drive through a VM.

[Scoutp]

Small update:

Managed to create an entirely new vista install, konami code executes as normal, so the ACHI, and APCI errors should entirely disappear with that motion, shedding the need for specific Taito motherboards.

I just need to rebuild the machine when the new board arrives and build a new Vista hard drive.

I will likely do an OS upgrade instead of entirely rebuilding,

The VM testing is now over, the real thing should be up and running next week.

The hardware in this machine is a royal pain and has fought me at every single turn.

I'll get some drive images in Google drive, and host the Konami files separately with instructions on how to entirely re-create the drive.

The opens the door to using SSDs in these machines, and replacing boards when they die with Rufus, a usb stick, and a windows Vista iso.

Part of me is curious to see just how new an OS this could run on, and I'm sure I'll find that out in time when I inevitably get bored waiting for the motherboard and cooler.

I'll also be sure to get FRAPS running on the machine to check the frame rate, as I know there is some debate, from what I can see with my eye looking at videos, it's between 45-60, that can hit solid 60 with a small GPU upgrade, and that is penciled for our project down the line.

A small note which I found quite funny: I forgot to move the ELOTouch systems folder, and simple got a message "THIS SYSTEM IS BROKEN!!!"