4-Slot sound cuts out random?

I've got a 4-slot and it's never done this before so I'm thinking it may just be the combination of carts I currently have but every once in a while for no apparent reason I loose sound when I select a game. It isn't alway the same game either but it's alway when I select it, never in the middle of playing a game. My current cart selection is: KOF 2001, Neo Driftout, Metal Slug 3, Aero Fighters 3.

Sometimes I can play for hours until it happens sometimes only 20-30 minutes. Anyone know what could cause this. I'm lead to believe it may be my selection of cart in there currently due to the fact I've played many other carts in this cab over the past couple of years and have never had this problem.

This crap..happens to me a lot..(pisses me off)


From my experiences :.....with no understanding why.
It usually has to do with cart selection,Some carts just don't seem to work with others well,and as I was thinking about this again last night...
"Operators must of had a lot of headaches with the Machines due to this"..

Yesterday:..I put in Baseball Stars Professional in the third slot in my Candy cab..
Super Baseball 2020
Overtop
Baseball Stars Professional
Neo Driftout
I usually let the demos run through a few times to see if any problems occur..Three demos in it reaches Baseball Stars Professional and the sound goes out on the whole board....WTF!!!..I take the cart out move it around to other slots..
It now will not play any DEMO sound no matter what I change the Soft Dip settings to..But it will play if I start the game.
This drove me nuts..I had company coming over to play..
I take the cart,open it and clean it beyond clean..put it back in the first slot now,same thing..

I Clear the Back Up Memory in Hardware Test(Press A,B,C)..,,Problem Solved.....Try that...

.......................................
If I mix KOF 2001 with Double Dragon it will cut out the sound when I select one of them depending on which is first in the line-up..
Mixing that cart with others will do the same..
Neo Geo Cup 98 seems to give me problems mixed with many other carts....I can really only put it in the 2 slot and not worry about it having problem with other carts...It's in with Super Sidekicks 2

MOTW doesn't like being in cab in the below line-up: (sound goes out/Big Red..
Aero Fighters 2
Metal Slug
KOF 02
MOTW

I took out KOF 02...Problem solved..
Sound would go out in MOTW ...Last slot..

I get this problem a lot,I think more then anyone...I switch carts a lot....(The problem Sucks)
It happens with several combinations of carts and I don't know why..and either knocks out the whole board's sound or one cart during the second demo cycle...Upon start up or later while it's going to demos or if I select a game......Never during play as I remember..

Cleaning the carts real well sometimes helps..
Taking one cart out and changing it to something else usually helps..

This back-up memory fix thing I did last night in the candy was a surprise that I didn't expect...
I had the cab running for the longest last night,played etc and the sound never went out after doing that..

It's most annoying when you set a cab with the demo sound off(Non Attract Made) and select a game and get no sound due to this problem..



(Boots..do this a lot too)

Thanks for the reply chris1, I was wondering if I was the only one with this problem. I did swap the same carts around to different slots but the sound still cuts out eventually. I'm going to stick in a couple different carts tomorrow and hopefully I won't have this problem again.

The Chief said:

Thanks for the reply chris1, I was wondering if I was the only one with this problem. I did swap the same carts around to different slots but the sound still cuts out eventually. I'm going to stick in a couple different carts tomorrow and hopefully I won't have this problem again.

Click to expand...

Let me know..

It's going to be one of the carts causing the problem..Start by replacing the KOF..
If it's not that one,then take out Metal Slug 3..


I've tried switching the same line up of carts around that were problematic...and still the problem occurred..(It's very annoying)

I think we should try and start some kind of compatability database.

I know that Metal Slug 3, MOTW and KOF02 have difficulties when all placed in the 4-slot. SVC is problematic with SSV and KOF01/01/03. I find that the order the games are in has something to do with it. MOTW, SVC, SSV, KOF/01/02/03 will result in one game not running no matter what order they are in. I find SVC to be very troublesome for me as I can have MOTW, SSV, KOF01/02/03 running fine with say RBS or AOF3 for example.
I don't really know what makes this happen though. Maybe the newer games drawing more power or something?
Lets see if we can't get something started to try and help.

I have just tested and found this.

4.KOF02
3.Metal Slug 3
2.SS1/V
1.MOTW

After 2 attract cycles MS3 and KOF02 lose sound. MS3 has no BG music, but has voices and gun shots etc, but KOF02 loses all sound. Only a power off will fix it.

I'm going to do some messing around with the 4-slot today. It seems to be the newer carts are what's causing the problems, I wonder if there's some technical reason for it. The first cart I'm taking out is KOF2k1, it needs to be swaped anyway.

J0e Musashi said:

I think we should try and start some kind of compatability database.

Click to expand...

That's a good idea..Reading this thread again last night I was thinking about that myself.
I should of wrote down what carts mixed with others were giving me problems when it happened..
A compatability database would be a good spot to post the info when it occurs.

Though,I don't think to many people seem to have this problem..and it may not be the same for them..
I'm pretty sure they are people out there that are lining up the same games in a cab and having no problems.
I just don't see it talked about much...
......................................................................

I always seem to get the weird problems like this stuff happening to me...I play a lot of Neo Geo and switch games out a lot.
I was shocked when Baseball Stars Professional gave me problems and even cleaning the cart didn't solve it.
When Clearing the Back-up memory solved the problem I was going to make in info topic in tech noting that Clearing the Back-up memory may solve this problem if it happens to anyone/I never got the chance.

Most of the time I just switch a cart or figure out what's wrong and forget about it and live with it..
I figure it's just something I have to deal with,with this hardware...so I don't bring it up much..(this crap happens to me a lot)

Pochi ann Nyaa gave me problems(new kit) mixed with other games..(sound went out)

I myself would love to know the technical reasons why these problems occur.

Why did clearing the Back-up memory solve the problem for me with that line-up I had..but won't always be the fix.

It;s best not to try some compendium list for stuff like this. Too many permuations. Too many variables.....

Hell, nobody can get a real handle on problems with the oneslot/rotd compatability issues.

The four slot issues could be Imense... Especialy when you talk about sound or skipping or whatever.

Always try this:

1. Clean carts/contacts
2. Move suspected problem Carts around
3. Clear Backup Memory.
4. Keep trying

Within the current problem..

Crazy thing about Baseball Stars Professional..

I just went into the soft dips to check and to change the play timer and noticed,Demo sound was set to OFF for Baseball Stars Professional but the demo music is still on/playing
When I Cleared the back up Memory I didn't change that setting to off..I only switched the credit display off.
(cart wasn't taken out either)

Is Demo Sound in Baseball Stars Professional by default turned off..?..Why


In SET UP CABINET I have the Demos set to : "Set up in each Game"..For the demo sound.
All other carts are set to Demo Sound On..
No matter if I set Baseball Stars Professional to on or off the demo music still plays.

Now if I set the cab to : SET UP CABINET ..Demo Sound "WITHOUT" then I get no demo sound out of Baseball Stars Professional..but then all the carts demo sound is off.

I'm wondering if it's a UNI BIOS chip issue..(?)
But I have to try Baseball Stars Professional in another motherboard/cab first to see if does the same thing.

This is one thing I would really like to fix in the Universe Bios. I am quite sure that it is a software problem in the way the bios swaps games. From my understanding it seems to happen when there is a misture of older and newer games in the system.

Because there is no physical way to reset the Z80 (to my knowledge) what seems to happen is that the program data the Z80 sees is swapped on the fly so to speak. For this to work it basically means the every M ROM in a system must have the same piece of code (probably a main wait loop) programmed identically and it must also be in the same place in every ROM. If the Z80 program counter is in this loop while the data is swapped it will still see a understandable code in the new data and the sound will continue to work fine.

What I think is causing the sound to stop is that some games do not follow a standard so it basically means that when the game is swapped the Z80 gets confused because the PC is ending up on different code in the new M ROM.

If only I had a multislot I would look into this more and see if there is a way to workaround it but maybe there is a way that multislot owners can help. If I was to know if the cutout is random or always happens between a swap between 2 certin games it would give me something to work on. Also I would like to know the sound loss can be reproduced in the same way by using the jukebox in the unibios and then choosing between games.

Raz

chris1 said:

Crazy thing about Baseball Stars Professional..

I'm wondering if it's a UNI BIOS chip issue..(?)
But I have to try Baseball Stars Professional in another motherboard/cab first to see if does the same thing.

Click to expand...

Yes I think this is a UNI BIOS issue _IF_ you are in USA region. Basically looking at it there are less SoftDIPs for the USA region but the UniBios always uses EURO softdips to keep it english even when in Japan region.

Raz

Razoola said:

Yes I think this is a UNI BIOS issue _IF_ you are in USA region. Basically looking at it there are less SoftDIPs for the USA region but the UniBios always uses EURO softdips to keep it english even when in Japan region.

Raz

Click to expand...

Thank you Raz..

Razoola said:

This is one thing I would really like to fix in the Universe Bios. I am quite sure that it is a software problem in the way the bios swaps games. From my understanding it seems to happen when there is a misture of older and newer games in the system.

Because there is no physical way to reset the Z80 (to my knowledge) what seems to happen is that the program data the Z80 sees is swapped on the fly so to speak. For this to work it basically means the every M ROM in a system must have the same piece of code (probably a main wait loop) programmed identically and it must also be in the same place in every ROM. If the Z80 program counter is in this loop while the data is swapped it will still see a understandable code in the new data and the sound will continue to work fine.

What I think is causing the sound to stop is that some games do not follow a standard so it basically means that when the game is swapped the Z80 gets confused because the PC is ending up on different code in the new M ROM.

If only I had a multislot I would look into this more and see if there is a way to workaround it but maybe there is a way that multislot owners can help. If I was to know if the cutout is random or always happens between a swap between 2 certin games it would give me something to work on. Also I would like to know the sound loss can be reproduced in the same way by using the jukebox in the unibios and then choosing between games.
Raz

Click to expand...

I'll keep posting my findings in this thread Raz...

It usually happens between a swap between 2 certain games ..(for me)

In the demo sequence or switching to the certain game the sound will go out.

I've had it go out on the whole board once that game was reached.
OR: just the sound would go out in the newly inserted cart..
Or :it would knock out the sound on another cart in the line-up.

I forget what cart was inserted before each other but when I had Double Dragon and KOF 01 in my big red,...KOF 01 sound would go out..Switched the carts around and Double Dragons sound would go out once reached..
KOF 01 was the newly put in cart so I narrowed it to be the problem..
Then once one of these games was reached it started knocking the whole sound of the board out like something was building up..
If I took out Double Dragon KOF 01 worked fine//vice versa..

Sometimes you don't even get any sound upon start-up of the cab,putting in new game.
("new" as in just another game)

95% of the time I super clean my carts connections before I put them in..
Sometimes if I'm in a rush I take a chance and don't.
It does make this problem happen a lot to if you don't clean the carts well
BUT,.Say like a cart like that KOF 01 I had problems with..I cleaned it several times and still no change..Sometimes it's just the line-up.

Taking out one cart out of a 4 slot making it only 3 slots has solved the problem for me."Sometimes".that being one of the carts not giving problems.
Sometimes taking a cart out (that being one of the carts not giving problems) doesn't help.

Usually the sound will go out after the first demo lap..once it's reached a game for the second time...

I've had newly put in games work through the first demo lap then once it reached it the second time the sound will go out...this is usually what happens thus I catch the problem quick.


/////////////////////////////
I mainly get this problem when I set my cabs to Demo Sound Off/Attract Mode Off.

Both my Big Red,Candy and Gold are all set to Demo Sound Off/Attract Mode Off.
If I put in a new game and leave the settings this way..when I choose a game I'll have no sound.(not all the time/just certain cart mixes cause it)
Sometimes I can have the cab running with Demo Sound on/Attract Mode On and have no problems after putting in a new game..OR..Then I'll switch it to Demo Sound Off/Attract Mode Off..let the cab run or try to play a game and no sound..nothing..
I can only figure it's the cart I just put in.....because all the carts were just working with no problems in the settings of Demo Sound on/Attract Mode On ..

I've also had the settings emo Sound Off/Attract Mode Off,and the sound go out later.....after a few demo laps...I'd try a game the first few demos and it would be fine..later try and the sound be gone.Problem with that is I can't hear when it goes out.
One reason why I leave my cabs on..after putting in different carts..
I'm testing to see if the sound is going to go out in any of them..
After 7 demos laps,if the sound hasn't went out it's not going to..

All 3 cabs are running fine with Demo Sound Off/Attract Mode Off right now..

Sometimes though I have to change that setting to "Set Up In Each Game"then turn each games demo sound off..Whereas you can leave some on..
Sometimes I'd just leave MOTW demo sound on..
All 3 other games demo sound will be off and when the demo reaches MOTW that demo sound will play..(awesome)just that game.

Changing these setting around a lot of times fix the sound going out when I have the cabs set with the demo sound off.
I don't know why but sometimes it just won't work right either way and has to be set the other way..

I've had the sound cut out with Demo Sound on/Attract Mode On after several demo laps..It seems to run into the newly put in game and cut out...but later..after the cab has been on...
This will happen on the second demo lap or third.






I'll try the jukebox also and let you know..etc.

If I had a spare 4 slot I'd send it to you too..