Blazing Star MVS Garbled Text

Just bought BS from vwlunatic, and though he DID note before sale that it has a problem displaying text properly, I finally sat down and played through it tonight.
And yeah, the text problem is pretty distracting.
I took the case apart and cleaned it out pretty good. It was in bad shape, had to use lots of alcohol and Q-tips.
I didn't notice any particular damaged looking spots, but did notice some rust on some of the traces on the pcbs.
I checked the boards versus the pics on "Boot or no Boot" to make sure it's not a fake, but other than the chips being a different brand, it all looks legit.
Any thoughts?

That's from a broken trace to the S1. Look at the solder side of the CHA board near the 2 big mounting holes. The MVS cart's plastic tower rubs on that trace and sometimes cuts through. All you need to do is bridge the trace.

Xian Xi said:

That's from a broken trace to the S1. Look at the solder side of the CHA board near the 2 big mounting holes. The MVS cart's plastic tower rubs on that trace and sometimes cuts through. All you need to do is bridge the trace.

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Suh-weet! Have to try that in the morning, and I'll let ya know how it turns out. Thanks for the info!

I have to concur, that was the same issue I had with my first copy of KoF'97 (Which I got as a freebie when there was a delay in shipping an item I bought)

Stuff like overlay text, demo logos, health bars, and whatnot are stored in the S-ROMs. Patch any bad traces and you should be golden. I'd recommend 30ga. wirewrap wire, if you have it, or stripping individual wires from an old PC ribbon cable, like for a floppy drive. Those work great.

Isn't it nice when things turn out to be a real simple problem?

TheBakachan said:

I have to concur, that was the same issue I had with my first copy of KoF'97 (Which I got as a freebie when there was a delay in shipping an item I bought)

Stuff like overlay text, demo logos, health bars, and whatnot are stored in the S-ROMs. Patch any bad traces and you should be golden. I'd recommend 30ga. wirewrap wire, if you have it, or stripping individual wires from an old PC ribbon cable, like for a floppy drive. Those work great.

Isn't it nice when things turn out to be a real simple problem?

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Oh hell yeah! And you're both absolutely right...opened it up, those traces have been broken by the plastic column support.
Should be a pain in the ass, but doable!

EvilEvoIX said:

Damn that is a very exact answer. Really great to know that and help out so quick.

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I know, huh?
...<sniff> I love you guys!

And....FIX'D!!!

Hell yeah! God, there's nothing more satisfying...

I swear this hobby is forcibly teaching me electronics repair.
Never had to solder before about 3 months ago, now I'm like doing these really fine solder jobs.

You guys rock, thanks Xian Xi!!!



The tape is just cause I couldnt find any insulated wire that small. Pulled a single strand out of a speaker wire and used that, but had to connect BOTH traces right there. Works GREAT, though!

What pins on the chip do those traces go to? It looks like an address bus line isn't receiving the signal.

benjammin1701 said:

And....FIX'D!!!

Hell yeah! God, there's nothing more satisfying...

I swear this hobby is forcibly teaching me electronics repair.
Never had to solder before about 3 months ago, now I'm like doing these really fine solder jobs.

You guys rock, thanks Xian Xi!!!

The tape is just cause I couldnt find any insulated wire that small. Pulled a single strand out of a speaker wire and used that, but had to connect BOTH traces right there. Works GREAT, though!

Click to expand...

I usually just run a wire from the pin on the chip to the pin on the chip on the other side in case it happens again. If you patch it that way you might want to cut the support tower on that side.

Xian Xi said:

I usually just run a wire from the pin on the chip to the pin on the chip on the other side in case it happens again. If you patch it that way you might want to cut the support tower on that side.

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Beat ya to the punch on that one. Cut the support tower to prevent it from rubbing the solder off.
Would have just run a wire from the solder points, BUT...the end to the left in the pic ends up going thru the board UNDER the chip there. Didn't want to attempt a solder job where something under the chip on the other side MIGHT come loose while soldering and not be able to reattach it.

But it's cool, it's working great, all text normal. It was a bit of a pain in the ass to solder so tiny with my normal size soldering iron. May have to look into getting a smaller one for fine work like this. And a magnifying glass...

Just so you can see what I mean, and maybe you know a better way, here:

The points where the traces end at the top of the pic I couldn't really see a way to solder a wire there.
The end points at the bottom I could have done just fine.

If both traces hadn't been broken it would have been much easier. The first solder I just taped a small filament of copper wire over the trace after scraping the protective film off with a razor blade. Once taped, I cut off a small piece of solder, the melted it over the copper and spread it out along the wire. Pulled the tape off, cut extra wire, and that one was done.
The second trace, however, was way worse cause there just isn't room to repeat that process. So I basically scraped the protective coating off about 3/4 inch apart, and soldered the ENDS of the filament to those and wrapped small piece of electrical tape around the middle to keep it from contacting the solder from the first repair.

Live and learn, eh?

When it happened to me, it was pins 11 and 12 on the S-ROM. Same thing on yours? The traces are in an identical (And still dumb.) position, though it's a different board design.

More recently I replaced the the ribbon cable wires with some fine strands of kynar-insulated wirewrap wire. Much cleaner look.

Nice. Yeah, same exact problem. This makes me want to take apart EVERY one of my MVS carts to check for this and shave a little off the support tower.

Also, from your pics apparently it IS possible to solder to those points over on the left. That's good to know.

benjammin1701 said:

Nice. Yeah, same exact problem. This makes me want to take apart EVERY one of my MVS carts to check for this and shave a little off the support tower.

Also, from your pics apparently it IS possible to solder to those points over on the left. That's good to know.

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Oh, yeah. Hehe... Forgot about that. I just carefully scraped down to something solderable and went to it. Ugh, the solderpoints on the old repair look horrid, lol.

TheBakachan said:

Oh, yeah. Hehe... Forgot about that. I just carefully scraped down to something solderable and went to it. Ugh, the solderpoints on the old repair look horrid, lol.

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Well crap if I had a brain I'd be dangerous. Hindsight, you know?
I thought to scrape off the protective coating from the traces, but NOT from the endpoints. Duh. Could've saved myself a little trouble!

Thanks guys for the info got a bad Windjammer cart and was extremely hurt this fixed the video problem now I got to find out why the sound is all messed up.

channelmaniac said:

What pins on the chip do those traces go to? It looks like an address bus line isn't receiving the signal.

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They go to pin 9 (A1) and 10 (A0) on the S1. I think Blazing Star has a small chip in the S1 slot most likely a 512.