Neogeo AES, dead or not dead ?

Noth666

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3x semi-dead AES NEO-GEO, HELP!

Hi All,

I didnt know where to post this so I am posting it here. I guess there should be a specific thread but I could not find nor create one.

Anyways I have 3 Neo-Geo AES systems with differing issues.

System no1 - AES, mobo rev NEO-AES3-6 has OK picture but no sound at all, I've checked the board for traces broken or any component which looks damaged but everything looks clean and solid. If I move the jack about in the headphone socket I get a buzz but I think this is just shorting the headphone jack.

System no2 - AES, mobo rev NEO-AES3-3 has OK sound, but the picture is freaky.
When I have for example a fighter the character on the right side of the screen looks OK, but the top bar and texts look blitted in some way, missing pixels and colors, and the main character on the left half of the screen is drawn with the pixels in the wrong order in the sprite, making it look very funny. I can still play on it but almost all text is entirely garbled and so are the logo screens...

system no3 - AES, mobo rev NEO-AES (old 50.000 serial number unit) this unit is dead for the moment, but I believe it needs 9v/2AMP? Can anyone confirm if it works on any less than 2 amps? I did get a blue test=OK screen from this once with a 1 amp 9V PSU but never since then.

I would very much appreciate any pointers, hints, help or similar with these since I now have 3 AES systems in house, and none work properly :P.

-Noth666
 

channelmaniac

Mr Neo Fix-it
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OK n00b... it goes in Tech Support, not Boot or No Boot.

FIRST: CLEAN THE SLOTS AND THE CARTS. Most problems can be resolved by doing this first. Look at www.hardmvs.com for instructions. Clean the carts by disassembling them and using a pink pencil eraser on the contacts.

If that's not it then check the following:

System 1) Check the volume pot and if it's OK then replace the caps in the audio section. You probably have a bad one. If that's not it, check the connections between the audio ROMs on the cart and the sound subsystem on the board.

System 2) Look for bad traces or plated thru holes. See if the problems come and go if you put pressure on the top of the square NEO chipset chips. If pressure makes it look better/worse then that particular surface mount chip needs resoldering.

System 3) 9v 1.2a DC output.
 

Noth666

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Dec 17, 2008
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Thanks for the quick reply, will post in tech supp next time :-).

The cart is clean and OK - it works in another system without issues.

system no1: no caps available to swap right now - but will definitely try it.

system no2: I guess I should also have mentioned it screws up also the Neo-Geo start screen. When the white background logo comes in it looks normal, and when it 'turns' it becomes garbled.
if it is drawing only one chunk of sprites it garbles all of it, but when you have 2 characters and background it brakes down like:
background all graphics OK
top score bar colors are incorrect, text is garbled
characters: one is garbled one is not.

I have it next to me open and running now, have been tapping chips but nothing seems to happen. It did restart a few times tapping one of the mem chips close to LSPC2 but it did not repeat this reliably either. I think this is where the issue is, but I would need to know which chip does what to have a better clue.

To render the idea:

if a character was composed like below pixel by pixel:
1a.2a.3a-1b.2b.3b-1c.2c.3c
this results in:
3a2a1a-3b2b1b-3c2c1c

In other words drawing the pixels in the opposite order, but keeping the 15 pixel lines.. no idea if this makes any sense, I think I need to take a pic of it...

Thankfull for any assistance or ideas
 

MKL

Basara's Blade Keeper
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system no3 - AES, mobo rev NEO-AES (old 50.000 serial number unit) this unit is dead for the moment, but I believe it needs 9v/2AMP? Can anyone confirm if it works on any less than 2 amps? I did get a blue test=OK screen from this once with a 1 amp 9V PSU but never since then.

NEO-AES is 5V/3A unless it has a power daughterboard (and empty area by the switch)
 

Noth666

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Dec 17, 2008
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Update on the below

system 1: pot seems unlikely, there seems to be no signal through no scratching or humming or anything also moving the pot - so I am going for the caps.

system 2: no change, very much suspecting IC 43256 to the left but nothing seems wrong with it.
With sufficient info on what draws the sprites and if it uses a buffer reading from the cart it should be possible to narrow down I am thinking... ideas?

system 3: Thanks MKL, now I have blue screen without cart, but as soon as the cart is in it displays only WORK RAM TEST.
Atleast it is doing something now, but the PSU I am using is rated to 2.5A which might even be optimistic so I am going to source another PSU to test it with also. Good I didn't go and find a specific 9V psu for it, had already tested 3 sofar, 1a and smaller.

Any tips welcome ;-)
 

MKL

Basara's Blade Keeper
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Update on the below

system 1: pot seems unlikely, there seems to be no signal through no scratching or humming or anything also moving the pot - so I am going for the caps.

No sound from the A/V out and headphone out suggests a common origin for the problem, i.e. located somewhere in the audio circuit before each channel splits and takes two different paths. But there are no in-line caps in that part of the circuit so it could be a faulty DAC or op-amp.
 

Noth666

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No sound from the A/V out and headphone out suggests a common origin for the problem, i.e. located somewhere in the audio circuit before each channel splits and takes two different paths. But there are no in-line caps in that part of the circuit so it could be a faulty DAC or op-amp.

Thanks, very good point indeed, makes absolute sense.
Is there any possibility it is not reading any sounds from the cart or something like this? I don't know how the carts are organized so I would not know if it is possible...

also now system 2 seems to have died entirely, blocks all over the screen that do not move with cart in, restart brings a different color and order but still all garbled, and a kind of pixels run over blue screen without cart - might use it for parts if I cannot think of whats wrong as it definitely has fully working sound :P. I tested before it died, sounds great.
 

doctor_shred

Zero's Secretary
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Apr 15, 2008
Posts
154
Hi, I'm sure you've already done this but make sure you have the right power supplies for the different consoles.

I had an AES that I thought was dead as I got a garbled screen and buzzing sound when used with my 9V supply.

It turned out it wasn't giving enough current, only 300mA. As soon as I tried a 9V 1.2A supply the AES worked perfectly.
 

MKL

Basara's Blade Keeper
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Thanks, very good point indeed, makes absolute sense.
Is there any possibility it is not reading any sounds from the cart or something like this? I don't know how the carts are organized so I would not know if it is possible...

If the cart connector were busted/dirty yes but you said it's OK/clean and tried multiple carts right? So it's more likely that it's a bad component on the mobo (YM2610, YM3016, 4741) or, but less likely, broken traces. Try tapping sound directly from the YM3016 (pin 10 = L, pin 11 = R), if you don't get any replace the DAC (too bad it's an obsolete/hard-to-find part).
 

Noth666

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Hmmh,

Would that not potentially damage something? Or should I just connect an amp to the pin and ground on TM3016 and check for sound?

Yes have tried different carts and they behave the same on all systems, although for a moment now when I plugged FF2 in to the system without sound, it gave me the same visuals as the one with the funky graphics, reseating the cart fixed that but still no sound of course.

Does anyone know how I could check the cart slot traces, ie a map of which pin on which IC or component which cart slot pin is connected to?

I would like to be able to check that they are all OK before taking to the soldering iron.

Has anyone heard of this kind of issue, where the system draws every other character correctly? To me this would seem like a rather straighforward thing to check provided I had the traces and knew which IC does what...
 

channelmaniac

Mr Neo Fix-it
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There are no schematics of the AES available... All you can do is find a pinout for the cartridge slot or make one by looking at which ROMs connect to which pins on the cartridge edge connector...

Once you figure that out then you can trace the path from the cart slot connector to see if you can find a bad trace or bad plated thru hole that needs patching. That's how I've found them.

RJ
 
L

lherre

Guest
North666 I have the same problem with the sound in a aes 3.3 board.

I "hear" some "noise" in the headphone socket but no sound with the main av-sound connector.

I tried to put a connector in the pin 10 of the ym3016 pic but I haven't sound.
 

Eppe

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Hi North666 and lherre,

The system 1 sound problem seems to be recurrent, I have the exact same problem.

Did you succeed to get something working ?
 

dr.wily

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Bump this topic for another AES restoration.

Motherboard is a first gen NEO-AES.

- Powering up the system without cart gives a yellow screen
- Powering up the system with cart gives garbled graphics with sound.

Visual inspection of video memory chips and traces (near reset button) don't seem to be broken. This system works fine since 1992, year of purchase. Photos on demand.

Thanks
 
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smkdan

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I agree with posting in the main tech forum in case someone misses it here.

There's 2 types of video memory that do completely different things. You can tell what to look at depending on the type of glitching. If the text in memory card menu, controller test, "CREDIT xx" / "LEVEL-x" / lifebars etc. is OK and everything else is bad, then it's probably the 2K chips at fault (small pair of DIP ones). If those are also glitched then it may be the 32K ones but a photo of gameplay and the neogeo startup screen would help.
 

dr.wily

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fremen --> If a moderator can move this topic in the right section... thanks for url, but I already know channelmaniac's website. He provided me a very good work in the past on a AES system.

smkdan -->
If the text in memory card menu, controller test, "CREDIT xx" / "LEVEL-x" / lifebars etc. is OK and everything else is bad, then it's probably the 2K chips at fault (small pair of DIP ones). If those are also glitched then it may be the 32K

Interesting info thanks. I took some pics :

- KOF98 boot screen
- KOF98 title screen
- KOF98 menu

- KOF2k boot screen
- KOF2k title screen
- KOF2k ingame

- Memory Card menu
 

smkdan

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The bad text in memcard menu and glitching in game is definitely not the 2K chips. I think there is a data problem with the 32K chips but this is just my guess work using your pics without error info like on MVS. You have LSPC-A0 on a first gen system. The "Slow VRAM" stuff is for the 32k RAMs connected to it with SVD0~SVD7, SVD8~SVD15 going to different RAMs. There is also the address in that pinout but your screenshots point to data problem. Can you test those connections?
 

dr.wily

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connections has been tested. There is a bad trace on SVD9 line. This AES system works flawlessly now. I let a pic of SVD pinout lines (0 to 15) between lspc and ram chips for future fix. Only for first AES system only .

svram-aes.png


Thanks for your help.
 
Last edited:

Late

Reichsf?rer-Finnland,
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AES is literally undead because we drink the overpriced true blood
 
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