Black bars on Metal Slug

Anselm

Camel Slug
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
I keep getting these black bars on the side of my Metal Slug cart. If you look you can see that at the bottom of each side of the screen there is one square of graphics, but the rest is black all the way up. I tried re-seating and swapping slots. It's definitely the cart. It did this the first time I plugged it in last week as well. It started working so I left it alone but now it's doing it again. Anyone seen this before/ know how to fix it?



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Anselm

Camel Slug
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
Ok, I didn't adjust it when I installed the Power Supply. I'll hook a multimeter to it and check it out. Thank you.

~Anselm~

Adjusted +5 to +5.00. Same problem. I think it's a cart issue since 7 other carts work fine, and this one does it in two different slots. Any other thoughts?

~Anselm~
 

kernow

The Goob Hunter
20 Year Member
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Sep 1, 2001
Posts
34,813
Is 5v on 5.00 with the board connected and under load, or just a bare harness?

I've had this problem a few times on Slug 1 and no other carts at the same time, setting the voltage always cured it. I guess you could clean the cart, slots etc, erase backup RAM in the test menu to eliminate all other possibilities though.
 

Anselm

Camel Slug
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Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
Is 5v on 5.00 with the board connected and under load, or just a bare harness?

I've had this problem a few times on Slug 1 and no other carts at the same time, setting the voltage always cured it. I guess you could clean the cart, slots etc, erase backup RAM in the test menu to eliminate all other possibilities though.

It is with no load. When I test it with a load on it I got different voltages depending on which of the three grounds I use coming from the power supply. I'll play with it some more today.

~Anselm~
 

kernow

The Goob Hunter
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It's still far too low then, set it to 5.15 with the mvs board connected and running.
 

Anselm

Camel Slug
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Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
It's still far too low then, set it to 5.15 with the mvs board connected and running.

Ok, I set the voltage to 5.15 with a load, didn't fix it. I then tried turning it up even more, didn't fix it. Then I erased the Test menu data and unplugged it, didn't fix it.

Guess I'll open the cart and clean the connectors. After that I don't know what else to do...

~Anselm~
 

Anselm

Camel Slug
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
Ok, I set the voltage to 5.15 with a load, didn't fix it. I then tried turning it up even more, didn't fix it. Then I erased the Test menu data and unplugged it, didn't fix it.

Guess I'll open the cart and clean the connectors. After that I don't know what else to do...

~Anselm~


Thoroughly cleaned, still has the same problem. Starting to think I just have a bad cart. :mad::blow_top:
 

channelmaniac

Mr Neo Fix-it
15 Year Member
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Nov 29, 2005
Posts
4,275
Mine does the same thing... I thought it was just the way they did the side scrolling.
 

Official Ninja

Morden's Lackey
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May 16, 2009
Posts
373
I see this when I play the game on the AES with the super converter 2. I dont see the bars when I play in my cabinet.
 

Shorty

n00b
Joined
Aug 26, 2005
Posts
22
Yeah, I remember this behavior aswell. If you could take a photo somewhere where it would be easy to compare with a screenshot of the same spot one could se if the black bars are hiding parts of the graphics or if the line at the bottom just is wider than the screen should be. The beginning of stage one before the screen starts scrolling should be a decent spot for the comparison.
 

Anselm

Camel Slug
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
Yeah, I remember this behavior aswell. If you could take a photo somewhere where it would be easy to compare with a screenshot of the same spot one could se if the black bars are hiding parts of the graphics or if the line at the bottom just is wider than the screen should be. The beginning of stage one before the screen starts scrolling should be a decent spot for the comparison.


The picture I provided shows how the whole game behaves. And I can't just adjust the monitor settings to stretch it because every other cart works fine with the monitor settings. It has to be an error with the game because I can't believe they would expect it to work this way.

Also, at a certain point during the demo the screen flashes as it transitions to the next display. When it does that, the missing graphics flash in for a fraction of a second.

~Anselm~
 

Anselm

Camel Slug
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
So after playing a few games of Baseball Stars, I went back to screwing with Metal Slug.

I started messing with the soft dip settings and found that with a few of them, when I exited and it rebooted, the extra square of graphics went away, and I was left with a full black bar on each side. This leads me to believe that it may be something to do with my two slot and Metal slug combination. It wasn't random either. When I found a soft dip change that removed the bottom square, I could consistently put it back to regain that square.

I'm going to abandon trouble shooting this until my 6 slot arrives. If the game works on that system then I at least have identified where the problem lies.

~Anselm~
 

Razoola

Divine Hand of the UniBIOS,
Staff member
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Nov 12, 2002
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4,662
Adjust your cabs monitor so the bars are off the left and right of the screen. I can see from the screenshot your showing too much of the picture. There should only be 16 pixels visable from the left of 'credit'.
 

Anselm

Camel Slug
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Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
Adjust your cabs monitor so the bars are off the left and right of the screen. I can see from the screenshot your showing too much of the picture. There should only be 16 pixels visable from the left of 'credit'.

That is not a rational fix. If I do that then EVERY OTHER GAME will be sized incorrectly. Why would I make the size of every neo geo cartridge wrong just to accomodate one? I have 8 carts and this is the only one malfunctioning.

~Anselm~
 

Razoola

Divine Hand of the UniBIOS,
Staff member
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That is not a rational fix. If I do that then EVERY OTHER GAME will be sized incorrectly. Why would I make the size of every neo geo cartridge wrong just to accomodate one? I have 8 carts and this is the only one malfunctioning.

~Anselm~

You won't be.... There are many many many neogeo games that do this same thing (disply graphics in the off screen area).
 

Anselm

Camel Slug
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
You won't be.... There are many many many neogeo games that do this same thing (disply graphics in the off screen area).

Well things like Baseball Stars just look silly with a whole row of pixels missing (The start up animation has a clearly defined border on all of the pictures). And the play area of games like Aero Fighters 2 would be missing, like two whole ship widths that I won't see. And for that matter the ship would simply disappear on each side. Just seems silly.

~Anselm~
 

Official Ninja

Morden's Lackey
Joined
May 16, 2009
Posts
373
You won't be.... There are many many many neogeo games that do this same thing (disply graphics in the off screen area).

Yes. I was going to add that since I started playing my AES thu the XRGB2+ on a widescreen TV set to 4:3, I can see all sorts of graphics that are normaly off the screen in many Neo games.

I think League Bowling has the most. There is a whole column of white on the left side of the screen.

And that is exactly where I see these black bars in metal slug, just like the OP sees.
 

Anselm

Camel Slug
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Posts
503
Yes. I was going to add that since I started playing my AES thu the XRGB2+ on a widescreen TV set to 4:3, I can see all sorts of graphics that are normaly off the screen in many Neo games.

I think League Bowling has the most. There is a whole column of white on the left side of the screen.

And that is exactly where I see these black bars in metal slug, just like the OP sees.

But this would mean Metal Slug is missing graphics that every other game I own has. So if this is true, Metal Slug will run in my cabinet with two black bars.

~Anselm~
 

Official Ninja

Morden's Lackey
Joined
May 16, 2009
Posts
373
But this would mean Metal Slug is missing graphics that every other game I own has. So if this is true, Metal Slug will run in my cabinet with two black bars.

~Anselm~

Well, I just hooked up my AES with the XRGB to show you.

The black bars are in the image. I can adjust the H position of the XRGB output. I can move it back and forth and see one on the left and one on the right, but I can never adjust both out of the picture. Here is a picture about as centered as I can get it.
You can see the bars.



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Shorty

n00b
Joined
Aug 26, 2005
Posts
22
Researching this a bit, it shows that some games on the Neo has graphics that gives the games a 320x224 resolution. Puzzle Bobble and Baseball Stars uses this.

But the official resolution for Neo Geo is 304x224, if a game has a 320x224 resolution it's just using some tricks to get som extra pixels in width. Here is a quote from maws:

0.35RC2: Nicola Salmoria incresed the horizontal resolution for NeoGeo to 320. This looks strange with some games, but it is definitely the correct value as I verified it on the real thing. Games like Puzzle Bobble and Baseball Stars use the extra area, while most of the other games draw just two bars in there. If a game looks odd, adjust your monitor to send the extra area offscreen.
 
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