CPS mobo differences & King of Dragons broken patches

Green Beret · Jun 9, 2015

Hi guys, I have all sizes of CPS mobos but I don't really know their differences.
There is the short model and the long model. What are their differences?
Some games are only compatible with the long or the short?
Do they play better or worst?

EDIT: A patched desuicided King of Dragons can not display Hydra's 4th boss tail and Red Dragon's final boss whole body with tail and legs.

pulstar · Jun 9, 2015

One primarily has through hole components, the other surface mount. They all play exactly the same. Some motherboards were the dash motherboard and have a faster clock speed and was released with SF2 Turbo onwards (I think). If you play games like Turbo on a standard mobo it will run slower.

Some people say the shorter boards are more reliable, but I'm not really sure if that's true or not.

ReplicaX · Jun 9, 2015

pulstar said:
Some motherboards were the dash motherboard and have a faster clock speed and was released with SF2 Turbo onwards (I think). If you play games like Turbo on a standard mobo it will run slower.

To add to this so ppl aren't confused.

CPS1 Dash Games aka CPS1.5 / CPS1 Q-Sound is a different animal.

There were specific CPS1 12MHz A Boards that ran Hyper Fighting and Championship Edition and in Japan these were called "Dash".

fluxcore · Jun 9, 2015

From my experience, the short and long boards aren't really much more reliable than each other, what tends to die are the big custom PPU chips anyway (I need about 10 of the damn things to revive my boards!). But the long boards are older, so naturally they are more likely to now have faulty components.

Otherwise there's sod-all difference between them. The short boards don't bend as much in the middle when unsupported, which is nice, and probably lends to longevity.

The long boards have through-hole components, which can be easier to diagnose/replace parts in since you can socket them, unlike the surface mount stuff on the short boards...

And yes, the boards labelled "CPS DASH" for the SF2Turbo boards have a 12MHz capable CPU and clock, as opposed to the 10MHz older boards. To be honest I'm not sure this actually makes all that much difference. I've been meaning to make a video comparison to have some quantifiable evidence one way or another.

Westcb · Jun 9, 2015

fluxcore said:
From my experience, the short and long boards aren't really much more reliable than each other, what tends to die are the big custom PPU chips anyway (I need about 10 of the damn things to revive my boards!). But the long boards are older, so naturally they are more likely to now have faulty components.

Otherwise there's sod-all difference between them. The short boards don't bend as much in the middle when unsupported, which is nice, and probably lends to longevity.

The long boards have through-hole components, which can be easier to diagnose/replace parts in since you can socket them, unlike the surface mount stuff on the short boards...

And yes, the boards labelled "CPS DASH" for the SF2Turbo boards have a 12MHz capable CPU and clock, as opposed to the 10MHz older boards. To be honest I'm not sure this actually makes all that much difference. I've been meaning to make a video comparison to have some quantifiable evidence one way or another.

I put a turbo B and C on a non dash A.... I didn't see a difference in speed and it played fine. Maybe the 12mhz was for future proofing in case they made a Turbo Turbo :-)

Green Beret · Jun 9, 2015

Is there a possibility to have game freezes because of a mobo?

bustedstr8 · Jun 9, 2015

Some of the later games wont run at 10 Mhz.

Westcb · Jun 9, 2015

bustedstr8 said:
Some of the later games wont run at 10 Mhz.

Really? Which games?

Green Beret · Jun 10, 2015

I have recently acquired a Japanese King of Dragons desuicided and there were some freezes in the beginning of a stage. Until stage 4 there was most of the times a crash. It had a long mobo. Switched to a short mobo and I have tested 5-6 times and no crash...
Strange is that the long mobo if used with KOTR it plays fine....
WTF?

ReplicaX · Jun 10, 2015

Green Beret said:
I have recently acquired a Japanese King of Dragons desuicided and there were some freezes in the beginning of a stage. Until stage 4 there was most of the times a crash. It had a long mobo. Switched to a short mobo and I have tested 5-6 times and no crash...
Strange is that the long mobo if used with KOTR it plays fine....
WTF?

As someone stated earlier with the long boards usually being older, it likely had more wear and tear besides age on the components.

Green Beret · Jun 10, 2015

I agree long boards are older but in my case it is in great shape and very clean. Also what about all other pcbs which are much older than the CPS long mobos? They do work flawlessly, at least mine.

ReplicaX · Jun 10, 2015

Green Beret said:
I agree long boards are older but in my case it is in great shape and very clean. Also what about all other pcbs which are much older than the CPS long mobos? They do work flawlessly, at least mine.

Great shape and clean has nothing to do with # of hrs on components and component breakdown over a life cycle though.

Green Beret · Jun 10, 2015

ReplicaX said:
Great shape and clean has nothing to do with # of hrs on components and component breakdown over a life cycle though.

Sure, you are right.
Which components are the ones I shall check?

bustedstr8 · Jun 10, 2015

Green Beret said:
Sure, you are right.
Which components are the ones I shall check?

It's almost always the CPS-A-01 that dies...custom PPU and game ender.

Westcb said:
Really? Which games?

So far I have seen Captain Commando and HF, KotR is a later game that will run at 10Mhz.

Green Beret · Jun 10, 2015

King of Dragons also maybe has a problem with 10Mhz.
Out of topic: My King of Dragons has some missing elements. There is no tale of the Hydra boss. There is no body and tale of the red dragon final boss. It is desuicided.
Has anybody this issue?

ReplicaX · Jun 10, 2015

Green Beret said:
Sure, you are right.
Which components are the ones I shall check?

bustedstr8 said:
It's almost always the CPS-A-01 that dies...custom PPU and game ender.

^ This is the most common failure.

There are many components on the A Board that can cause lockups. Always start with the basics checking for bad connections/solder joints. From there it gets more complicated testing the main components: PPU, 68K, Z80(sound).

Green Beret · Jun 10, 2015

About the Hydra tail and Red Dragons body which is missing in the fixed version of King of Dragons. They are secondary sprites in the background.
Maybe must the pin 40 pulled high on the C board?

bustedstr8 · Jun 10, 2015

You can insert the C-Board at slightly different angles, this will sometimes make connections for the missing layers.

fluxcore · Jun 10, 2015

Missing sprite layers can also be caused by a faulty custom PPU on the C-board... try swapping out the C board if you are lucky enough to have a spare. Honestly, these two PPUs on the CPS1 are the biggest headache. I'd love for a reverse engineered replacement to be made available - it's getting increasingly hard to find working examples.

Of course I haven't played with resurrecting suicided CPS1 boards yet, so there might be something special needed for that process. I know there are some mods to the C-board that are necessary.

Green Beret · Jun 10, 2015

fluxcore said:
Missing sprite layers can also be caused by a faulty custom PPU on the C-board... try swapping out the C board if you are lucky enough to have a spare. Honestly, these two PPUs on the CPS1 are the biggest headache. I'd love for a reverse engineered replacement to be made available - it's getting increasingly hard to find working examples.

Of course I haven't played with resurrecting suicided CPS1 boards yet, so there might be something special needed for that process. I know there are some mods to the C-board that are necessary.

I have a couple of fixed C boards to swap. Will do that later and come back. Even if I worry it won't fix it. The Japanese guy that desuicided told me it is because of the fix, I hope he is not right.

bustedstr8 said:
You can insert the C-Board at slightly different angles, this will sometimes make connections for the missing layers.

Different angles? What do you mean with that? Not to fully insert them in the socket?
I have to buy a jamma megadrive from you some time

In dead battery society says:
"If your game works but the graphics drop out and disappear at certain points, you might want to test pin 40 to make sure it's also being pulled high. This is the pin that formerly was supplied power by the suicide battery. It should normally be pulled high when the game is on, but you may have a bad diode or something causing it to not get pulled high"
I don't have a multimeter to test. I only have a soldering iron.

bustedstr8 · Jun 11, 2015

The desuicide fixes shouldn't cause any lost grafx. I've used most of the other romsets from Dead Battery and never had any issues. Missing grafx is almost always connection or PPU problems with these boards.

Try inserting the board fully and then raise the left half a little, then try the right half, then try the front right corner and then the back left....etc. Or you can start by barely inserting it and then slowly push down on different areas and see if you hit bingo. It may work for a while and then need to be done again or might get you nowhere. Best bet is to snag a confirmed good C from a parts board.

Green Beret · Jun 12, 2015

bustedstr8 said:
The desuicide fixes shouldn't cause any lost grafx. I've used most of the other romsets from Dead Battery and never had any issues. Missing grafx is almost always connection or PPU problems with these boards.

Try inserting the board fully and then raise the left half a little, then try the right half, then try the front right corner and then the back left....etc. Or you can start by barely inserting it and then slowly push down on different areas and see if you hit bingo. It may work for a while and then need to be done again or might get you nowhere. Best bet is to snag a confirmed good C from a parts board.

Thanks.
I have swapped 2 more different C boards but it was the same. Also swapped a short A board and only that way it doesn't freeze.
The guy that fixed it, he also played his KOD and he had the same sprites missing. Then he swapped region to US or ETC, I am not sure which one, but no luck.
So the B board is not faulty either. Something else must be done.
So far it's the only game it is not the same with the original board on battery as far as I have encountered.
I also spoke with another member who has the game in ETC region. He has the same missing sprites.
Here is a thread he opened not long ago
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...-Reviving-the-CPS1-borad-questions&highlight=

ReplicaX · Jun 12, 2015

Green Beret said:
Thanks.
I have swapped 2 more different C boards but it was the same. Also swapped a short A board and only that way it doesn't freeze.
The guy that fixed it, he also played his KOD and he had the same sprites missing. Then he swapped region to US or ETC, I am not sure which one, but no luck.
So the B board is not faulty either. Something else must be done.
So far it's the only game it is not the same with the original board on battery as far as I have encountered.
I also spoke with another member who has the game in ETC region. He has the same missing sprites.
Here is a thread he opened not long ago
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...-Reviving-the-CPS1-borad-questions&highlight=

Interesting, like busted I have used many of their fixes and had no issues. However, one of the games I haven't done is KoD.

Green Beret · Jun 12, 2015

ReplicaX said:
Interesting, like busted I have used many of their fixes and had no issues. However, one of the games I haven't done is KoD.

Two things are happening:
1.a better decryption patch is required to run this game with all features enabled.
or
2. maybe because my me EPROMs are not the original 27c4096 but instead they are 27c400.

ReplicaX · Jun 12, 2015

Green Beret said:
Two things are happening:
1.a better decryption patch is required to run this game with all features enabled.
or
2. maybe because my me EPROMs are not the original 27c4096 but instead they are 27c400.

Interesting, are the 27c400s around the same speed as the original 4096s?

CPS mobo differences & King of Dragons broken patches

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