161 in 1 MVS Cart Resetting / Glitching – My Board?

Joined
May 20, 2019
Posts
20
I ordered the notoriously-poorly-QA'ed 161-in-1 MVS cart from AliExpress and it seems to have an number of issues: While some games will boot and run fine (Thrash Rally, Neo Bomberman, Neo Mr Do!), most don't start at all or boot with glitched graphics then reset.

I've taken a partial refund, so I'm wondering if I could fix this. Anyone else know of similar problems?

I've tried a few things:

  • Reseating the cart in the MVS / cart shell.
  • Looking for bridged pins with a loupe.
  • Checked caps (only with a multimeter, not an ESR test).
  • Adding a 100uF cap to the regulator output.
  • Taped down the ROMs in case of bad BGA soldering.

It's worth noting that this revision of the board (v3?) has the bridged pins on the PCB, so the 161 in 1 stability fix thread isn't needed.

I suspect one of three things may be wrong: Power, ROMs or my MVS.

What's interesting is that the fault is somewhat intermittent. E.g. sometimes Neo Turf Masters loads to a black screen, other times to grabbled colors. Sometimes I can get a couple minutes of play on Neo Drift Out! while other times it resets on coin drop.

Any thoughts on what I should try next?

As a note: My MVS (MV-1A) has GA11 NEO-BUF bypassed like this: https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=File:Neo-buf_bypass.jpg As this buffer is for the data bus could it be the problem? The board works fine with a legit Metal Slug 2 (only other cart I own).

Thanks for any advice!
 

segasonicfan

Camel Slug
Joined
Feb 3, 2006
Posts
517
Sounds most likely it's just corrupted ROMs. Though it wouldn't hurt to check the output voltage for your 5v and 3.3v rails. The earlier version sends 4.2v to the audio CPLD which I've always found puzzling. But it sounds like you have a later version anyway.

From what I've read these use repurposed and reprogramed ROMs so there's not much you can do to fix that until someone figures out the way to program them.
 
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a4ndr3c

n00b
Joined
Dec 30, 2019
Posts
6
I'm on exact situation as you willbot2000, Same board and even with the same neobuf bypass. Yesterday I beat Metal Slug 2 on a legit cart just like yours and no problem. Did you buy your 161-in1 cart from ebay?
 

dj-ad

n00b
Joined
Sep 26, 2019
Posts
22
Did you manage to solve your issue ? I’m having sometimes similar crashes, sometimes i’m caught by the Unibios 4.0 bios memory error handling screen.
 

a4ndr3c

n00b
Joined
Dec 30, 2019
Posts
6
I don't own a Unibios, but the problem continues. Asked for a partial refund from the ebay seller also. I've painted the shell black and made a custom label because I hate the banana style lol so no return option for me. One thing I notice also is that old games ,like the OP, Viewpoint and such works fine and no reboots.
 
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