AES 3-4 Intermittent Sound Issues

sabre470

n00b
Joined
Jul 5, 2005
Posts
11
Hey Folks,

I have an AES 3-4 that is slightly puzzling me.

It's had intermittent issues with sound since I bought it a few years ago. Initially most of the time the console would boot without sound but after a few restarts/resets it would boot with sound and work for the rest of the day with no issues even if I swap carts. Rarely the sound would work but fade away after 20-30 minutes.

6-9 months ago I installed a Unibios on it and right after the installation the console booted with sound and work perfectly for a number of months.

Recently during game night with a mate, the problem re-occurred and sound wouldn't work at all until the last game when I reset the console and the sound came back... the console had been running for 3-4 hours by then.

I tried 6-7 different carts and problem occurs with all of them.

Again tonight I wanted to play a little and it's only after a few hours that the sound worked as if by magic.

Tonight I tried to do a bit of diagnostic, Unibios tells me in the Jukebox player "error starting sound". Without a cart I get a white screen. Neo diagnostic tells me I have a Z80 error comm issue...

At the moment I have KOF94 running perfectly for the past 30 minutes with sound and I can play no problem.

I suspect a capacitor issue since I get sound when the console is warm but that's really my candid view and the caps on the board don't look too bad, at least no visible leaks.

Any thoughts?
 
Last edited:

GohanX

Horrible Goose
20 Year Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2001
Posts
12,490
Yeah, you can't tell by visual inspection if a cap is bad. Just because it's not bulging and leaking doesn't mean that it's still doing its job.
 
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