AES Boots Garbled/Reset then Fine - It also hates Pulstar (a lot)

yagamikun

Art of Typing Wiz
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2000
Posts
2,343
My AES has done this for quite some time. I'll boot it up and it will display a garbled mess of a screen. If I quickly turn it off then immediately back on, it boots normal. So long as it's been about 24 hours I won't run into the issue again, but if it sits for a bit it will come back.

My AES also hates Pulstar. I've had two copies this year, an Eprom conversion and currently an authentic, and they both produce the same error.

Usually around the end of stage 2 the game will freeze and flash a green rom error (unibios) telling me to clean my cartridge. I recently sold the conversion "as-is" because I thought the issue was the cart, but turns out it's just a thing with Pulstar as it happened to me today with my authentic. Happens with or without unibios cheats. This happens with no other game - and I have 64 to test it against.

I keep all my games super clean, and I recently cleaned my console's contacts with Deoxit so I know that's not the issue in this case.

The only other issue I know of with my console is the memory card slot trace on the board is broken as the console recognizes the card but I can't use it.

Console was modded with component video, s-video, stereo, unibios 4.0, reset light (not by me).

Any thoughts/help?
 
Last edited:

HeavyMachineGoob

My poontang misses Lenn Yang's wang
10 Year Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2011
Posts
5,813
Could be a power supply issue, or one of the work ram chips is going bad. Maybe both but that's unlikely.
 

Jonap

Mega Shock!!
Joined
Oct 10, 2006
Posts
100
Well before test more important thing like integrated chips try to clean slot cart of the machine with isopropilic alcohol in a old t-shirt with a credit card.
 

lilwashu

n00b
Joined
Sep 15, 2020
Posts
7
Mine did this - I replaced the PSU with a new aftermaket one and it fixed the problem. Further investigation revealed that one of the capacitors in the original was leaking badly, I replaced it which fixed the original PSU.
 

yagamikun

Art of Typing Wiz
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2000
Posts
2,343
Could be a power supply issue, or one of the work ram chips is going bad. Maybe both but that's unlikely.

Thanks! I had suspected it might be a PSU issue. I'm not terribly tech savvy when it comes to electronics repair (I can change a battery in a cartridge, that's about the extent of it), so I can't troubleshoot very well myself.
 

Neodogg

Dogg-Father,
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2002
Posts
5,588
Could always get in touch with James or BigBear to help...
 

yagamikun

Art of Typing Wiz
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2000
Posts
2,343
Could always get in touch with James or BigBear to help...

Aye, I'll most likely do that. BB was a huge help recently with a game I got in that was busted. Wanted to see if anybody else had run into the issue to get a possible diagnosis.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2001
Posts
349
See if you can run Neo Turf Masters without issue. If my suspicions are correct, you might get a similar failure with it.
 
Top