4 Slot Crosshatch of Death, no battery leak

TravistyOJ

TravistyOJ

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So I just got a 4 slot in a big red version 3 cab, and after testing it on my bench, I got the crosshatch on all slots. So at first I thought some battery had exploded. I opened it up, and saw a battery I had never seen before. Judging from the way the cab looked, and how tight everything was mounted, I'm pretty sure this board had never been worked on, and that the battery was original. Have you guys ever seen this one? I also saw the BIOS was on an EPROM, not a PROM. Anyway, I've checked the board for broken traces, and nothing so far. Any ideas where I should start?
 

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skate323k137

skate323k137

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Definitely does not look like the original battery, but the battery is just for backup ram and isn't technically necessary anyway. Honestly you could remove it in the mean time, but I doubt it's the cause of your troubles.

I assume you cleaned the shit out of the slots and carts? Got a unibios laying around? all DIPs off?
 
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TravistyOJ

TravistyOJ

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Yeah, I'm gunna try Uni bios next, just gotta burn one. So it's possible it will boot with uni bios, or will unibios give me tools to understand whats going on?
 
skate323k137

skate323k137

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TravistyOJ said:
Yeah, I'm gunna try Uni bios next, just gotta burn one. So it's possible it will boot with uni bios, or will unibios give me tools to understand whats going on?
Click to expand...

It's possible it might give you some tools, and at least then you know it's a good bios. There's a thread on this forum for a debug bios too, though I've never had to use it. I'm sure someone with more knowledge than myself will chime in as well.
 
Xian Xi

Xian Xi

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TravistyOJ said:
Yeah, I'm gunna try Uni bios next, just gotta burn one. So it's possible it will boot with uni bios, or will unibios give me tools to understand whats going on?
Click to expand...

Burn the diagnostic bios, better than the Unibios for repair.
 
TravistyOJ

TravistyOJ

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OK, finally got my burner and adapter in, and burned the diagnostic rom, and it says all tests passed, but I still get nothing but the crosshatch. I burned a uni bios, and then when I hit D to go into Mem Viewer, I get a black screen.
 
Xian Xi

Xian Xi

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Razoola said:
If it helps here is a list of what causes the crosshatch, well there are only 3 possibilities.

1) The BIOS finds no game header or ID for every slot (this is the header at 0x100 in the game program rom).

2) The BIOS finds the header but the simple authenticity check fails (the authenticity check simply checks a set area in the game rom to see if it matches a set area in the bios).

- these 2 could be due to bad/dirty slot connections

3) The hardware port (68k writes to 0x380021) is broken. If this is the case the above 2 will fail also anyway. This port controls which slot is active however it does not default to slot 1 so when broken the 68k will see nothing where it expects to see the game code.

- im not sure how this port controls the hardware so I dont know where you will look if this is the issue.

Raz
Click to expand...

Also make sure you check the pinouts:
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...ut-(a-contribution-to-the-crosshatch-problem)

It's most likely a broken connection from top to bottom board so check the connector pinouts, I think it's for an MV4H which is the one with all the TTL chips on the top board.
 
A

Alpha Skyhawk

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Xian Xi said:
Also make sure you check the pinouts:
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...ut-(a-contribution-to-the-crosshatch-problem)

It's most likely a broken connection from top to bottom board so check the connector pinouts, I think it's for an MV4H which is the one with all the TTL chips on the top board.
Click to expand...

This helped me fix my 4 slot. I had all crosshatch due to a bad trace. It just popped up out of the blue one day, too. Probably a bad via. Jumper wire that crap if that's the problem, and you might find the MVS works better than anything you've ever used before.
 
TravistyOJ

TravistyOJ

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Thanks! I will trace the connections and see where it is broken. What's a via?
 
Tyranix95

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Remove the battery.

Separate the boards. And power up the bottom board. See what happens. Same screen?
 
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TravistyOJ

TravistyOJ

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I finally got off my ass to work on this board, and I just wanted to post a resolution in case it helps someone else.

As recommended, I checked the connections from CN10 to the actual IC's, and found A5, A6, A7, B5, B6, and B7 were not connected. They traces didn't look that bad, but apparently were cut. They are the six lines (3 distinct pairs) that run directly underneath the battery. I soldered wire from the CN10 solder joints on the bottom of the board to their respective IC pins (B7 2, 3, 4 and B9 18, 3, 16) to replace the cut traces, and BAM! 4 slot is back in action!

Thanks again for the help, and to MKL for documenting all those connections.
 
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