Japan MVS Garou glitchy control problem. Solved

I got an MVS Japanese Garou (green box) from a neo-geo forum member who has a long standing.

The cart doesn't have much trouble booting up, and the graphics and sound work great, but the matches are always set to ten seconds and the controls are messed up (A = crouch, B = strong kick, C&D do nothing). Very weird. At any rate, I open the cart and took some pics. I am still pretty new to the Neo scene and while I know some things to look for when identifying a boot (EP roms, non-SNK chips), I do not know if these things guarantee it's a boot. So please take a look and give me some pointers. Also, it looks covered in flax (is that what the stuff used with solder is called?), which might be a dead giveaway. I suppose that wire shouldn't be there also. Well, I just wanted to be sure.

Thanks!

Well, I was going to say it looked legit (Amano Jacu has a very similar-looking one), but the control stuff has me stumped.

a.) Maybe your MVS' previous owner had changed MOTW's settings to that before selling it to you, but you didn't put in enough games to get rid of Garou's settings, and now it's back?

b.) Are you sure your controls are wired well? And they your mobo is getting enough power.

If I had to go out on a limb, I would say that I think it is legit, but that perhaps some of the program code is corrupted (EPROMS can have "bit-rot" but it takes a few years... then again, MOTW is a 5-year-old game now...).

But don't hold me to that.

legit, 100%

Well, I guess I'm glad to here it's legit. But I'm still at a problem.

Dan, I've played many games on my MVS and none have had control issues. And I believe an MVS can only store save data for about 6 games (and I've played plenty more), however, when I looked at the soft dip settings, they were not of default, and some of them even seemed a little messed up (such as options you shouldn't be able to choose). More on that later.

Thanks for the help, any ideas as to what my problem is are welcome.

Have you got Razoola's unibios? Would be interesting to see what the cart check says about this...

No, my system is an old 4 slot MVS with no new bios installed. Do legit carts become corupted offen?

Mad Mage said:

No, my system is an old 4 slot MVS with no new bios installed. Do legit carts become corupted offen?

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Not usually with solid-state ROMs, but EPROMs (the chips with the window) have a shot at getting corrupted. See, they're erased using UV rays, so that's why the window's there (there's a high-intensity UV "gun" of sorts that's normally used to clear them). Perhaps some sunlight got in the area not covered by the sticker and messed with it...

It'd have to be in direct sunlight for a very long time....

Well, the forum member who sold it to me says he had no problem with it. I think he said he was using it on a supergun or a phantom. I'll try it out on the MVS at my work. If I get the same problem, I'll at least know that it probably doesn't work with any MVS systems.

I'll likely be returning it unless someone can figure this out. Thanks again for any help.

I had one with the exact same control problems once.. check the dips to make sure they are all off, but I know it didn't fix it for me. I think it had to do with the mvs board.. it worked on another.

So you had the exact same problem and the cart worked on a different system?

So what would your advice to me be? Give up on this cart and buy, say an English version of the game and hope it works?

Mad Mage said:

So you had the exact same problem and the cart worked on a different system?

So what would your advice to me be? Give up on this cart and buy, say an English version of the game and hope it works?

Click to expand...

Simple problem, your work ram is corrupt... easy fix. Turn off the MVS. Flip all dip switches to on and then turn the MVS back on. You will see a WORK RAM TEST message on the screen. Wait about 15 seconds, then turn the MVS back off. Reset your dips the way you like them and power the MVS back on... you should be good to go,

-Nick

Nruva, you are the MAN! I am extremely grateful. I consider myself indebted to you.

All is good folks. Oh, and you probably all already know this, but I just found out: The Neo MotW beats the hell out of the Dreamcast port!

What were those extra options in there that you didn't think you could normally change??

DanAdamKOF said:

What were those extra options in there that you didn't think you could normally change??

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The entries are pure garbage, sometimes they contain some readable text, but usually they are entries from other games. This happens when a section of work ram memory becomes corrupt and the game can not properly write/read to the memory. The fix I stated above simply wipes out and resets the work ram memory.

-Nick