Savage Reign home cart problems

[GohanX]

I've had this Savage Reign homecart for a while now that has lines in the screen but I've been too chicken to pop it open to try to troubleshoot. I finally got the proper tools and opened it (pretty easy as it turns out) to try to fix it. Everything is legit and it looks good. There were a few suspect solder joints and the connector was a little dirty so I thoroughly cleaned the connectors with Deoxit and I reflowed every through hole joint on the CHA board hoping it was just a cold solder joint somewhere. The game seems to play fine and there are no sound issues so I didn't mess with the PROG board at all. There is no corrosion on the PCBs at all and other than not working the cart is in great shape. I'm good with soldering and such but I don't know enough about how these carts actually work to go further in troubleshooting. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix it?

 

[ballzdeepx]

I had this with an AOF cart and it ended up being an adjustment to a pot inside the aes, I want to say it adjusted the crystal timing but can’t remember. I also had a SS2 cart that had this as well and never could fix it.

 

[GohanX]

I looked up my motherboard revision 3-6 and it looks like the only pot it has is TC1, which is a chroma adjustment for the video encoder. I don't have another home system to test the cart on, but it was given to me by another member as broken so it is more than just my system.

 

[Misos]

The Neo Geo Logo on the intro is stored in C1 so it's probably the culprit.
I had a similar problem with a Samurai Shodown 2.

 

[BIG BEAR]

Yeah,there is a problem on the CHA board.Hopefully it's not a bad rom..but if it is,you will have to replace with another original from an MVS cart or use an eprom.
BB

 

[GohanX]

I can't get my ancient crappy eprom burner to work with a current computer, so I'm getting Fox1 to send me a C1 eprom, let's see if that works. Thanks!

 

[GohanX]

Finally figured it out. I reflowed the rom chips before but I didn't touch the surface mount chips. I reflowed them both and now the cart works perfectly. The Neo-CMZ2 chip has some lines that run directly to C1, I suspect it was one of those pins.