Space Firebird issues

[virtvic]

I got a Space Firebird cocktail at my place at the moment (looking after it for a mate)

We plugged it in and there was just a bit of garbage on the screen.

I removed the boards and reseated all the socketed chips, the game nearly plays now, but the sprites and game screen seem to be squashed onto the left hand side of the screen, but the star field is in the proper place (covering the screen) There are no bullets either from player or firebirds.

I also changed the ribbon cables for known working ones.

Any ideas? - remember my fixing skills are limited to the above, plus replacing parts (soldering)

Cheers

V

 

[trm]

Hi dude,

I presume you've checked the voltage reaching the ICs? Could you upload a pic of the game as-is? When you shoot do you get invisible bullets (able to kill anything) or is there absolutely nothing?

cheers

 

[virtvic]

I haven't checked the voltages yet, should have been the 1st thing

The invisible bullets do kill the evil firebirds, and theirs kill me.

I'll vid the game "working" tomorrow,, just been on a monitor pickup run.

Thanks.

 

[virtvic]

Here it is - the split is always on the left (and on p2 side of the cocktail)
If you go all the way to the right, you go thru the screen and come out on the left.

It's not a monitor problem, as the star field is all over the screen.

It's like the play area has been squished onto the lh side?

 

[trm]

Have you got a pic of the full monitor screen so I can see the fault in context? From your description it sounds like the part of the video hardware which draws the display has a duff counter or timing signal in there somewhere. Have you been able to locate any schematics for this?

And have you got a logic probe yet sunshine?

 

[PaulSwan]

From what I remember about Space Firebird, the video hardware is none-trivial to understand and it has some uncommon video RAM. I'd go with a scope/logic probe and see if you get lucky spotting any dead video counter, address & data lines.

 

[virtvic]

I have got a logic probe - never used it!
I couldn't check the voltages at the ic,s as the boardset is very hard to get to when it's all plugged in. It has about 8 connectors and a ribbon connecting it all together. As you can imagine (in a cocktail) there's no mushroom!

I just found the Gremlin/Sega schematics - are they the same?

 

[virtvic]

I'll try and get a video of it tomorrow...

 

[virtvic]

cheers

V

 

[guddler]

Hmm, that's foo'barr'd

[EDIT] Ok, I'll be slightly more helpful!! Can you make a jamma loom? If you could make a jamma loom and we know we have schematics then I'd be happy to have a nose. Never looked at one of them before!

Unfortunately, without a Jamma loom, I have literally dozens if not hundreds of other PCBs need looking at that I should be making jamma looms up for and fixing first...guddler2011-06-29 00:50:03

 

[virtvic]

Well, there are a million, if not 2 million cable bundles on that damn board and the machine isn't even mine!

My mate was going to jamma it anyway, but it seems such a shame as it's a nice game when it works...

I'll have a quick look on crazykong and see how many essential bits need wiring up.

 

[virtvic]

Would it be acceptable to carefully hard wire it to a jamm, so I don't have to wire up all those damn sockets? If so, I'll try and get round to it soon.

 

[virtvic]

I shoved my multimeter in the power lines earlier and they are 5.1v - I can't get to an ic to measure it properly, due to no space in the cocktail cab.

 

[guddler]

Would it be acceptable to carefully hard wire it to a jamm, so I don't have to wire up all those damn sockets?  If so, I'll try and get round to it soon.

Err, no since it'll never fit back in the proper connectors again. Well, saying that, I've no idea what kind of connectors we're talking about here, but I'd still say no!

Having had a look at the owners manual I think you'd only need to make up three of the connectors, the power to the CPU board, the power to the video board and the output from the video board. Which looks like it may be inverted. but the inverter board only shows a 74LS04 and three 22 Ohm resistors so that's not insurmountable!

Out of interest, what kind of connectors are they? I can't make out from the pictures I can find on the internet.

 

[virtvic]

What I could do, is just make up the wire sockets and use them individually on the relevant pins? Then I could just whip them off afterwards? I'll take a bunch of pictures tomorrow. Off to the I.O.W in a minute. Cheers.

 

[system11]

My mate was going to jamma it anyway

I do wish people would stop vandalising original cabs. Hope you get it fixed, might save it from a mauling.

 

[P-Man]

I have a proper space firebird jamma loom, as well as working pcbs if you want the pcb fixing or make a working cab.

Don't jamma it, the monitor uses negative RGB anyway so you'll need an RGB inverter too.

Gudd - it uses connectors that you only find on nintendo pcbs, you can't get them anywhere, and you can't modify anything else to plug into them. talk about proprietory. Donkey kong has them too if you're familiar with that pcb.

P-Man2011-07-02 14:32:13