A couple weeks back I gave in to the arcade urges I’ve been holding back since the late 90s when I sold off my massive collection and bought two 25" cabinets… a CPS2 cabinet with MSHvSF and a four slot Neo Geo cabinet.
The CPS2 cabinet worked great… but I’m not much for the Versus series so I bought an ST board and a Puzzle Fighter board. The Puzzle Fighter board came today, I shut off the cabinet, swapped the boards, and turned it on. It made all the noises it typically makes, the fan on the bottom of the main board was spinning the cabinet was making its normal low hum, but there was nothing on the screen. I took the Puzzle Fighter board out and put the MSHvSF board back on… again… nothing.
I took that board off, cleaned off all the dust from both boards and tried both of them again… nothing.
I then took a Point Blank board and hooked it up to the JAMMA connection… works!
Any ideas as to what’s wrong? Any ideas as to how to fix it?
Probably something wrong with the connection, either between the A & B boards or with the JAMMA harness. I doubt both boards would die at the same time and even then you’d see a colored screen.
Make sure the boards are pressed together tightly and that the JAMMA harness is hooked up the right way & firmly to the A board. Other than that I don’t know.
While I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a case of it, it’s certainly not impossible that an A board could die. These are electronic components, and are getting onto 15+ years old. Nothing lasts forever, unfortunately.
I would at least pull the A board apart and use some canned air or a shop vac (if you have one handy) to blow off 15 years worth of accumulated dust, including the connectors, as Burning Vigor suggested. Make sure you’re plugging the JAMMA connector in the right direction too (probably not worth mentioning, but I mention it anyway).
It sounds to me like you have some bent pins. Take the A board out and look at all the pins and make sure they are all in good shape. If one is bent take some thin plyers and gently bend it back into position. DO NOT PULL on it you have a good chance of breaking it all together.
I think your problem is very simple: you need to push the A and B boards together VERY HARD. I got freaked out when I first got my supergun setup because things were working fine and then all of a sudden didn’t. Now when I change boards, I always assume it won’t work the first time I start it up; if it’s doesn’t work, I just push the boards together harder and bingo.
The board was mounted vertically with the mainboard fan at the bottom… I ended up unmounting it, laying it flat, and pushing really hard and that fixed it…
Now I just have to tweak the color on this old monitor so you can differentiate green and yellow easier.
