hmm, video troubles... *solved*

[bartre]

so, here's the skinny -
i've got a PCE briefcase setup with a coregrafx and regular PCE drive in it, and an arcade card PRO to top it off.
thing works great, outside of two games: Sapphire (a bootie that byron gave me), and Fausette Armor.
both games are giving me different issues.
Sapphire's issue is simple, it won't load level 1, it freezes the frame before the "1" in "STAGE - 1" appears, but music is running.
Fausette Armor's issue is a little less so, sometimes it stops before the cutscene when you start a new game, and gives me a noise similar to a gong.
other times, i get into the game, but it looks as if ~5 pixels on the main character's sprite are flashing between white and the color they're supposed to be, with occasional graphical glitches that are again, specific to the main characer, all BG and enemy sprites display properly at all times.

I can say with some certainty that this issue is not the fault of my CD drive, as i lugged out every single other CD game i own and it played all those perfectly, even my garbage copy of Nekketsu Soccer.

my real question is, could this be the fault of my arcade card?

[majors]

Sapphire's issue is simple, it won't load level 1, it freezes the frame before the "1" in "STAGE - 1" appears, but music is running.

What other ACD games have you tried? Any mod's to the system? After my region hack for my PCE Duo, I had issue with Arcade Card games, but I've been to lazy to troubleshoot it.

[burn_654]

There was a single laser pot on my Duo that I had to tweak to stop graphics corruption in Dracula X cinema, and the Gate of Thunder 4 in 1 'zoom' intro. I forget which one but it seemed relevant to data/error correction loading off the disc.

I could look in my Duo tonight and determine which one but I'm not sure it'd be relatable to a briefcase setup. But a look at the calibration would be my recommendation. My glitch more often than not looked like it was loading wrong/corrupt tiles.

[Fidde_se]

Hi, I have a Briefcase giving me exactly this, if I change everything except the briefcase it still shows (CD-ROM2, PCE, CDCard), and if I change the briefcase it goes away so it's definitely the briefcase, all around it's bulletproof built but it has a weakness, the briefcase is mostly circuits for audio mixing, extra memory (ram), and memory for storage (saves), there are extra ram in your arcade card and it could be the one gone bad but less likely (easy test by trying another System Card), so I would guess it's the ram in the IFU that starts to deteriorate,
It would only need one or a few internal transistors failing to create it, and these circuits are getting old, other more mass produced
circuits are less likely to fail, most of the standard ones are still in production today while these ram circuits are long gone in production.

IC102 M5M5256BFP-70 (Mitsubishi) SO28 SMD / 262144-Bit 32768-Word by 8Bit S-RAM
IC103 M5M5256BFP-70 (Mitsubishi) SO28 SMD / 262144-Bit 32768-Word by 8Bit S-RAM

Located on the RAM Board.

I can only see it as giving me weird distorted pixels in the cinema sequence of Rondo X, so it's not that annoying, none in gameplay.
The circuits are probably storing the data parts of the cinema sequence in a certain part of the ram not usually used in game and therefore
not seen otherwise, if a game would use those bits the information would probably get distorted too.

One day I will see if I can't get any NOS circuits and install and see if that fixes it and then we'll know for sure.

[SignOfZeta]

I would guess that the Arcade Card isn't seated correctly, is dirty, or is bad. Sapphire (and Mad Stalker) is the most temperamental AC game. Do you have any other system card that will run Fausette Armor? If a regular Super System card runs it then you'll know its the AC.

[bartre]

nah, all i've got the the arcade card, i tried cleaning it.
but seeing as this issue just popped up after i did the region mod, i'm wondering, could it be that the AC isn't getting enough power?
i tapped 5v from the huey slot for the region mod.

[BlueBMW]

Some have mentioned that could be a possible cause of the problem... you could try tapping the 5V directly off the 7805 regulator instead.

[bartre]

alright, i'll give that a shot.
it only occurred to me when i was playing sapphire in the import room at MGC this year, oddly enough.

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, voltage drop irks the AC, even really really small amounts. This is why Sapphire doesn't work so well with converters.

[thesteve]

i have yet to see an AC act up from a region mod.
what mod do you have?

[bartre]

region mod is the only one, put one of beemer's chips in myself.

[thesteve]

well i havent seen a card have a prob with it, but its possible

[bartre]

and thanks to beemer's tip, problem solved.
looks like it was a simple voltage drop.