(Topic ID: 235154)

Lethal Weapon - No game DMD, only rom version showing, MPU fault

By Cathaldub

5 years ago


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  • 13 posts
  • 3 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 5 years ago by lucky1
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#1 5 years ago

So I picked up this LW3 a few months ago, it didn’t boot at all, I recapped the PSU board and all my voltages are now spot on, game booting but no sound or DMD.
I downloaded Leon’s test Rom and powered up my MPU board with an external supply and narrowed down to 2 dead PIAs (9B and 7B), I socketed both of these and the game now boots, all sound working, but still no dmd, I done some testing on the DMD controller board and while waiting on some chips, I borrowed a known working dmd controller(thanks bigian) so now I get second of gibberish when I unplug the ribbon from the cpu board.
I noticed a small crack on the DMD so ordered a pinballsp colour dmd.
So I’ve installed it and I can now see the gibberish is actually the DMD Rom version. I’ve reburnt all roms, I’ve swapped the ribbon with one from my other pin, ive checked all traces from the PIA to the ribbon connector. The only thing suspect there seemed to be that some of the resistor networks(ra21,22,21)are reading a bit low.
My CPU Rom is the latest 2.08 and my Display Rom is also the latest 2.06
I’ve no idea where to go from here.
Here is a quick video

#2 5 years ago

With the LEON ROM installed I've tested the output of CN22

Pin 1 Ground

Pin 2 High

PIN 3-10 all pulse high/low

PIN 11-26 all high (I'm thinking these should also be pulsing? these are coming from PIA at 9B, I've ruled the chip out by swapping with another socketed PIA)

I've traced pins 11-26 to either 5E(LS245), 5D(CMOS RAM 2064)

#3 5 years ago

Retested all PIAs, all check out
Swapped out the socketed chips
CMOS 6024 ram, no change
6808 had one bent pin, I thought wahoo, but alas, no change
I've tried different versions of the CPU rom 2.05 and 2.08, no change
I think it either has to be a rom compatibility issue so I'll burn some previous versions of the display roms tonight or the LS245 at 5E

#4 5 years ago

Check wether the reset line on the data bus keeps pulsing.

A shame that you most likely never will be able to use this colorization for LW3

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pin2dmd-running-on-an-alternative-device#post-4663688

#5 5 years ago

Is the port not likely to be released? If I get the DMD working at all I’ll be happy.
So I went back to basics and tested all the PIA outputs again using Leon Rom and all outputs on PIA 9B are still stuck high, I previously socketed this chip and replaced as this was one of the original faults, I guess I thought the new chip fixed it as the game booted. So not sure how I go about tracing back from here to figure out where the fault lies but at least I’ve an idea now if any logic/circuit diagram experts could help that’d be great

#6 5 years ago

Do you have any system 11 pins that you can test the MPU in? Reason being that all the PIA outputs on that drive discrete segments on the system 11 displays. This would make it way easier to see if 1 or more PIA outputs isn't making it to the display driver.

Eprom rev difference probably aren't at play here. The Display driver will boot and show it's rom revision then if the MPU has booted correctly it will display it's rom version. Not getting the MPU rom revision to show is likely a missing bit of data from the MPU board.

Normally on system 11's the ribbon cable as well as the 3 connectors to the right of it drive the displays. The DE DMD games only drive data to the display from the ribbon cable but still has a couple wires on those 3 connectors to the right. After many years of working on these I've never bothered to see what those couple of wires drive. Maybe one of those is connected to something that is causing an issue on the PIA that drives the displays

#7 5 years ago
Quoted from Cathaldub:

Is the port not likely to be released? If I get the DMD working at all I’ll be happy.

We could release the pin2dmd firmware for MK66 instantly if Luis from pinballSP would provide the necessary information to pack the firmware for the utasker bootloader (https://github.com/uTasker/uTasker-Kinetis) he uses. He activated the encryption option of utasker for his firmware files and as long as we don´t have the encryption parameters (key, prime and shift value) the upgrade process is not very user friendly and also not reversable. Maybe it helps if you ask him.

Are you sure you did not kill the PIA again. I killed 3 pieces of them developing the 128x16 pin2dmd color display for my checkpoint through a missing ground connection to my external power supply They seem to be very sensible. You should try to check wether your dataeast dmd controller is working properly by testing it in a different machine and narrow down the problem that way.

#8 5 years ago
Quoted from kbliznick:

Do you have any system 11 pins that you can test the MPU in? Reason being that all the PIA outputs on that drive discrete segments on the system 11 displays. This would make it way easier to see if 1 or more PIA outputs isn't making it to the display driver.
Eprom rev difference probably aren't at play here. The Display driver will boot and show it's rom revision then if the MPU has booted correctly it will display it's rom version. Not getting the MPU rom revision to show is likely a missing bit of data from the MPU board.
Normally on system 11's the ribbon cable as well as the 3 connectors to the right of it drive the displays. The DE DMD games only drive data to the display from the ribbon cable but still has a couple wires on those 3 connectors to the right. After many years of working on these I've never bothered to see what those couple of wires drive. Maybe one of those is connected to something that is causing an issue on the PIA that drives the displays

Thanks for your post, I do actually have a system11 game sitting right next to it, I'll try what you suggested here

#9 5 years ago
Quoted from lucky1:

We could release the pin2dmd firmware for MK66 instantly if Luis from pinballSP would provide the necessary information to pack the firmware for the utasker bootloader (https://github.com/uTasker/uTasker-Kinetis) he uses. He activated the encryption option of utasker for his firmware files and as long as we don´t have the encryption parameters (key, prime and shift value) the upgrade process is not very user friendly and also not reversable. Maybe it helps if you ask him.
Are you sure you did not kill the PIA again. I killed 3 pieces of them developing the 128x16 pin2dmd color display for my checkpoint through a missing ground connection to my external power supply They seem to be very sensible. You should try to check wether your dataeast dmd controller is working properly by testing it in a different machine and narrow down the problem that way.

I'll ask him, maybe the more people that do the better.
I’ve a loan of a known working DMD controller in it at the moment. So I’m positive that is working.
If I swap the PIA that controls the audio with the one for the display the audio still works, so I was assuming the PIA isn't the issue, I have ordered a couple of spare PIAs just to have for future use.
I’ll check the reset pin on PIA(9B) later.

#10 5 years ago

Reset pin 34 is high.

#11 5 years ago

Broken trace on the 5v of pin20 VCC.
Sometimes the fix is so obvious you miss it
Thanks for all the suggestions, now on to finishing the restore.
C9A7DFEC-3242-4D04-B734-65BBD81B607B (resized).jpegC9A7DFEC-3242-4D04-B734-65BBD81B607B (resized).jpeg

#12 5 years ago
Quoted from lucky1:

We could release the pin2dmd firmware for MK66 instantly if Luis from pinballSP would provide the necessary information to pack the firmware for the utasker bootloader (https://github.com/uTasker/uTasker-Kinetis) he uses. He activated the encryption option of utasker for his firmware files and as long as we don´t have the encryption parameters (key, prime and shift value) the upgrade process is not very user friendly and also not reversable. Maybe it helps if you ask him.

He said

That is an illegal activity, an unauthorized firmware that supposes the immediate loss of the warranty of the product and of any type of support.

Illegal

#13 5 years ago

That is an illegal activity, an unauthorized firmware that supposes the immediate loss of the warranty of the product and of any type of support.

Which support Almost no change from the initial version except fixing sync issues.

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