Plainville, MA
Okay, same issue others have had, but I'm not finding a lot of prism specific details on the net. I have Googled hard and Googled deep.
I have a Pin2k that has been rock solid reliable for years. Been running SWE1 for two years or so converted from RFM. Known good ROMs, etc. Stock computer and using a later model WG CRT. Occasionally the PC would fail to boot when the game was turned on (with fluo lit) and I'd have to fiddle with the PC's AT switch. That was a known issue for years.
Recently the video just flat out died. I saw no neck glow on the CRT at all, and since the CRT was a bit hacky and I hate working on them, I decided this was a good time to convert to LCD. I picked up a sync adapter dongle produced by a reputable Pinside member and paired it with the usual GBS-8220. I powered the GBS and the adapter off of a PCI USB card in the PC. Then I added the one known compatible network card and around that time the video stopped working. I measured power at the adapter at around 4.9v so I figured the power supply just wasn't cutting it for all of that added load. I replaced the power supply and removed the USB card switching to wall warts plugged into the wall for the adapter and GBS for testing purposes. Clean 5v to both, network card out, USB card out, no video.
The game does fully boot and is playable but there is no video coming through the GBS. It stays on No Signal. I can get into the menus just fine on the GBS.
This is where I start debugging. I started by replacing the power supply with a brand new AT because I don't know if that had ever been done. I pulled the prism card and booted to VGA. I can see the machine POST through the RAM test right up to the "no boot device" error. The motherboard looks good.
When I try to boot with the prism card in to the VGA I get the "out of sync" error you would expect. Still, I get no video through the adapter+converter so I have no idea what it's actually putting out. I have not yet replaced the motherboard 2032 or the prism card's battery but I'd be shocked if that made a difference.
There is an LED on the prism card. It appears to come on solid for the boot sequence and then starts blinking at a constant rate. No pattern to the blinking. I have Googled hard to find info on that LED's purpose and can't find anything. Is that a clue here?
Does anyone have any advice? I do have a WG arcade drop in LCD I could try to eliminate the conversion factor. I'm not sure if I would need to mod the original video cable, though. I'd have to look at the pinouts.
