Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, The
Data East, 1993DMD driver and power supply both Rottendog. Stays on for 30 seconds until score comes up and then goes blank. It will intermittently come on at beginning of each ball and show the score but never any animations and only lasts 5 seconds then. In diagnostic mode screens seems to have possible corruption. Not sure what is going on. Bad cable ?
IMG_6259 (resized).JPG
IMG_6260 (resized).JPG
IMG_6258 (resized).JPG
Ok I can officially rule out the data cable as I replaced that without effect. So the display isn't resetting during the game or else I would see the rom reset message. Similarly it doesn't seem to be just dying as I can go into adjustment mode. I suspect the power is ok as voltages check out and it is running off of a Rottendog DMD driver and a Rottendog power supply. Nevertheless after getting to the score it goes blank, no animations, or anything except when moving to the next ball wherein it briefly again flashes the score. Anyone have any ideas ? Is this a bad DMD rom, a bad game rom on the MPU. Otherwise the game plays as expected with respect to sound and playfield lights. So I'm at a loss here as to what the heck is going on and I don't have a replacement DMD to throw in there to further diagnose
Ok here is my guess: the PIA is bad on the MPU board leading to this intermittent functioning. Some data must be getting from MPU to DMD driver or else there would be no correct score. But it must be choking on the higher data rate animations. I don't have a replacement MPU board to test. I can buy one but that's an expensive test. Any other ideas here ? Will the data east test eprom give me he proper yes/no answer ?
Quoted from pookycade:Ok I can officially rule out the data cable as I replaced that without effect.
Sounds like you replaced one ribbon cable. Was it the one from the MPU to the DMD controller board or the small one from the DMD controller board to the DMD? Or both? Either one can cause issues.
If you did not change the small one from the DMD controller to the DMD, you can take the one out of one of your Bally/Williams games and use for testing, even though it is 3 feet longer than it needs to be just to rule it out.
Quoted from pookycade:I don't have a replacement DMD to throw in there to further diagnose
You sure could swap the DMD from STTNG, Dr Who, WCS94, Fish Tales, or even JD if you have an original orange plasma DMD to use for testing. They are all universal, even though the brand name on the DMD may be different. Personally, I don't think it is a DMD. Or remove the DMD out of the R&B and put it in any of those games.
If all else fails, need to test out the DMD controller and/or DMD controller in someone's else's game. Doesn't have to be a R&B, just as long as it is a 128x32 DMD game.
Quoted from PinballManiac40:Sounds like you replaced one ribbon cable. Was it the one from the MPU to the DMD controller board or the small one from the DMD controller board to the DMD? Or both? Either one can cause issues.
If you did not change the small one from the DMD controller to the DMD, you can take the one out of one of your Bally/Williams games and use for testing, even though it is 3 feet longer than it needs to be just to rule it out.You sure could swap the DMD from STTNG, Dr Who, WCS94, Fish Tales, or even JD if you have an original orange plasma DMD to use for testing. They are all universal, even though the brand name on the DMD may be different. Personally, I don't think it is a DMD. Or remove the DMD out of the R&B and put it in any of those games.
If all else fails, need to test out the DMD controller and/or DMD controller in someone's else's game. Doesn't have to be a R&B, just as long as it is a 128x32 DMD game.
Yes I pulled a DMD 10 pin cable from my Congo to the R+B and same thing. Also swapped the Congo DMD to my R+B and same problem. SOOOO it's either the MPU or the Rottendog DMD controller on the R+B. If I had another data east game it would be an easy diagnostic. But I don't. So I'm kinda stuck unless I just go buy something.
Quoted from pookycade:SOOOO it's either the MPU or the Rottendog DMD controller on the R+B.
Two options. Send the two boards out for test/repair to ChrisHibler or test the two boards out in a friend's machine.
For grins, can you post a picture of the Rottendog DMD controller board? Just wanted to see how the board is configured. Do you have the original DMD controller board?
At this point, I would not buy another board.
Ok I'm gonna answer my own question for posterity. Doesn't seem to be much that people know about these data east DMDs from my perusal of other threads.
Anyway, I purchased the Data East MPU Test EPROM from EBay (also available on Marco). By flash codes PIA4 at position 9B is a fail. So the issue is the MPU after all. Will reach out to Chris and see if he can repair. I can do it too but it will be more of a mess than if he does.
So basically you can get many aspects of the display that look correct (correct score, credits and ball comes up intermittently) and still have a bad PIA on the MPU board. I suspect some text and score animation is held in rom on the DMD controller itself.
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rocky-and-bullwinkle-flaky-dmd and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.
Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.
