PCB Repair Logs Ghost'n Goblins Bootleg

Ghost'n Goblins (Bootleg)

Ghost'n Goblins (Bootleg)

PCB Image	Reserved
Pin Out	Reserved

Repairer: GameDude
Forum Thread: Ghost'n Goblins (Bootleg) PCB Repair

Got this one from the same pile of PCB's as RYGAR. Its Ghost n Goblins and in my opinion bootleg or not damn worth spending the time to fix and I did.

To start with it was in a sorry state, bodgy repairs, PCB tracks that were vaporized by the touch of the last solder iron (this is more to do with the cheap PCb used by the bootleg), missing audio parts and half an AMP missing.

Start with the usual power up see whats happening and got a picture that composed of backgrounds only, no sprites and the foreground picture was fading in and out left to right. Sometimes there was just a shadow style edge and sometimes after warm up most of the text was there however only white. Of course no audio as well but I will deal with that later.

Started with the 2114 sprite ram in the middle of the video PCB (11e-12e-11h-12h-11j-12j), two had been poorly replaced but I left them for now and concentrated on the rest, they were all different indicating someone had a problem here before.

I piggybacked the ram and on one I got sprites back but with jailbar effect... a good start! I decided that someone elses crap repair was not worth relying on so I de-soldered all 6 2114's, checked continuity on all pins and wire bridged any damaged tracks as it happened only that previous repair was bad/damaged. I socketed all 6 and replaced with known good ram and got sprites back with no problems.

Ok moving on to the forground text I concentrated on the CPU PCB as its responsible for basic stuff like this, I used a scope to watch what was in the lines and looked for a signal similar to the distorted graphics. I found the signal near the main program ram opposite side to the audio, I traced it back through the circuit until I got to a 74LS157 (10c) third row in right where the audio is pins 1 and 2 were pulsing but pin 3 (output) was stuck high. Swapping had no effect so I went one up the chain from the output to a 74LS174 (4f) roughly in the middle of the PCB and swapped that and BINGO foreground text is back.

OK Problem 3 is the audio, one of the YM2203 (14e) was missing as well as one of the Y3014 op amp (14d) and the AMP itself, replaced all this but no audio - oops amp was in backwards an easy mistake when nothing is labeled on the PCB . OK Audio is OK for FM effects but crap for digital seems wrong, turned out the second Y3014 (13d) that was still on the PCB was totally dead, swapping that gave back all sound YAY!.

Problem 4 was strange, all color was OK except the lives and the weapon box was there but missing a color and was purple instead of white and browns, since this was part of the foreground I figured maybe still a bad chip or trace somewhere here, spent a few hours on the IC's and couldnt find anything wrong, on a hunch I decided to check the color ram 2148 and piggybacked a good ram on each in turn, on the middle 2148 ram (7d) I got a positive result so de-soldered and socketed the position and tried the new ram. New ram worked and I also now got the ram rom test screen on boot, I noticed in MAME it was there but not on the bootleg but put it down to maybe different rom set DOH! Well it works now.

Problem 5 showed up after a little playing I noticed just when you get to the area with the lifts a flash of yellow and sometimes some misplaced graphics showed, the misplaced graphics also affected the on screen interaction so I figured I will check the background ram but it seemed OK. Seeing as it works well up until then I figure maybe a ROM but if its bad it should always happen and it wasnt so I checked voltage on the PCB and had a .2volt drop from 4.85 to 4.65, a little to low so I wire linked GND and 5volt from the edge connector directly to the video PCB and now get a more healthy 4.8volts and no more problems

As it turns out one of the 2114's that was replaced by the last repair was totally dead so 2 of the 6 were bad.

It was a big job and took most of my Sunday but it is worth it for this game I think...

Update on that last problem, seems the V+ was not entirely the problem, it happens less but still there so time to check more IC. I started on the video board left side (background data) and given the problem and its intermittent behaviour decided to piggyback sections of LSxxx chips and see what happens. A positive result! no more background corruption on up/down scrolling, I played to the second level, there is a lift that goes up and down so while there I slowly removed the piggybacked chips till the problem happened.

As it turned out a LS157 @ 9c was the problem, it even compared OK in the comparitor... just flakey old crap I guess... anyway that last prob is now definately FIXED!

I also labeled all IC locations based on an original board which is pretty much the same except the bootleg is more spread out.

Repairer: Arcade King
Forum Thread: Ghost'n Goblins (Bootleg) PCB Repair

PCB looks like somebody had a previous shot at fixing the board(gun shot approach that is), so theres quite a few IC's already been replaced.

Board was dead with a blank screen blank screen. Immediately found dead chips 74ls74(F) @ 4M, 74ls08(F) @ 5L, 74ls00(F) @ F7, 74ls273(F) @ 8H and 2 X 74ls367(GSS) hex buffers (colour) @ 8A and C (these things almost blistered my finger!

At this point I've got a green screen with some random garbage for a few seconds when I turn it on.

I can't really find any other obvious fault at this point so I've decided to pull some of these Fujitsu 245's out to see if they come up good on my programmer. As I suspected H10 and 11 were both dead, replacing these the board boots up but im getting random crashes and garbage. Turning down the voltage I seem to get a longer run out of it. Looking at the schematics I decided to pull the 245 @ B3 although it tested ok once it warmed up it would fail. I'm starting to see a pattern with these (F)ucked) Fujitsu IC's so I'm going to replace the whole lot of the 245's just to play it safe, I know im only going to have to replace them down the track anyway. After replacing all of them the game is up and running with no sound.

Starting to get shitty with this board fix one problem and another chip fails right in front of my eyes.

Problem: Missing red out of the lower half of the GnG title and weapon box at the bottom of the screen wrong colour.
Fix: bad 74ls174(GSS) @ 4F

Problem: board just died with green screen.
Fix: Bad 74ls174(GSS) @ C3

Problem: Colour in Topscore text is randomly fluctuating from red to white.
Fix: Another bad 74ls174(GSS) @ 8F

Problem: all the text and GnG title is split in half and showing the top half at the bottom.
Fix: ANOTHER faulty 74ls174(GSS) @ E8. Pin 2 was stuck open (high) Starting to see a pattern with these 174's

Ok board seems stable time to look at that sound.

The YM2203C's and YM3014's were both already socketed so this should make life easier. Probing around I noticed the inputs were dead on one of the YM3014's, removed the YM2203 connected to it and I had sound FX, replaced the faulty YM2203 and while I got the music back only half of it was there. Problem turned out to be the YM3014.

I don't normally spend so much time on a PCB but I beleve this game is worth saving. As usual the majority of bad IC's were F chips but there were a few GSS's 174's in there also. Usually When an F chip dies the outputs just go dead so the GSS chips were a bit trickier to find. PCB seems to be 100%, will leave on on for a few hours to make sure nothing else shits itself.

BTW you can interchange the top and bottom board on this bootleg with an original Capcom PCB.

More Problems updated 19/feb/09

Problem: Title Screen graphics (high scores etc) colours flickering.
Fix: Traced the problem back to a bad 74LS194(GSS) @ D11, Replaced the other 74LS194(GSS) @ D10 just to be safe.

Problem: Game runs for a bit then crashes, when you try to turn it back on your get a "vram is bad error"
Fix: Sigh man by the time im finished with this board it will be completely rebuilt. Had a bad 74ls157 @ 5H, using the probe you could "hear" the chip failing. The outputs sounded sick, looked sick were sick. I ended up replacing all of the 157's just to be safe.

Problem: Problem to end all problems Game was running fine for awhile then died...again! Screen background covered in random garbage and foreground was mostly zeros (see attached pic no.2). When you turned on the board you could see the garbage in the background cycle like it was doing its self test so I assumed the program was running but halting with an error.
Fix: I spent 4 nights on this on and off the bloody thing was driving me nuts I couldn't put it down! (even though I said I threw it on my shit pile) I decided to remove all the chips i had socketed which was all the 245's. I also removed all the roms, main MC68B09P CPU and the 6264 and 6116 ram's. I was convinced the problem was had something to do with the character video ram. I poked around the 6116 with my scope and noticed some of the address were doing nothing, Using the schematics I traced it back to a set of 3 74ls157s (all of which I ended up replacing). I noticed pin 14 which is an input of the 157 @ 5H was sitting high. Using my probe and the schematics I traced the input (AB0) back to see what IC's its connected to. I immediately knew there was a problem when I traced it back to an 74ls245 @ N6 pin 11 which had already been replaced, with the chip removed pn 11 was sitting high when it should have been dead along with the rest of the row of pins on the socket (pins 11-18). I knew there must be a short somewhere. Going back to the schematics I traced AB0 through to a couple of other IC's, a 74ls259 @ B9 (pin1) and a 74ls138(GSS) @ A3 pin 1.

The 259 was an Hitachi brand and IMO they are a very robust (ive yet to find a dead one on any PCB I've worked on) The 138 was however a GSS which has been problematic through out my repair.

The 259 looks like it had been replaced previously so I went ahead and used my side cutters to cut pin one which is an input on the 138. Fired the board up and away she went! I really hate these sort of faults where an input shorts.

The 138 is part of the I/O Port so disabling it didn't stop the game from running. Replaced the 138 and the game has been runing for about 3 hours without a hitch.

Before I did this last repair I did replaced all the roms and CPU on the board, I noticed the Roms were getting VERY HOT to touch, not only the roms but the main CPU, the 2 Yamaha sound chips and the 245's were all hotter than they should be. Before finding the above fault I replacing all the Roms the board now runs nice and cool. I think this confirms this board had been spiked at some point. Even when I first got the board running the game would crash to a white screen at random, some time's I got an hour out of it other 10 seconds, anyway shes all fixed...for now

PS: I always try and replace faulty IC's with either Hitachi or Mitsubishi brad, I find these to be extremely well made.

Update: 21/2/09

Bloody thing developed another fault but really it was my fault for not replacing the IC anyway. Problem: Character sprites colours all messed up.

Fix: This was the last GSS branded 74ls174 @ H1 on the CPU board and stupid thing was I knew it was on the way out but forgot to replace it. As soon as i saw the graphics colours screw up I knew what the culprit was.

Back to PCB Repair Index