I got a VB in from a PVB member with a very strange problem, it works fine with all the games he and I can throw at it, except for Bound High! which is for certain a problem with the mainboard.

I swapped out the displays with a VB head unit I have and the displays do not give problems, while my displays do show the same problem on the VB unit I received to repair.
The problem is that when the precaution texts are supposed to show, both screens just display a full red screen and text cannot be read in other parts of the game. I tested it with a Flashboy (non plus version) and repro copy of Bound High! and both had the same problem.

Does anyone here have an idea what it could be?

I’m a little bit confused with what you wrote, but the issue is related to bad connectors on the eye pieces due to how BH works. I think there was a thread about this already. Search for Bound High and it should come up.

Wyndcrosser wrote:
I’m a little bit confused with what you wrote, but the issue is related to bad connectors on the eye pieces due to how BH works. I think there was a thread about this already. Search for Bound High and it should come up.

Well, it most definitely isn’t that, the display units were fine in another VB unit. But thanks for the input!

Not being a hardware guy but a software one. If I saw the issue while coding id guess there was something wrong with character or bgmap memory areas.

Greg Stevens wrote:
Not being a hardware guy but a software one. If I saw the issue while coding id guess there was something wrong with character or bgmap memory areas.

That of course could very well be, Bound High! could use more of the RAM available than those other games and if that part of the RAM would be corrupted, this will only show up in that case.

Thanks for your input as well 😉

I believe Wyndcrosser was talking about this thread. Is this the actual VB you’re having trouble with? Back then, I also thought it might be a very specialized cable glitch problem, but that’s been eliminated, obviously.

It has to be something like Greg mentioned; damage related to video RAM or the VIP itself. However, rather than actual damaged parts, it could be as simple as a short between some of the upper address lines, which would cause only certain areas of memory to be affected. Maybe a thorough wash with IPA (isopropyl alcohol) and/or ultrasonic vibration, followed by drying in a hot oven (with gradual warm-up and cool-down to prevent thermal shock to the parts), would solve it.

RunnerPack wrote:
I believe Wyndcrosser was talking about this thread. Is this the actual VB you’re having trouble with? Back then, I also thought it might be a very specialized cable glitch problem, but that’s been eliminated, obviously.

It has to be something like Greg mentioned; damage related to video RAM or the VIP itself. However, rather than actual damaged parts, it could be as simple as a short between some of the upper address lines, which would cause only certain areas of memory to be affected. Maybe a thorough wash with IPA (isopropyl alcohol) and/or ultrasonic vibration, followed by drying in a hot oven (with gradual warm-up and cool-down to prevent thermal shock to the parts), would solve it.

Yes, that is the VB I was talking about and it is already on its way to him. I acquired two VB’s through eBay a month ago and used one of its mainboards to swap. So now he can finally play BH! without issues.

Too bad I do not have equipment to perform ultrasonic vibration to test your proposed process.

Seems I totally forgot about that thread, have been pretty swamped with stuff lately, working two very different jobs and have had a lot of extra curricular activities to boot!

I will totally admit, that I did not read the entire post. Like I said it confused me slightly, so it sounded somewhat similar to the other issue reported. Thanks for the feedback.

Take the VB apart, take macro shots of the mainboard. From both sides. You might get lucky and a member here can point out something obvious through visual inspection.

You might get even luckier and have the problem magically disappear once you re-assemble the VB.

It’s worth a try.

cYa,

Tauwasser

[TheForce81]

Tauwasser wrote:
Take the VB apart, take macro shots of the mainboard. From both sides. You might get lucky and a member here can point out something obvious through visual inspection.

You might get even luckier and have the problem magically disappear once you re-assemble the VB.

It’s worth a try.

cYa,

Tauwasser

Thanks for your input! Already cleaned the board by using an air compressor (while the mainboard seemed completely clean, though you never know) and I took a good look at all parts of the board using a magnifying glass and couldn’t see anything.

Will be trying some homebrew later today to see if some other games exhibit these problems on this particular mainboard.

EDIT:
Well, I tried a lot of games and some homebrew and even the Display Tester didn’t show any problems! So it seems to be isolated to BH! which might say something about BH! or makes it a very curious case. Could anyone with more software knowledge see if BH! uses more RAM than other games? I of course do not expect (if anyone is willing of course) to check it against all other available games.
If possible, comparing it randomly against a few other games could be insightful.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by TheForce81.

Well, just finished the tedious process of flashing and trying all the commercially released games and have come to the conclusion that none of those exhibit any problems with this mainboard except for Bound High!

Can you take a picture of the some problem examples, and tell us exactly which BH ROM you’re using (CRC32, or where you got the ROM, etc)? If you post some pics, I’ll try to check those locations in the emulators to look for anything in common.

If I’m understanding it correctly, the game plays fine, the graphics look mostly fine, but some text and things look bad. So, the low level stuff should be fine… the displays, framebuffer, etc.

To me, it sounds like the possible problems are problems reading the graphics from the ROM, problem with the RAM used for the chars/BG maps, or a problem with the VIP or one of its signals (bad address or select line).

The ROM would be easy to check. One possible problem with the ROM could be if BH sets the ROM wait states to 1, which the other games don’t (I don’t know if BH does, and kinda doubt it). But this seems unlikely, as I’d expect more “other” problems than just problems with text.

Chars are stored in the VRM between the framebuffers, so I’d suspect failed VRM last… since the framebuffers seem fine. They are remapped into a different address space, so there could be a problem with that mapping. BG maps are stored in DRAM… my first guess would be that the DRAM is beginning to fail. What looks like a failed component could also be a problem with the VIP or its signals.

Do you have a can of freeze spray? If so, try freezing some of the components and see if the problem changes. If not, one thing you can try is putting the whole VB in the freezer, and see if it plays any differently immediately after removing it (be careful of condensation if moving it from the freezer to hot moist air).

DogP

I am pretty sure it isn’t a ROM problem, but just to be thorough I added the ROM like I flashed it on my FB and to be clear, I also used the reproduction cart that was available to buy a while ago and they both suffered the same problem.

Attachments:

1. 

   auto-pause.jpg
   

2. 

   gameplay0-rotated.jpg
   

3. 

   gameplay1-rotated.jpg
   

4. 

   precaution.jpg
   

5. 

   start-screen-rotated.jpg
   

Huh, sorry I don’t really any ideas as to why, but this happened to me for like a day with my Bound High cart on my VB.. I thought my displays were loosening up, but when I tried a different game it played fine. The next time I played Bound High (a couple days later) all was back to normal, and it hasn’t happened since.

Unfortunately I didn’t think to try my other VB, but it sounds like you’ve tested that already.

The only useful bit of info I can think of is my house is heated with a woodstove, so it can cycle from warm to cold quite a bit over winter time. Have you tried doing a couple heat cycles to the main board (nothing crazy, maybe from like 10 degrees C to 30 degrees)

speedyink wrote:
Huh, sorry I don’t really any ideas as to why, but this happened to me for like a day with my Bound High cart on my VB.. I thought my displays were loosening up, but when I tried a different game it played fine. The next time I played Bound High (a couple days later) all was back to normal, and it hasn’t happened since.

Unfortunately I didn’t think to try my other VB, but it sounds like you’ve tested that already.

The only useful bit of info I can think of is my house is heated with a woodstove, so it can cycle from warm to cold quite a bit over winter time. Have you tried doing a couple heat cycles to the main board (nothing crazy, maybe from like 10 degrees C to 30 degrees)

Thanks for your input as well, I already thought it could be the cart, but as it happens with the FB and the repro cart as well, I kind of dismissed the cart itself. But that never had me doubt it could have been the cart slot of the mainboard, so I checked it and cleaned it, the only thing I didn’t try is special contact cleaner.
So I will try that soon just to be sure that isn’t the problem as your experience does give me at least some more empirical data! That is more than I had hoped for to be honest!

TheForce81 wrote:
I am pretty sure it isn’t a ROM problem, but just to be thorough I added the ROM like I flashed it on my FB and to be clear, I also used the reproduction cart that was available to buy a while ago and they both suffered the same problem.

Yep… I wasn’t suspecting a ROM problem… but there are a few ROMs out there, and I didn’t want to try chasing memory locations in a ROM that’s different than the one you’re using.

I’d have to look in more detail, but looking at those pictures… the first thing that comes to mind is the BKCOL register being set to 3, rather than 0. It’s possible that there’s something goofy with the way BH handles BKCOL (maybe it never initializes it, or writes to it when it’s not supposed to). I’ll try to look at it more closely later.

DogP

DogP wrote:

TheForce81 wrote:
I am pretty sure it isn’t a ROM problem, but just to be thorough I added the ROM like I flashed it on my FB and to be clear, I also used the reproduction cart that was available to buy a while ago and they both suffered the same problem.

Yep… I wasn’t suspecting a ROM problem… but there are a few ROMs out there, and I didn’t want to try chasing memory locations in a ROM that’s different than the one you’re using.

I’d have to look in more detail, but looking at those pictures… the first thing that comes to mind is the BKCOL register being set to 3, rather than 0. It’s possible that there’s something goofy with the way BH handles BKCOL (maybe it never initializes it, or writes to it when it’s not supposed to). I’ll try to look at it more closely later.

DogP

Thanks for looking at this, as I am not that big of a software person, is it easy to change the BKCOL (whatever that might be 😛 ) to 0 hard coded and send me the ROM (again, not sure if possible, but that is the first thing that comes to mind when reading your response)? Take your time with it of course!

I am pretty happy with all the responses here and I just sprayed the connector, but do not wish to short circuit anything and really have to go to sleep now, have tennis tomorrow, is already past midnight and don’t want to show up red eyed to my team 😛 so won’t be waiting out the 30 minute work in time.

TheForce81 wrote:
Thanks for your input as well, I already thought it could be the cart, but as it happens with the FB and the repro cart as well, I kind of dismissed the cart itself. But that never had me doubt it could have been the cart slot of the mainboard, so I checked it and cleaned it, the only thing I didn’t try is special contact cleaner.
So I will try that soon just to be sure that isn’t the problem as your experience does give me at least some more empirical data! That is more than I had hoped for to be honest!

No worries, I just remembered about it when I saw the pictures. The reason I mentioned the fireplace is I could have lit a fire after it had happened, or maybe I had a fire going. My thinking is either the heat and cool cycle kicked whatever went out of line back, or maybe it was really warm in the room when I was playing (it can get to I’m sure 35 degrees in that room). Maybe that VB was exposed to some higher than normal heats, causing a chip to overheat? A wild guess but hey, it’s something.

Well, as I was just too curious, I just tested it and unfortunately, it didn’t make any difference other than that the cartridge was really easy to put in and out of the slot now 😉

What do you think… look familiar? 😉 So… yes, Bound High never initializes BKCOL. Putting a watch on that location, it’s never accessed, and if I write it once, it persists forever (while other VB ROMs write it during startup).

BKCOL is the “Back Color Palette”… in other words, the color of the background. Any graphics that aren’t defined as a color are transparent… usually the background is black, so whatever is transparent shows up as black. In this case, the background is bright red, so transparent is bright red. I immediately recognized that, since I use BKCOL a LOT when debugging my own programs (it’s a very simple way to output status without having to write much code – just something like VIP_REGS[BKCOL]=3; ).

I don’t think the VB guarantees this register to be 0 at reset, but apparently it usually is on most systems. But, I’d say there’s nothing wrong with your hardware… just that it behaves differently than most. One thing you could try is booting Mario’s Tennis, pull it while the system is still on, pop in Bound High (while still on)… inserting the Flashboy will probably trigger a reset… then see what that looks like. If it doesn’t reset, try turning the power off and on really quickly.

You could probably fix it with a ROM hack, though IMO it’s probably best to add the line into the source and rebuild it (since the ROM came from source anyway).

And now that you bring this up… I’m sure I’ve seen this once or twice myself.

DogP

Attachments:

1. 

   precaution.png
   

2. 

   autopause.png
   

3. 

   jss.png
   

4. 

   title.png
   

5. 

   gameplay.png
   

Wow, great that you figured that out!

Strange though that this one mainboard suffers from this problem consistently and others almost never. That would mean that not every mainboard is created with the same chips?
It still is a bit curious, though the reason why it can happen is pretty clear of course.

If someone with the know-how could be so kind to change the BH! ROM with this setting incorporated correctly, I would be grateful and could put it to the test.