help needed I'm stumped Rom quirkyness re: previous working rom now doesn't

[gatordad]

I have had my setup running for some time now and have not had to do too much to it as it's been pretty solid.

However in the last few weeks wierd things are happening

I now have had several known previous working roms just quit working altogether. Hit start and mala/mame shows the loading screen gets half way then exits back to my list
I reloaded a few and some work again but there are others even after reloading them won't run.

Rom version match mame version
Refreshed game list in mala after reloading the roms from my cd backup
I'm stumped?
Any ideas

I am leaning towards thinking its the begining of HD troubles but wanted to ask if anyone has any ideas

[gatordad]

One of the games I was having trouble with is 2020 baseball, I was doing some reading today and that is a Neo Geo game, have to check with my kids what other games they are having trouble with. hmmm.........

[leapinlew]

Refreshed game list in mala after reloading the roms from my cd backup

I don't know if the ROMs need to be read/write access, but lots of times when you copy from a CD the files are READ ONLY. Reset the attributes on the roms folder using the ATTRIB command on the command line prompt.

[ark_ader]

Sounds like data corruption.

Hope you have backups.

[gatordad]

Finally had time time to look into this.
All my Neogeo games were on the fritz
Reloaded my neogeo bios file and all good again, for some reason my bios file went bad.


Just for curiosity sake
Does the bios file store data and get bigger as you play the Neo games? cause the new bios file was much smaller in size then the one I replaced

[SavannahLion]

Probably unimportant but....

How old is that setup you have? The PC I mean.

[gatordad]

Its a old Dell 400sc P4 3.0, 2g ram
got a deal on it for 250 bucks way back when Dell used to have stackable coupons crazy deals, been running like a champ for quite a few years now.

[BobA]

Think your PC is having file problems so the probable cause is the HD going wonky.  The file size of the neogeo bios should not have increased so probably a bad file.

[SavannahLion]

It's kind of a shot in the dark but....

On one PC, a K6 I believe, I kept getting corrupted files. installing Windows fixed the problem but the corruption would reappear about a year later. If you read Windows magazines from that era, you'll see that this was a super common solution to a myriad of Windows problems.

I eventually got fed up and installed Linux on the K6 and the problem became somewhat self-correcting with the Linux FS. That PC is gone now but I got a hold of a P4 years later with the same problem. Pulled it apart to clean it and discovered bad caps all over the motherboard. I didn't know about the bad caps back when I had the K6 so I never thought to check for it then.

I pulled the drive from the P4 and use it with a Linux computer as a buffer now without any problems.

My point? Check the motherboard for bad caps. Look for any that are bulging, deformed, or busted open. If you find any toss the board and get yourself a replacement.

Think your PC is having file problems so the probable cause is the HD going wonky.  The file size of the neogeo bios should not have increased so probably a bad file.

Definitely possible. I can't recall the utility that helps check for flakey drives. MS's Disk utility might help but IIRC, it's rather basic. Is it a SMART dive? If its enabled you can check the logs to check the stats on the drive.

[gatordad]

IIRC there was a bad batch of caps on some of the 400sc's that were shipped from Dell BITD
Next time I pull it out of my cab I'll check it for any

Is there any good freeware drive utilities to check the drive?
I'll have to check to see what drive is in it, I don't know if its a smart drive or not.

[SavannahLion]

The 400SCs aren't the only ones Dell made to suffer bad caps. There are oodles of models with bad caps. Whenever I pull apart a PC, it's become second nature to check the caps. Unless its a rare board from a desirable manufacturer, I just toss the board or gut it for the individual components and practice my soldering. I would gladly string the ---smurfs--- up responsible for torturing consumers for the next fifty years.

Can't rightly recall any utilities atm. I'm at the pool watching the tots so I can't check my discs.