Unemulated game - Woodpecker

[daeven]

I got my hands on a Woodpecker PCB in a generic cabinet.  It is listed as an unemulated "most wanted."  Upon boot, I just get a beep from the speaker every second, and the screen showed a sort of test screen.  There is no response to test buttons/switches, but I have not tried to change the dip switch settings.

My uneducated guess is that the ROM(s) are bad, but I'm looking for advice on where I can go for any troubleshooting advice, or a reputable person I can send it to for repair/ROM reading where I know I'll get it back.

I may get hooked up with RGVAC if it is the place to go.

[Jakobud]

You should just send it to the Mame dumping project.  That guy is an expert and could probably easily figure out what/if there is anything wrong with the board and how to fix it.  And of course hopefully he could dump it too.

[XtraSmiley]

You should just send it to the Mame dumping project.  That guy is an expert and could probably easily figure out what/if there is anything wrong with the board and how to fix it.  And of course hopefully he could dump it too.

I agree with this 100%.  It's your best chance of getting a pro to look at it for free, and you would help the community out.

[Dav]

I got my hands on a Woodpecker PCB in a generic cabinet.  It is listed as an unemulated "most wanted."  Upon boot, I just get a beep from the speaker every second, and the screen showed a sort of test screen.  There is no response to test buttons/switches, but I have not tried to change the dip switch settings.

My uneducated guess is that the ROM(s) are bad, but I'm looking for advice on where I can go for any troubleshooting advice, or a reputable person I can send it to for repair/ROM reading where I know I'll get it back.

I may get hooked up with RGVAC if it is the place to go.

I'd be willing to look at it for you if you're in the US.  Also, if it's complete I'd be willing to trade a pacman bootleg for it.  I likely have one here with the same pinout that would slide right in.  Do you have any pics?

[SirPeale]

Dav -

You're one of the MAME dumpers?

[Howard_Casto]

Doesn't sound like it's broken at all.  First thing you should do is try the dips when you are stuck in a test menu.  

Google the game and see if you can find a manual.  As you can find a manual for virtually any game this shouldn't be a big issue.  

regardless

*SEND IT TO THE MAME DEVS*

[Dav]

Dav -

You're one of the MAME dumpers?

I've dumped and/or written the drivers for quite a few games in the pacman driver.  I can't really say if I can dump this until I see a detailed  pic of the board.  I think I can.  If the z80 is exposed then I probably can.  If the z80 is in the epoxy then I probably can't.
The last board was destroyed when they tried to cut open the epoxy,  I would only want to try a non invasive dump.  I've cut open exoxy before but it's a lot of work and usually not neccessary.


BTW I also do board repair on pac boards, which this basically is.  I've seen similar boards my amenip they are the same board as piranha which is nearly the same as eyes, which is basically a bootleg pac board.

[daeven]

Randy Hoffman is going to hopefully hook me up with a dumper in California (I don't want to deal with sending it to Guru if I can avoid it).  I'm going to try changing the dip settings (after recording the current settings).  Thanks for the pointers, everyone.  I'll let the group know if I get it working, or if it ends up being a good ROM dump eventually.

Also, it's thanks to this board that this thing was even discovered.  It was sitting in one of my neighbor's mother's basement for the last 20 years.  I probably wouldn't have been talking with him about arcade games if I hadn't rediscovered MAME last year, and happened across this site.

Oh, and I hope it's not a really stupid game!  

Speaking on the neighbor's mother's basement - she's got a few other games down there:  One other unknown arcade cabinet game (I'll find out what that is), a standard old pinball, a few video poker machines, and some kind of a cocktail table pinball machine.  Has anyone ever seen a cocktail table pinball?

[pocketbikez]

i have a spyhunter arcade machine and about a year ago it stopped working. the game would boot up and look normal for about 5 seconds then the screen showed garbled graphics and it wouldnt respond to any  inputs. i checked all the connections, cleaned and inspected everything i could and nothing helped. then i bought 2 spyhunter boardsets off ebay and neither made the game come back to life. then i bought a new power supply board off ebay and presto! the machine rose from the dead and it now plays great. after close inspection of the old power supply board it has a few resistors that look like they are crumbling apart. if changing the dip switches doesnt fix your woodpecker game maybe try closely looking at all the boards for fried components.

if you get it working please post screenshot pics. also, does the cabinet have a marquee, control panel or side art? if it does please post some pics, id love to see what it looks like.

thanks

[Dav]

Oh, and I hope it's not a really stupid game!  

I think it's very similar to naughty mouse that's already in mame, several of the graphics sprites are the same, so yes it probably is.

[jerryjanis]

Crappy game or no, there's nothing cooler than the fact that you uncovered an unemulated Mame game!

Aren't all the rare games rare largely because they weren't good?  I kinda hope Marble Man never gets emulated, because it's so cool that it has remained the unattainable holy grail for so long.  I'm afraid that having it Mame'd will only make it painfully clear why Atari never released it as an arcade game.

[Dav]

Crappy game or no, there's nothing cooler than the fact that you uncovered an unemulated Mame game!

Aren't all the rare games rare largely because they weren't good?  

Yes, pretty much.  There are some exceptions though, projects that got canceled because of the video game crash.  MM could fall into that category.  I've played it but I don't really remember much about it.  I'm not a big fan of Marble madness.

[APFelon]

...cocktail table pinball machine.  Has anyone ever seen a cocktail table pinball?

This may be worth a considerable amount of money. Find out what it is and grab it... or just grab it and then find out what it is!

APf

[Jakobud]

I work in the video games industry and you would be VERY suprised as to the number of awesome games that get cancelled and fall through the cracks and never see the light of day.... sometimes it's because of bad quality but a lot of the time it's just b/c of budget or time constraints no matter how good the game is.

[XtraSmiley]

The cocktail pinball is most likely a Joust pinball.  Only 402 were ever made.  I've been trying to get one off of ebay, but the last 3 went above 1200, my limit.  About 4 of them ago I saw one with a fully restored playing field go for 2,900!!!!  At the least you've got a grand on your hands.  Good luck, and let me know if you'd like to sell it to me!

[daeven]

Smiley, you've got it all wrong!  You're supposed to say it's worthless and that you'll give me $50 as a gift to take it off my hands!    In any case, I just found a web image of a Joust cocktail.  It definately wasn't that!  If fact, I don't remember seeing any name at all on the thing.  I'll take a closer look and snap a few pictures of everything this weekend.

As for the Woodpecker PCB, I tried all the dips - no change.  I should have access to a different power supply this weekend.  I'll try that and then send it off for dumping.  It came in a generic cabinet with a space theme and an "Infinity 1" marquee.

[Harakiri]

That's great! Another game for MAME!

It's a pitty that one of my favourite games (World Rally 2) has a hard protection wich's gonna be troubled to emulate right...  

[XtraSmiley]

Smiley, you've got it all wrong!  You're supposed to say it's worthless and that you'll give me $50 as a gift to take it off my hands!    In any case, I just found a web image of a Joust cocktail.  It definately wasn't that!  If fact, I don't remember seeing any name at all on the thing.  I'll take a closer look and snap a few pictures of everything this weekend.

LOL!  I wound't rip off a fellow gamer, now someones grandmother who had it sitting in their basement....

I hope the ROMs on the other game are still good enough to MAME.  Even if it's a bad game, it's still a piece of software history and needs to be MAMEd.

[APFelon]

Here is a cocktail pinball list. It has descriptions and est. value. Congrats on your find!

http://www.gameplanpinball.com/machines.htm

APf

[daeven]

Quick updates:  

The Woodpecker PCB did the same thing with a known good power supply and wiring interface.  The system powers up with the same pattern on the screen that Naughty Mouse powers up with for about 1 second.  Problem is, my Woodpecker stays at that screen and beeps the speaker.  Any ideas?

I couldn't get in touch with the Guru, but I may have that problem solved tonight.  Regardless of whether I get it running, I will send it to the Guru.  From what I've heard, this could be a difficult and/or time-consuming ROM dump.

The cocktail table pinball is "Foxy Lady" by Game Plan.  It isn't working, but it's been offered to me for converting a generic upright cabinet to MAME.  I'm working on that project now!

[Dav]

Quick updates:  

The Woodpecker PCB did the same thing with a known good power supply and wiring interface.  The system powers up with the same pattern on the screen that Naughty Mouse powers up with for about 1 second.  Problem is, my Woodpecker stays at that screen and beeps the speaker.  Any ideas?

I couldn't get in touch with the Guru, but I may have that problem solved tonight.  Regardless of whether I get it running, I will send it to the Guru.  From what I've heard, this could be a difficult and/or time-consuming ROM dump.

That's about the place where it would do the rom check, so bad rom is a possibility.  I think there's a test mode but you'll likely have to jumper a chip to get into it.  If you have a pacman diagnostic board that plugs in with the ribbon cable you could remove the epoxy block and run the diagnostic program.  The diagnostic chips probably won't work unless you convert them to eyes encryption before you burn the rom.