Monitor or ROM Issues??

[clanggedin]

Last week my brother and I picked up a Surf Planet that had some screen problems. It had jail bars on the left side of the screen and the image was stretched a little. It also has 2 areas on the monitor that either appears that the pixels are dead or they are getting wrong info from the board. One of them is only 3 or 4 pixels wide while the other is 7 or 8 pixels. When I go to the service menu, which has a black background these bars are usually another color like yellow or something.

I did a cap kit on it last night which removed the jail bars and fixed the screen size probelm, but it didn't correct the other issue. Could I have a bad ROM that is causing this?? I don't have any other JAMMA pcbs that I could hook up to test and see if it is a ROM issue.

The bars are not that huge of an issue, but I really would like a perfect looking game just in case I want to sell it later on.

I don't know what to do next. Should I buy another JAMMA PCB just to test, or should I try and replace ROMS??

[Witchboard]

Are the bars you're talking about run horizontally at a slight angle?  If so, your screen voltage (brightness) is too high.  These should go away when you turn it down.

If you're not talking about those kinds of bars, then I'm confused.  I couldn't understand your description very well.

[clanggedin]

The bars run vertically, but they are not black, like regular jail bars that require a cap kit for repair. These bars are full of color and the color changes depending on what the screen is showing.

All I can think of is that I have a ROM issue, but I don't want to totally rule out the monitor.

I tried to make a mock-up of what it looks like:



It kinda looks like this but when oyu play the game the bars are more transparent, but show diferent colors/shapes than what the game is showing.

I hope this helps.

[Witchboard]

Press on all of your EPROM chips.  One may not be making good contact.

[APFelon]

My Space Harrier does something similar... it shows "junk" in the skybox.  The test shows that I have a bad RAM chip. Does Surf Planet have a built in memory / ROM diagnostic? If it does, that'd be where to start.

APf

[clanggedin]

I'm not sure, but I'll check tonight. Thanks for all of the responses so far.