Faulty LCD on Star Wars pachinko

[drcrippen324]

was that justa screen or was it a screen wit hthe inverter attached
reason i ask is i had inverter problems and thats exactly what it produced
like some one was turning a light on and off about every half a second to a second intervals

[daverob]

From the video it looks like a driver problem, LCD panels like this one will do a gradual fade from white to black and back again if there is no data clock signal getting to the display module.

Most Sankyo Lumina frame games use the same display driver module, and you can swap the green cable that goes between the display CPU box and the LCD panel around between cells to check if the signal coming out of the display CPU is bad. If you put the game and the cell back to back there should be just enough rooms to unplug the green cable from the game and plug in the green cable from the cell. When you power the machine up like this you should get the display coming up on the screen on the cell.

I'm not 100% sure if this is possible with Star Wars and 007, as the 007 LCD is a 15" 1024x768 panel and the Star Wars is a 640x480 10.4" panel. But the same is true of my Star Wars and the same model display panel in Neo Powerful and when I was looking into the Star Wars warm up problem I remember trying this and getting nice clear Star Wars animations on the Neo Powerful screen (and vice versa!)

BTW it's unlikely to be an inverter problem. These usually flash the screen on and off with a sharp transition (with the normal game graphics still visible) rather than the gradual fade in and out seen here.

[compirate]

Resend me your address monkeyboy and I'll send you a driver board.

[monkeyboy]

Thanks Daverob for pointing out that the fault is likely to be the driver board. I did notice when I removed the LCD that there was a little patch of brown dust where the driver board had been but the board didn't smell burnt at all.

The driver board is different on the 007 so I don't fancy connecting that cell to the Star Wars board. I don't want 2 non working pachinkos.

So over to you Compirate to save the day. Thank you so much. My address has been sent. Let's hope it works.

[drcrippen324]

ahh sorry didnt see the video i take back my advice on the inverter totaly diffrent to the way it fades dave rob is right mine just flashed as aposed to faded

[monkeyboy]

Is the Driver Display Module the small card behind the LCD labelled SAKQ012A?

[monkeyboy]

Thanks to Compirate I've replaced the driver board and cable but still the same problem. Looks like it could be the main CPU board.

On power up the screen is all white but then quickly fades to display this.

[compirate]

Does it still play music when you put a ball in the start pocket, maybe a little change in the screen?

My guess from that is bad LCD.

I'll clean up the one I've got and send it along.

[monkeyboy]

Still plays music but the screen stays the same. I have tried 2 replacement screens that I found on ebay but still the same fault. So defiantly not the screen.

[monkeyboy]

The Force is now strong in this one!!

All down to Compirate who kindly sent me a replacement Audio/Video board. I don't care what you say about him he's in my book.

I was so excited when I saw the screen light up my brain totally went out of the window when I then found the shooter not working after a quick tear down of the shooter assembly I realized there was no dongle fitted.

[daverob]

Thanks for letting us know that it's all fixed and what the solution was.

It would be interesting to find out exactly what failed on the A/V board. From my experience the soldering on the Hitachi SH-3 CPU chip on the video board can be suspect on this era of Sankyo machines (causes the more common 'warm up' problem). But it's not an easy one to resolder, as it's got 208 pins on a 0.5mm pitch.

[compirate]

I'll let you know when it shows up

I sent him one of the flood ones, goes to show how much these can take and keep on going.

[monkeyboy]

I'll get it sent out after the Christmas rush. Will be intresting to see if it can be fixed. The soldered joints on that chip look pretty good to me.

[compirate]

No rush at all, glad it worked!