Super Mario Kart not working

[austin532 465]

Alright, so I have a Super Mario Kart that's not working and I can't seem to figure out why. The pins are clean and shiny, I can't see any broken traces, all of the pins are getting continuity, I reflowed the solder joints, and still get nothing. Not even a garbled screen or blank screen. Maybe I'm missing something obvious? As they say two heads are better than one so I'd like to hear another opinion on this.

[a3quit4s 3,816]

Could be one of the chips are dead, doesn’t happen often but it does happen. 

[austin532 465]

That's my guess as well but which one? Is there a trick to reveal which chip is bad? I'm not an electrical engineer but I know enough of the basics.

[Tanooki 4,894]

My guess if you didn't miss it, and it's a chip I'd probably go with the main chip the game is on, or the DSP failed.

[fox 1,546]

Try some Yoshi 1 motor oil

 

[phart010 1,677]

Was this game previously working for you and it stopped working?

Or is this a newly acquired game that you have which was not working when you got it?

 

My guess is a bad trace.. this is often the problem even if you can’t see an visibly obvious broken trace. You’d need to test continuity between chips and pins to know for sure.

Alternatively, you could transplant the chips onto the board of a less desirable game with same pcb. If chips are still good then they’ll work on a known good pcb.. although this is frowned upon by collectors because it’s considered as a modification from original which will not always be obvious to the next person this game ends up with.

 

Edited August 16, 2021 by phart010

[austin532 465]

It's a newly acquired game. Sold as is so I took a gamble. I'll try giving it a second look for anything suspicious.

The board is exclusive to Mario Kart so I would have to swap it with another one.

[a3quit4s 3,816]

4 hours ago, austin532 said:

It's a newly acquired game. Sold as is so I took a gamble. I'll try giving it a second look for anything suspicious.

The board is exclusive to Mario Kart so I would have to swap it with another one.

Which at that point is basically just buying a new Super Mario Kart. 

At some point the patient must be declared dead, good doctor. 
 

[Estil 1,202]

On 8/16/2021 at 6:12 AM, a3quit4s said:

Which at that point is basically just buying a new Super Mario Kart. 

At some point the patient must be declared dead, good doctor. 
 

 

[austin532 465]

Yeah, still not sure what it could be. I de-soldered all the chips off the board and I don't see anything obvious. Now I'm tempted to buy a cheap Mario Kart and swap out the chips to see if it works. If it's the game or the board well there's nothing else that can be done. If it's the DSP chip or Ram maybe I can ask and see if anyone has spares.

[darkchylde28 1,546]

2 hours ago, austin532 said:

Yeah, still not sure what it could be. I de-soldered all the chips off the board and I don't see anything obvious. Now I'm tempted to buy a cheap Mario Kart and swap out the chips to see if it works. If it's the game or the board well there's nothing else that can be done. If it's the DSP chip or Ram maybe I can ask and see if anyone has spares.

If you've gone to the trouble of removing all the chips, have you tested the continuity of all of the traces?  That's the easiest fix if it's the problem and also the easiest to detect.

[austin532 465]

Yup, all traces get continuity. So I suspect it's the Rom chip. I guessing the game can still run even with a bad DSP chip but maybe I'm wrong?