NES fails to play certain games. (Mega Man 1)

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Coughdrop
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NES fails to play certain games. (Mega Man 1)

Post by Coughdrop »

Hello!

I did an NESRGB install recently and have suffered from basically all the problems introduced with this 4.0 version, after hours and hours of troubleshooting the NES kind of just started to work more and more on it's own, first mario bros's title screen cleaned up, then Hello Kitty world started working which it didn't before, it would freeze about a minute in and only start working again after the NES had been off for a while.

Now fast forward a month or so and mostly everything is working, the only issue that's remained was Donkey Kong Classics (PAL)having a garbled title screen with 1 of 2 games being a garbled mess as well, but other than that everything worked great.. so i kind of forgot about it.

Til now, where after plowing through 4 Mega Man games with no problem, the first one doesn't work no matter what i do.

It runs for about 30 seconds, then it either freezes on the title screen after a reset, resets by itself somehow or just shows a black screen with a very faint ringing sound after a manual reset. After waiting for about 5-10 minutes (after it's cooled down i suppose) it starts working again.

Does anybody know what the cause of this could be? I'm thinking it's a loose connection somewhere, but i don't even know where to start with checking what joint it might be as there's nothing getting hot, it doesn't seem like a failing component as all other games run fine, even Mega Man 2-6 which makes this even wierder to me. I've been told it might be a RAM issue but wouldn't the later Mega Man games be more taxing on the RAM?

The NES is a PAL console converted to NTSC with Famicom parts, all pin connections are clean and game has been confirmed working on another system. Game is the PAL B version of Mega Man. My copies of 3-6 are american and 2 is PAL, DKClassics is also PAL.

Any insight and help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
calima
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Re: NES fails to play certain games. (Mega Man 1)

Post by calima »

Are you sure that's NESRGB related? You're trying to run PAL games on a NTSC console. They often fail due to the different vblank.
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Individualised
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Re: NES fails to play certain games. (Mega Man 1)

Post by Individualised »

OP implies that it varies based on external factors, so, unlikely that it has anything to do with PAL vs NTSC.
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Coughdrop
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Re: NES fails to play certain games. (Mega Man 1)

Post by Coughdrop »

calima wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 1:25 am Are you sure that's NESRGB related?
I don't wanna imply it's an NESRGB issue, just wanna be as descriptive as possible, although i wouldn't be surprised as mine's been a nightmare with all sorts of issues that have all oddly resolved themselves somehow.
calima wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 1:25 am You're trying to run PAL games on a NTSC console. They often fail due to the different vblank.
Also That was my first thought too, probably not the case though as the NESRGB's in my friends consoles don't have trouble with DK classics and Mega Man, Only issue i've had like that is with PAL Double Dragon 3 which freezes on the title screen on all NTSC consoles.

I've got a copy of Rockman coming in to test it anyways, i'll likely be dissapointed but i was bothered by the pitch of the music in the PAL version anyways.
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Memblers
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Re: NES fails to play certain games. (Mega Man 1)

Post by Memblers »

Coughdrop wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 5:08 am I don't wanna imply it's an NESRGB issue, just wanna be as descriptive as possible, although i wouldn't be surprised as mine's been a nightmare with all sorts of issues that have all oddly resolved themselves somehow.
Have any of the caps been replaced? I don't know if I can tie that to any specific symptom, but for problems change over time/temperature, that's I what I think of. My NES when powered-on cold had quiet audio (maybe half volume), and would get louder after warming up for a few minutes. After replacing the capacitors, it's back to normal.
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Coughdrop
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Re: NES fails to play certain games. (Mega Man 1)

Post by Coughdrop »

Memblers wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 5:03 pm Have any of the caps been replaced? I don't know if I can tie that to any specific symptom, but for problems change over time/temperature, that's I what I think of. My NES when powered-on cold had quiet audio (maybe half volume), and would get louder after warming up for a few minutes. After replacing the capacitors, it's back to normal.
Honestly i hadn't thought about it being cap related as i've heard NES caps are really good and have rarely heard of NES problems being caused by caps, but you could be onto something, my Grandpa's Stereo also does this, varies wildly based on temperature and that's definitley a cap problem, maybe i'll re-cap the board fully, couldn't do much harm even if it doesn't fix it. Then again everything expands with heat, i'm worried a bond wire in one of the chips gets out of alignment when it heats up, but it's still very wierd to me why other games don't seem to have much of a problem with it.

I also got Rockman today and it behaves the exact same, so defintiely not the PAL game being the problem. (Not that it was likely anyways)

Thanks for the suggestion, i'm gonna give it a shot.
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