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Risky Rick in Dangerous Traps (June 25th)


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Sorry for reviving this old thread but it's only just now that I have finally got my F18A modded CV back up and running and was excited to play some Risky Rick.

 

So, for me Risky Rick starts, plays and looks great. However, it must be unhappy with my F18A and must be starting in demo mode as I'm stopped from moving past Level 1.

 

Only mod on the system is the F18A, otherwise it is stock. All VRAM is still on the motherboard. F18A firmware is v1.9 (latest) and I tried the game with the F18A USR 1 jumper both on and off (adjusts sprite limit) with the same result.

 

Motherboard is Rev. J

 

Did some people with F18A modded systems actually get onto Level 2 and beyond?

 

Risky Rick plays fine on my F18a modded colecovision. I have gotten passed the first level numerous times.

Edited by killersquirel
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Risky Rick plays fine on my F18a modded colecovision. I have gotten passed the first level numerous times.

 

I also have heard from anyone that has the +5 vram mod in place if they can get past the 1st level. So now it would seem that it is one of all of these three things:

 

+5 VRAM mod

Rev. H main boards

Rev. J main boards

 

I've never seen a Rev J but a Rev H-2 exists and doesn't seem to have any issues. That tells me there was something up with the Rev H board at least and the H-2 is a minor revision change. If there was a list of what these changes between the Revs were, it would help to Isolate the issue.

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i have recently come into possession with a pal machine with both bad system ram and a bad video ram chip.

 

i was able to find pretty much direct replacements for each chip

 

2114 system rams

4116 video rams

 

i even managed to find some good ram chips that i pulled from other systems i put 5volt ram in in case the chips were not the correct speed.

 

the mainboard is revision d

 

after replacing the bad chips with all the different variants i still cannot get past level one!

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I also have heard from anyone that has the +5 vram mod in place if they can get past the 1st level. So now it would seem that it is one of all of these three things:

 

+5 VRAM mod

Rev. H main boards

Rev. J main boards

 

I've never seen a Rev J but a Rev H-2 exists and doesn't seem to have any issues. That tells me there was something up with the Rev H board at least and the H-2 is a minor revision change. If there was a list of what these changes between the Revs were, it would help to Isolate the issue.

This was the oddities I experienced: Rev. C stock and the intermittent AV modded rev.H. Actually just forgot about the rigorous cleaning as things got busy for me.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/279134-risky-rick-in-dangerous-traps-june-25th/?p=4089664

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What would be extremely useful is a rom that can be used to test a CV and report any issues using exactly the same checks that Risky Rick is using. That way we could at least identify on our problematic consoles exactly which components/parts of the system the game is identifying as being the issue. We could then focus on trying to fix that issue rather then guessing as we are doing now.

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We'll be featuring Risky Rick LIVE on today's ZeroPage Homebrew stream on Twitch at 11AM PT|2PM ET|7PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.t...ropagehomebrew/

Games Today:

- Kaboom! Deluxe (2019 WIP Hack) by Darrell Spice Jr.
- Moth (2006) by Simone Serra aka Seemo
- Snowball Fight (2019 WIP) by Captain Spazer
- Risky Rick (2018 CV) by ArcadeVision

post-37205-0-02165500-1549473481_thumb.jpg

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I now have a solution to the problem I was having and will detail it here in the hope that it helps others. The short answer is that pin 13 on my ColecoVision's cartridge connector was not electrically connected to the RF shield despite the board being well screwed down and the RF shield in place. Correcting this ground discontinuity meant that when playing Risky Rick I was then able to proceed beyond Level 1 of the game whereas before I could not. It would seem that the design of the Risky Risk cartridge board and the game itself is such that it relies on pin 13 being grounded as per Coleco design. Pin 13 not being grounded can affect the VDP clock.

 

This solution came via email from ArcadeVision who advised me to firstly check ground continuity between pins 1&2 of the expansion port (which connects directly to the ground plane) and pin 13 of the cartridge connector using a multimeter (or other continuity checking device), and secondly to check ground continuity between pins 1&2 of the expansion port and pin 29 of the cartridge connector. These checks can be done without any disassembly of the console.

 

post-5757-0-61831500-1549570081_thumb.png

 

Pin 29 of the cartridge connector is directly connected to the ground plane via various traces on the motherboard so it is highly unlikely that continuity doesn't exist between this and pins 1&2 of the expansion port. However, pin 13 of the cartridge connector is NOT directly connected to the ground plane. Instead it is connected to a small, entirely separate, secondary ground plane that surrounds the screw hole next to the cartridge connector (as shown in the above photo). For this secondary ground plane to actually be electrically grounded it needs to make good contact with the bottom RF shield, and in turn the bottom RF shield needs to make good contact with the main ground plane on the underside of the motherboard. The former is normally achieved via the screw next to the cartridge connector being well screwed down such that the motherboard is clamped tightly against the raised part of the bottom RF shield. The raised part of the bottom RF shield is shown below. The latter is achieved via the other two bottom RF shield ground plane connection points - see photo below.

 

post-5757-0-94375400-1549570121_thumb.png

 

When I checked mine, there was no continuity between pin 13 of the cartridge connector and the main ground plane (pin 1&2 of the expansion port), hence pin 13 was not grounded and acted as if it was not connected to anything. To rectify this I removed the motherboard and bent all three bottom RF shield connection points slightly upwards and also gave their surfaces a good clean with isopropyl alchohol. I did the same with the locations on the underside of the motherboard where the bottom RF shield makes contact. For reassembly, I put the bottom RF shield and motherboard in place and firmly screwed down the three screws that hold the motherboard in place and against the bottom RF shield. I then tested that pin 13 of the cartridge port had continuity to pins 1&2 of the expansion port and it now did. It is NOT necessary to reinstall the top RF shield for this test. Now that I had good ground continuity I found that Risky Rick worked perfectly and I could move on to Level 2 (even with the top RF shield not installed). :)

 

I now have my doubts that motherboard revision has anything to do with the Risky Rick problems and that it is simply that pin 13 ground continuity was lost during some disassembly and reassembly of the system. What would be really good to know is if someone with a +5V VRAM mod could do the above checks to see if they can get theirs working with Risky Rick or if indeed the +5V VRAM mod is actually incompatible with the game.

 

So, for me Risky Rick is now working with the following:

  • Rev. J motherboard
  • F18A video mod (v1.9 firmware)
  • Intro skip (fire) BIOS
Thanks to ArcadeVision for providing the solution to this problem.

 

BTW - what a great game :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Edited by Ikrananka
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You know what...that center screw is missing on my primary CV and I received it that way originally! I know this because I've had to remove it before on other consoles I've worked on but it was never present on mine. If nothing else, it is simple matter to just run some kynar from a nearby ground point and attach it to that screw point tied to pin 13.

 

BTW...they never provided me with this information originally, and only sent me the service information from the CV docs stating the importance of the RF shield being present and soldered down along with the ground strap inside from the RF box to the front of the left corner RF shield section.

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You know what...that center screw is missing on my primary CV and I received it that way originally! I know this because I've had to remove it before on other consoles I've worked on but it was never present on mine. If nothing else, it is simple matter to just run some kynar from a nearby ground point and attach it to that screw point tied to pin 13.

 

BTW...they never provided me with this information originally, and only sent me the service information from the CV docs stating the importance of the RF shield being present and soldered down along with the ground strap inside from the RF box to the front of the left corner RF shield section.

 

Yeah, I'll have to try this out. I did not hear anything via e-mail last year besides "maybe grounding problem" whether due to being unaware or protecting the protection. I'll have to thank them if it actually works.

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I did not hear anything via e-mail last year besides "maybe grounding problem"

 

And that is the problem. Here a part of my first answer to you on Jully 22th 2018:

 

 

The first thing to do is testing the ground continuity [...] Please, can you test with the multimeter if all those neighboring ground are connected together through the Bottom shiled?

 

Sorry if you was not able to detect it with the picture. We have said the same to everybody contacting us at this time, providing the informations we got after fixing for free two systems folowing the "CV Tech Manual" for properly reassembling the system. Sometime, a wire added for the mod was in "sandwich" between the ground and the bottom shield, avoid a good contact, or screws missing... Usually, peoples was able to fix their systems.

Edited by ArcadeVision
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Looking forward to hearing back if this solves the problem for other people. I really believe that it will.

 

Having now fixed this problem on my system, I began to wonder if the ground discontinuity was what was causing the resetting loop problem I was having with Opcode Games' Penguin Adventure. And incredibly it was, with the discontinuity fixed Penguin Adventure works perfectly. So after TWO YEARS I can now play Penguin Adventure. Kudos to ArcadeVision !!!!!

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Great to ear that sounding good! :music:

 

I apologise if some peoples do not have understood my english for trying to fix their issue. Thank you Ikrananka for the tutorial on the topic.

And great to know that solve your Penguin Adventure problem in the same way! (and may be some other games bug for other players)

Edited by ArcadeVision
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Great to ear that sounding good! :music:

 

I apologise if some peoples do not have understood my english for trying to fix their issue. Thank you Ikrananka for the tutorial on the topic.

And great to know that solve your Penguin Adventure problem in the same way! (and may be some other games bug for other players)

 

I'm loving Risky Rick and looking forward to any upcoming games you might be producing.

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Looking forward to hearing back if this solves the problem for other people. I really believe that it will.

 

Having now fixed this problem on my system, I began to wonder if the ground discontinuity was what was causing the resetting loop problem I was having with Opcode Games' Penguin Adventure. And incredibly it was, with the discontinuity fixed Penguin Adventure works perfectly. So after TWO YEARS I can now play Penguin Adventure. Kudos to ArcadeVision !!!!!

 

So the weird thing with mine is that the continuity of all five screws with the RF shield and grounding strap was good on my AV modded and stock CV. When I put them back together, the AV modded one worked with Risky Rick the first time I tried it, but not the dozen or so times after that and never worked with the stock one. The same exact thing happened after repeating the process. Not sure how the cart slot and expansion port pins will get me closer to a fix but hopefully they will reveal something I am missing.

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So the weird thing with mine is that the continuity of all five screws with the RF shield and grounding strap was good on my AV modded and stock CV. When I put them back together, the AV modded one worked with Risky Rick the first time I tried it, but not the dozen or so times after that and never worked with the stock one. The same exact thing happened after repeating the process. Not sure how the cart slot and expansion port pins will get me closer to a fix but hopefully they will reveal something I am missing.

 

Testing via the pins verifies for certain whether pin 13 of the cartridge slot is grounded - this appears to be the critical requirement. It's not the screws that need the continuity with the RF shield but the ground plane(s) on the motherboard and ultimately pin 13 of the cart connector. Let us know how you get on.

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I have been doing some tinkering with Ikrananka's guide above

 

You don’t even need the shield, just solder a wire to the pad that is left floating to any ground point on the circuit board

 

The below is my test 'patch'

post-18126-0-33232700-1549662429_thumb.jpg

 

I have tested the above on the following hardware:

 

NTSC rev A with ram removed and F18A - can get to level 2

SECAM rev B with 5v ram - can get to level 2

PAL rev D with normal new video ram and system ram with RF output - can get to level 2

 

all these failed to get to level two before adding the green patch wire

 

I do have another pal machine but it does not have a VDP in it currently so am unable to test but I expect the same result will be experienced

 

What i cannot understand is if this (pin 13) is critical and needs to be grounded, why was the circuit board not designed for it to actually be connected to ground, seems like laziness in my opinion, then if you have either thrown out the shielding or it has got dirty and has iffy connection it gives you issues which is not normally apparent. I’m sure some users that use colecovisions do not have electronic maintenance expertise

Edited by omf
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Well I have several projects this weekend and looking into this will be one of them. I also stated the same as you that if the screw is missing, then just solder some wire from that pad section to another other ground on the system board. Heck the RF shield would be a good place. I guess I never thought to look into this because I just assumed that all of those ground pads were tied together within the PCB already as all the others are. It does make you wonder why pin 13 isn't already and required the screw and pad to be attached to the rf shield in order to complete this. I've not had any issues with any other games but then I don't own an SGM or use any of the other add on modules with my CV setup.

 

So yeah, I will look into this and report my results. I will likely do a follow up video as well to mention this if it works so that others in the future will know.

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Well I took mine apart again this afternoon as I had a few things I wanted to do to my CV and figured I would look into this. Ikrananka guide and the fix with the ground is indeed the secret to getting this game working! Yeap, on mine the screw was actually there, but because that part of the bottom RF shielding appears to have been broken off, there was a teflon washer being used to hold the board down. So I took all of that out and used a piece of kynar to solder from that ground pad off pin 13 to another nearby ground and Risky Rick now works past level 1 and onto level 2 as it should.

 

Also decided to recap it and add the no delay bios mod to it as well today once I had that working. So...we can now confirm that the Rev. H with +5 vram mod also works and the +5 vram isn't an issue for this game.

 

Guess I need to start playing some Risky Rick again and try to pass level 2 next!

 

Thanks again Ikrananka for posting this up with pics to better explain it.

 

 

post-6-0-88479800-1549781419_thumb.jpg

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Well I took mine apart again this afternoon as I had a few things I wanted to do to my CV and figured I would look into this. Ikrananka guide and the fix with the ground is indeed the secret to getting this game working! Yeap, on mine the screw was actually there, but because that part of the bottom RF shielding appears to have been broken off, there was a teflon washer being used to hold the board down. So I took all of that out and used a piece of kynar to solder from that ground pad off pin 13 to another nearby ground and Risky Rick now works past level 1 and onto level 2 as it should.

 

Also decided to recap it and add the no delay bios mod to it as well today once I had that working. So...we can now confirm that the Rev. H with +5 vram mod also works and the +5 vram isn't an issue for this game.

 

Great news - so glad that yours is now working :)

 

For the no delay bios, did you use the one patched by youki? His one fixes the issue with Sewer Sam.

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-^Cro§Bow^- : Look the GND tracks width, compared to the wire section. Should be enough, but may be better to be a bit largest.

 

What do you mean exactly? The wire I put in I did so at that angle to maximize the attachment point and again the tab that the center is supposed to attach to, is missing on this CVs bottom RF shield. I can see where it was literally cut and using a larger wire would impede the cartridge from sitting down properly. Speaking of... I have found another odd issue that I hadn't noticed until just now trying to play Risky Rick again. It would seam the cartridge PCB on the game sits inside a little high because I noticed that the Risky Rick cart doesn't seem to sit as firmly in my CV as other games do. Or the fingers on the PCB for the game might be recessed a bit too far back. Not sure which, but because of this I have to really fiddle with the game to get it to fire up. It usually will start with a black screen and high pitch sound of some sort and takes me several tries of re-inserting it before it wants to come up. Once it does I can move the cart back and forth and the game doesn't crash..so not sure what that is about. And before everyone starts telling me the clean the cartridge port...trust me that has been done and it is squeaky clean. All other games seem to fire up without issue so I'm not sure if it something with the no delay bios I've added or another issue to track down or something with the cart itself?

 

As for the no delay bios, I have no idea what version it is. I got the Console5 kit for it about a month ago and it along with the recap was my saturday project.

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omf : Take care abould long flying wires and antenna effect that can produce noises.

that wire was only to test easily at it has crocodil clips on each end. the perminant solution will be better (probably connect pin 13 to pin 29 whuch is propper groubd on the cartridge connector which should be the shortest wire and give the less interferance

 

 

What do you mean exactly? The wire I put in I did so at that angle to maximize the attachment point and again the tab that the center is supposed to attach to,

 

i think he means the track width

 

you are basically connecting a thin wire to a fat trace

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