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My NES Chiller cartridge not loading


nesfangirlyes

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Hello!  I decided to post here because I am hoping somebody more knowledgeable than myself will reply.  So I acquired the NES game "Chiller" and when I turn the game on in the NES the title screen starts, and then when I press start the screen goes black.  I can hear sound in the background but the screen is totally black.  I took the cartridge apart and cleaned the lens at least three times and still got the same result every time I tried to start up the game.  I don't think the NES itself is the problem since all my other games work fine.  Here are a few images.  The quality is not the best but if anybody is knowledgeable about this issue I would love for you to post!  Thanks!

IMG_20210127_203236.jpg

IMG_20210127_203302.jpg

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7 hours ago, nesfangirlyes said:

Hello!  I decided to post here because I am hoping somebody more knowledgeable than myself will reply.  So I acquired the NES game "Chiller" and when I turn the game on in the NES the title screen starts, and then when I press start the screen goes black.  I can hear sound in the background but the screen is totally black.  I took the cartridge apart and cleaned the lens at least three times and still got the same result every time I tried to start up the game.  I don't think the NES itself is the problem since all my other games work fine.  Here are a few images.  The quality is not the best but if anybody is knowledgeable about this issue I would love for you to post!  Thanks!

IMG_20210127_203236.jpg

IMG_20210127_203302.jpg

I think I've read somewhere on the old nintendoage website that chiller carts like to go bad for some reason, it could be that it just need s a cleaning but I think I specifically remember reading about chiller carts failing, but can't remember why. Hopefully you can get it working though! 

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It's possible the lock-out disable circuitry in the cartridge does not work with the revision nes motherboard, but the fact that it initially boots may prove me wrong.

 

The fact that it boots then stops working is interesting... That may imply corrupt ROM chips, or that chip above the PRG ROM went bad. What is the part number on that smaller chip? It is likely serving as a discrete mapper for bank switching the PRG ROM.

 

A simple thing to try would be to reflow all the solder joints.

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Now that I'm not at work I can dig a little deeper...

 

I saw a few listings on ebay that had similar issues. One of them looked like it was reading sprite graphics okay but background graphics were all screwed up. Others would load the start screen then go black like your situation. As INTVCruise suggested, it seems rather common for these to fail.

 

That smaller chip is a 74ls377, an octal flip flop. The game has 32KB of both PRG and CHR ROM. The NES can see 32KB of PRG and 8KB of CHR at a time, so the '377 is likely bankswitching the CHR ROM and not the PRG as I assumed before. The fact that you can hear music but get no picture also points to this.

 

My previous guesses still stand. Either the '377 is bad, the CHR ROM is corrupt, or the PRG ROM is corrupt and not performing the bankswitch correctly.

 

Here is some further reading:

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1159

https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Color_Dreams

https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/sdls167/sdls167.pdf?ts=1611960678989&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

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11 hours ago, emerson said:

It's possible the lock-out disable circuitry in the cartridge does not work with the revision nes motherboard, but the fact that it initially boots may prove me wrong.

 

The fact that it boots then stops working is interesting... That may imply corrupt ROM chips, or that chip above the PRG ROM went bad. What is the part number on that smaller chip? It is likely serving as a discrete mapper for bank switching the PRG ROM.

 

A simple thing to try would be to reflow all the solder joints.

Did you mean the chip above the larger chip to the far right?  Underneath the battery?

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