No sound on any rom (Lynx II) (RESOLVED)

[Pavlovtiger]

My Lynx Game Drive arrived and the firmware install went as directed.  All roms load up immediately, but I get no audio of any kind.  Retail carts work fine with sound, and I've tried No Intro romset files and others I've had in my library for years from other sources.  I cannot work out what might be going wrong here and any assistance would be  highly appreciated.

[SainT]

Ok, this is odd, I’ve never had reports of this before.

 

Where are you based? The only option I can really think of is to send me your Lynx and I can figure out what’s going on. It’s not something I can diagnose remotely.

[Pavlovtiger]

I'm in Pennsylvania, USA.  Not the -most- tenable setup for shipping.  My Lynx II was an Ebay purchase, and the only other technical aspect of note is that the seller had previously bypassed the power button so the physical button does nothing and the system will only power on when all six batteries are inserted (or it's plugged into the mains.)  As I mentioned though, retail carts have audio so it clearly isn't that.  I have no idea WHY he chose to do this and a mate of mine (also in the US) has mentioned that he could have a look at it.

 

I am definitely not above shipping my system as I do really like the Lynx and it is a bit of a deal breaker to not have any audio on an otherwise brilliant Everdrive type cart, I just shudder at imagining the shipping fees involved.

[Pavlovtiger]

Update then.  Sound in all games works brilliantly now.  No I do not know why.  Last night when I tried my Ninja Gaiden III cart the sound was there, but the Game Drive sound wasn't, a condition which continued through tonight's testing with another SD card and roms both in and out of a folder.  Just now I tried NG3 again and got no sound, then I "jiggled the handle" and powered off and tried again, no sound again.  Tried a Ninja-Gaiden-Third time, got sound.

 

Then I tried the Game Drive, and now there's sound on the Game Drive.  It's solid, and doesn't drop on me in between power cycles to try different roms.  I have -no- bloody clue what's up with my system but it seems to be working now.  I'm pretty sure this Lynx needs a visit to the vet.

[Nop90]

Maybe it's only a bad contact of the speaker wires. Next time you can't hear the sound try plugging hearphone inthe audio jack.

 

[SainT]

Thanks for the update! That’s really weird that it only seemed to be happening on the GD cart. I guess just Sod’s law! Definitely time to start pressing on chips / connectors when the console is apart and you get no sound. Must be a bad contact in there somewhere.

[GadgetUK]

There's no way the Gamedrive could be causing that - unless its somehow knocking the speaker wire within the console?!?

[SainT]

The reason I didn't immediately dismiss this one as hardware related is that I actually DID have a similar problem very early on in testing of the original version of the Lynx cart in some games! It was down to not resetting the state of the hardware fully before rebooting to the game.

 

And as I had some strange behavior with older chipsets in the Lynx 2 not setting up the video, I thought this might be another odd edge case. It's very difficult when dealing with 30 year old hardware knowing when it's an age issue rather than a real issue.