Tableblazer
Beginner
I salvaged some components from a machine... I know nothing about the boards external of the main cpu. The main cpu powers up. Seems to boot up... but no video..
Thanks... did finally get the video to display. Sorry, not familiar with the term VRM?? Guessing the video card does work now that I can see that it failed to load.The N2 is just a PC with a custom BIOS. If the PC is working at all it should display something on the screen. Repeating "boot failed" means the PC has POSTed, has reached the first bootloader, and is trying to boot from hard drive. You should get a purple screen with the Namco logo if it's booted from hard drive.
If it's been outside, check for corrosion on the boards inside. The first run of these are from the capacitor plague era and are notorious for bad caps on the VRM. Also, the video cards are known for dying.
No way to re-install them... or have to send to NAMCO (SOS repair). If that is the case then I have boards and a case for sale.that ... and the fact that there's no way to reinstall them means they are a ticking time bomb.... which is a shame.
Well the main board definitely has some bulged caps, but I did get it to finally show up on a monitor... see pic. Tried a few times to see if any change. This is all I get.
Ok... looks like I have parts for sale... best advise for postingThe dongle is not used for game decryption. It's only checked for its existence once the OS loads (the purple namco screen) and then again once the game is booted and on the attract loop. The only dongle enveloped file IIRC is the factory setup script. The hardware info is what's used to decrypt the AES containers, and if it didn't match, you'd get the repeating "Boot Failed..." on screen.
This means your hard drive is almost certainly dead. The hardware has passed the aepass checks and the bootloader is trying to mount the OS, but the OS container is probably corrupt. There are ways to run the game decrypted, but unfortunately nobody has packaged this up into something readily available, so your easiest option is to get a replacement drive and dongle.