John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

Hi All,

I am the lucky owner of a Vs super mario cabinet. I usually fire it up once a month and play a few games. Last night I turned her on and of course it fired up right to the start screen. I loaded some credits but strangely the 1p/2p buttons aren't working. Does anybody have any insight to this issue? My machines are in the basement and I wondered about the cold being a factor but I'm not sure. Any help, ideas or areas to start looking would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

check the connections to the switches to start with.

First thing I would do is open the control panel and inspect the buttons and connections with the game on. I would manually activate the switch from underneath to see if that starts the game. Or wiggle the connectors while pushing the 1p start button. Check the harness connection from the CP to the game. Maybe plug it in and unplug it. Also do the same at the edge connector on the PCBs. If you suspect the switch itself is bad then short the two leads going to the switch together and see if that starts the game. If so, then the switch is bad. Sounds unlikely as they are both not working. What are the odds?

Thanks for the quick replies. I will update after I try the suggested.

Update, so I tried the above nothing seemed to work. I'm going to look for another pcb in hopes that that will fix it. if anybody has one for sale lmk. Thanks!

I'd try checking the ground wire, it doesn't seem likely that both buttons would happen to go bad

I know this wasn't on a Nintendo board but maybe it can help anyway.

 I had a similar problem with my Ms Pacman board on the coin inputs, neither would register, What I did to find the issue is trace what pins on the PCB handled the inputs and marked the affected ones, I then used my multimeter to trace them back through the circuit, turned out there was a pair of 74xxxxx chips and resistor packs that had gone bad keeping the inputs stuck, so they wouldn't register, I changed the pack and input chips and the inputs worked again.
I would bet this is a pretty common design on many arcade PCBs, so perhaps It couldn't hurt to check this if all else fails. It's cheaper to change those parts than to buy a new board.

Thanks for the replies. I plan on spending some time this weekend on it so we'll see...

So I found another board for a pretty good deal. I swapped it in and the exact same thing. well at least i know where the problem is.

Id say its a ground or wiring issue.

Check your ground connection at the edge connector. I had a broken ground wire there, and the heat shrink was still holding it in place. Or you can borrow a ground from the player 2 side and see if that makes it work.

Just to update it was indeed a ground wire. Working perfectly since. Many trouble free warps!

Glad to hear it got resolved!

What did you do with the spare board?

Jason