Yahtzee loading issues on BB2

[kgfiske]

Hi all,
I am running into trouble in trying to load the S52E-000-1030B5 game with a known good H13.47 OS card on my WMS BB2 machine. The load gets to the point shown on the screen shot and stops.  I tried the load a number of times with some other OS versions with no success.  Any thoughts out there? 

[Stayouttadabunker]

Did you use a Clear card first?

[kgfiske]

Yes, repeatedly.

[rickhunter]

what is the error for the call attendant screen.  Twist the jackpot reset key to get further error.

[kgfiske]

Twisting the jackpot reset key does absolutely nothing. 

[sccarlso]

Just my 2 cents as I've loaded a lot of BB2 games over the years...

My preferred OS for all BB2 games that use an H13 OS is H13.34 and H13.56

Pretty much every H13.XX game I've used loads just fine using one or the other with few exceptions.  So I always have these versions to use.

BB2's will pretty much never have any problem loading OS or game CF cards that are true WMS original game and OS cards.

So there's something it doesn't like about the game CF card image and the validation of it during load.  Your JUR chip would have to be ok to even load the OS.  And your SSD would generally need to be ok to be able to load the OS as well.  You have to watch the entire boot process.  Take a video with your phone if it goes by too fast to read...can make it easier to review the log as it loads.

If the OS CF card fails validation it will halt fairly early on, and you won't even get to loading the game CF to the drive. If that passes, then the game CF starts to validate as it will say it is on the screen during load, then the OS CF is good.  If it errors once it starts loading the game CF, there's something not right about the game CF card.  If the game CF passes validation, the data on the card is generally ok because just one byte out of place and it won't validate.

If you are clearing, then putting in your OS and game CF cards, powering on, the OS CF passes validation, and it fails loading the game, or during initial game load for any reason.

It's pretty much going to be due to the game requiring a license dongle (Yahtzee doesn't need one), or the
game CF card is corrupt in some way.  Either the CF image wasn't restored properly, or wasn't written to a CF card that the machine doesn't like (all CF cards are NOT the same), and the game fails to validate or initialize, and it logs an error about the game or the media at some point. 

The actual error can vary, or not display obviously on the screen, some kind of error message about it "should" display though, but other log entries could scroll on the screen after the error about failing to load/validate so it's not just remaining on the screen for you to see.  You have to watch as it loads for any error about the game image, or loading of the game.  If it's failing like that when loading the game from CF.  There's an issue with the game CF. 

If you open the machine and press the service button.  The same button you press to setup a game after it loads correctly.  It "may" display more information if the CPU door is kept open while loading the game.  But not always. 

I "think" that the CPU door, aka the "Logic Door" which the machine indicates is open during game setup following a good load, and the Logic door switch has to be open (CPU box is open) to access privileged setup, I don't recall because I always leave the CPU door open when loading a new game after a clear anyway.  And only close the CPU door up once all is setup, when then it has to be closed, and the remaining doors closed following setup for the machine to finish initialization and allow normal play.

There are a lot less actual WMS game loader cards these days, that's just how it is no matter where you obtain it.  15 year old game CF cards aren't coming direct from WMS that's for sure.  There are far more copies of games around that just have very good labels on them so they look just like a real WMS CF card.  A game that requires no dongle bought on ebay for example, is almost always going to be a copy, but if not machine tested, it could be bad.  If it requires a dongle, it's a little more likely that game CF card is original WMS, but not always.

WMS doesn't have holograms on their cards or anything else to really tell if it's a copy or not.  BB2 games are pretty easy to copy if the correct type of CF card is used.  So if you purchase a game, it's rarely going to be a true WMS game CF, that's not a shock.  But if so, the card should be machine tested if sold.  If not, that's the sellers fault.

If you bought the game, I'd contact the seller.  If you wrote the CF image to a card yourself, not condoning it.  But a lot still do it.  In that case, the game CF is likely not passing validation, most commonly due to a CF card that isn't WMS compatible was used.  It's highly unlikely this is some kind of hardware failure.  Especially if other games load just fine on the machine.

Also Yahtzee does use a vertical top screen.  It should still play just fine, but the top screen will display sideways on a normal BB2 machine. 

[kgfiske]

Great information, thanks.  A couple of notes:  This CF card is not an original WMS card, it was copied from an FMB file and written on a generic 512MB CF card.  I'm pretty sure it was never tested. 

I did shoot a video of the game load and caught an error message that popped up shortly before the load froze up in my original screen shot. The error message reads: Error: Validation failed on file: "/dev/hdb"  I have attached a screen shot of the error message from the video.

Is it safe to assume this CF card file is corrupt?  Thanks again...

[sccarlso]

All I know is the error just means your CF card isn't valid.   

If you purchased a game that was copied and isn't legit, can't control that.  But the only reason to even try to copy a game yourself would be for archive purposes where you own the actual legitimate game CF.

Any other discussion of game copying and such is a violation of the NLG TOS.

[rickhunter]

Yeah, the game cf is not validating, means it is corrupt or not valid.

[dragster73]

The CF card needs to be the exact same size as the original. You cannot program them on a computer with windows being newer than version 7