New PGM Motherboard
Tuesday September 23, 2025
In the last post, I wrote about how I ruined my new PGM set up by pressing the “test” button on my Astro City power supply in an attempt to switch the game to free play. I thought that maybe I had only screwed up the DOJ game cart, since the motherboard would boot when there was no cart inserted. I got an Espgaluda cart to help narrow down the problem. Nope. Still just a black screen upon powering up. New motherboard it is, then.
The proper way to get these CAVE bootleg carts into the service menu is to flip dip switch 1 on the PGM motherboard.
Good progress, however, both games seem to randomly die in the middle of playing. The screen goes black and the audio cuts out, just like the problem I had before. Turning the cab off and back on again tends to fix it, but it happens often enough for me to consider this thing unplayable. I say it happens “randomly”, but there could be a consistent reason for it. Espgaluda does it more often. I haven’t been able to make it out of level 1 before it dies, but I can usually make it much further in DOJ. I’m hoping it’s an easy fix. With my luck, I bet both carts and the motherboard somehow got damaged during shipping.