NBA Jam - TE Sound Issue

[derpnooner]

Hello,

 

I'm having a weird issue on the Atari Jaguar SD reader when playing NBA Jam TE (.jag file).  The audio will work properly on initial boot of the ROM, but after a seemingly random amount of time the audio glitches and hisses/pops.  I can hear the audio faintly behind the static.  No other ROM that I've noticed thus far seems to cause this behavior and I've let the thing run for hours running games like AVP, Rayman, Tempest 2000, Atari Carts, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, etc.  I have some CD image games as well as some homebrew titles and I haven't experienced this issue on any other media including my legit cartridges.  I haven't played every single game yet, but this is the only time I've run into this issue so far.  I posted this on Reddit on the Atari Jaguar sub and nobody so far can replicate.

Note, my Jag did require a replacement of the power conditioner chips and a cap (positive tip power supply popped it), but the machine has run properly for all other titles.  I found another version of the .jag file online and replaced with the same result.

Here's a video example:  

 

[SainT]

This isn't an issue I've come across -- anyone else?

 

Unfortunately with 30 year old consoles, unless the problem is repeatable on other machines, it's very difficult to know if it's an actual problem with the cartridge or the console or a mix of the both. I've had a few Jaguars which would crash playing certain games, but not others. Nothing wrong with the games, they were originals in this case, but just the console was faulty in an intermittent fasion.

[derpnooner]

Yeah, it is old tech -- but, like I said, none of my legit carts seem to cause this issue.  I guess I should track down a copy of NBA Jam TE to test, but that's a pretty steep price for a potentially broken experience.  Hence the Jag GD.  Oh well, plenty of other titles are working like a champ, but now my brain is FIXATED on this one game NOT working properly.  If anything changes on future firmware releases, I'll provide an update to my JAM saga.

 

Thanks!

Edited March 7, 2022 by derpnooner

[+cubanismo]

Tried to reproduce this, but all I can say is works for me. I played a game including overtime, let the demos run in between for a while, messed around in the menus for about 10 minutes putting in various secret character codes, and played another game all the way through. About 30 minutes play overall, and no sound issues. Does sound like something not quite right with the HW in your particular Jaguar, though no idea what.

[derpnooner]

Hey, thanks much for testing -- not that enjoying a dope game is TOO much of a hassle. 

I can't figure it out -- every other title runs like a champ.  No problems and I've been putting this thing through it's paces.  Any chance you could send me the MD5 sum of the .jag file you're using?  Perhaps I just found a borked one. 

 

Either way, thanks for the replies!

[+cubanismo]

MD5 (flash/NBA Jam - Tournament Edition (World).j64) = a302ef18eedcb6c07dd7ea139c849eb7

[derpnooner]

Thanks for checking.

I found that same MD5 version of the game you have and put it on my SD with no .mrq and it glitched on load.  It actually slows down the game play demo before becoming slow + crashing.  Guessing (World) might mean PAL version?

 

My system and history:

• NTSC-U (Red Light)
• Power Regulators and Cap Popped and Replaced (C134, U38 and REG1)
• All legitimate games work
• All other games (.jag) load and run properly with no audio glitching after hours of play
• 32GB SD Card (Formatted FAT32)
• Game Version (a302ef18eedcb6c07dd7ea139c849eb7  NBA Jam - Tournament Edition.jag)

 

I power-cycled a bunch and re-inserted the cartridge a number of times with the same results.  I then tried some other games on the drive and Defender 2000 would load but the menu was flashing and the game wouldn't actually launch.  AVP had similar experience where it loaded but had no intro music and the 'Predator' on the character selection screen was garbled orange pixels and the game also would not load.  I thought I fried my Jag SD.  I removed the SD and deleted the newly added .j64 file from the SD card and everything works like before.  All my other games are .jag file types.

I replicated this behavior each time re-adding/deleting the .j64 file on the root of the drive.  I'm guessing the drive might set it's PAL/NTSC setting based on the first detected file region or something which is pretty cool.  Oh well, I guess NBA Jam isn't in the cards for me at this time.  Perhaps on a future firmware update I'll be surprised. Thanks again.

 

[+cubanismo]

There's no separate PAL version of NBA Jam AFAIK. Almost all Jaguar games are region-free, detecting the PAL vs. NTSC system type at startup time, which is what the "World" refers to, though even my one game with a separate PAL-friendly (Though still region-free and completely functional in both iterations on NTSC and PAL) version, Raiden, came as a "World" ROM when I downloaded the non-PAL-optimized one. The internet doesn't know what it's doing. Regardless, I was playing on an NTSC system as well when I tested that ROM on the Gamedrive.

 

Something seems off here. I don't think it's going to end up being any particular ROM file. Seems like either the Jaguar, Gamedrive, Flash, or some combination of those is not quite at 100%.