Killer Instinct PCB Troubleshooting Guide

I recently bought a non-working Killer Instinct PCB and found it hard to find information on appropriate troubleshooting. So I pieced this information from all over the place and my own testing, hopefully it will help people determine what’s wrong with their PCB just from looking at what happens when it attempts to boot up.

What a normal Successful boot up looks and sounds like:
On Power On you should see the activity LED off and the Sound LED off.

The screen will be black and then start filling with blue from top to bottom, part way through the Sound LED will turn on solid and you’ll hear a “bong” through the speakers.

Once the screen is nearly filled with blue it will pause for a moment while the activity LED flickers before the game starts.

The first screen of the game will appear frozen for a few seconds before the game starts proper.

Possible Symptoms and what they mean:

If you power on and the screen is solid Gray, or gray and black lines or similar:
-This is typically an indication that you have a Bad CPU, a damaged pin on your CPU or a cold solder joint on the CPU. this is a very common fault on KI PCBs as the pins are incredibly fine and easily damaged and the CPU is prone to overheating and dying.

If you see the screen filling up with blue and reboot before finishing
-This is typically an indication that you have a Bad RAM chip, or logic associated with RAM or one of those needs to be reflowed or replaced.

If you see the screen fill most of the way with blue and then freeze for a long time before rebooting
-This is typically an indication that you have a bad hard drive or a bad hard drive connector

If you see the activity LED turn on immediately and stay on
-This is typically an indication that the HDD is not plugged in, or you have it plugged in backwards

If the Sound LED comes on but you don’t hear the power on “bong”
-This is typically an indication that there is an audio amplifier issue or the volume is turned down

If the Sound LED does not come on and you don’t hear the power on “bong”
-This is typically an indication that there is an issue with audio CPU or associated circuitry.

0 Responses to “Killer Instinct PCB Troubleshooting Guide”


  • No Comments

Leave a Reply

You must login to post a comment.