Help With Sega Model 2

Archived from groups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting (More info?)

Alright I'm a newb and a total one at that. I purchased a virtua
fighter 2 cab over a year ago and just now decided to get some games
for it. So I purchased two damaged boards thinking i could take the rom
boards off them and run them in the cab with either my vf2 mainboards
or with boards from a working game later on.

Canidate one heh is a dead or alive board that came into today. It is
the model 2a version so it should work on my vf2 boardset right? Wrong
lol, i just get a white screen when i put the game in. I have the
security board for it but even without it plugged in the attract mode
is supposed to run. Now if I pluge in my vf2 rom board into the doa cab
it runs although the graphics are messed up so Im at a total loss. The
only thing i could figure out about the doa board is that one memory
chip's pins are bent but if i run test mode on its own board i
everything shows up as good. There is a capacitator (I believe that is
the correct term) with one leg broken off but I have it bent so that it
touches down so that shouldnt be the reason. (I will fix that as soon
as I can afford a soldering kit)

My long winded question is if both are model 2a boards shouldnt the
game work in either? If it was a rom board problem wouldnt it still run
regardless, but show the errors with both mainboards?

The other board I got today was a fighting vipers boardset (model 2b)
where none of the 3d graphics show up but from what ive read that is a
tgp problem so as long as I get another set of mainboards it should
work right?