OMG What have I gotten myself into -- 10 MORE CABS!

[smalltownguy]

So I'm walking by the local pizzeria last week, and noticed that 2 of the 4 cabs in the hallway outside are not working. I know the owner, so I walked in and mentioned that I'd be willing to fix up his cabs since I enjoy the hobby and could use the experience. I told him that I would only charge him for parts and I'd provide the labor. I just cant stand to see cabs in disrepair, plus he's not making any money on cabs that don't work.

Sunday, I get a call from the owner - he wants to take me up on my offer. He's got a 'few more' cabs that he'd like to drop off to see if I can do anything with them, or maybe use them for parts.

2 hours later, here's what I have in my garage:





From left to right in the two pics:

1. Final Fight, in a converted midway cab. I believe it was a pacman cab, based on the blue paint I see on the back panel. Does not currently power up. Was working 2 months ago.
2. DONKEY KONG! Dedicated, original cab. Powers on and plays. A few sound issues noted, could be a speaker connection issue. Joystick is very loose, and intermittently responsive. Cab is in GREAT shape, 1 side of the coin mech still works. A real jem -- just needs a bit of cleanup and joystick work.
3. Tetris - I believe it's dedicated, but not sure based on the pic I see on KLOV. Works, but controllers are sloppy and intermittently unresponsive. Both coin mechs work. Monitor clear and bright.
4. Mortal Kombat II, in a converted cab of unknown origin. Monitor has a bit of burn, but looks OK when on. Owner tells me that it powers on and off randomly. Controls feel OK, but CP is in need of recovering or repainting. Both coin mechs work.
5. MS PACMAN, totally dedicated, restored cab. Currently using pac man bezel. Screen shows a bit of flagging, needs a capkit. Joystick a bit sloppy.
6. Tetris II - the Revenge of DOH, in a converted cab of unknown origin. Decent conversion, cab is solid. Needs marquee. Controls feel good. Game plays blind, monitor shows red image at times, scrambled at other times. I'm sure it needs a capkit.
7. Neo Geo cab, in a conversion of unknown origin. Marquee shows a driving game, but cartidge currently installed is a bowling game. Game does not currently power up. Control panel is horrible - button layout is all wrong, but joysticks feel good.
8. Head On - cab is in terrible condition - was left outside for many years with the back removed. The particle board is swelled and bloated everywhere, though it still appears to be structurally sound. All original artwork is there, including original 4-way joystick. Button is snapped off. Cab is open in the back (back board are stuffed in sideways in the bottom), and is full of dust and pine needles. I didn't try powering it on since I like my house 'not burned down.'

Needless to say, I've got some work ahead of me! I'll be working on the Donkey Kong, Ms Pac Man, Tetris, Arkanoid, Mortal Kobmat II, and then Final Fight in that order to get them in route ready condition again, and the other 2 cabs are parts machines only. I may ask him to keep the Neo Geo cab so I can rework it, and I'm pretty sure the Head On cab has so graciously been 'donated' to me.  

Looks like Bob Roberts and I are going to become good friends over the next few weeks.  

The owner has offered me free pizza for life when I get them all working again. Obviously that kind of offer would come with limitations (hey can I have 42 pizzas for my superbowl party?) but I'm inclined to take him up on his offer.

My wife was actually somewhat OK with the situation, even though this has rendered one stall of our 2 car garage useless for parking. I think the fact that there's a working Tetris and Arkanoid cabs in the mix helps with the WAF.

I'll try to post updates as I dig into these cabs to get them working again. Cheers!  

[sstralkowski]

Good luck, man.  This sounds like a fun project. 

[TOK]

Don't let this ruin the hobby for you. Taking on too many projects can burn you out.

[smalltownguy]

Don't let this ruin the hobby for you. Taking on too many projects can burn you out.

That's wise advice, TOK. I already told the owner that it may take some time to get this done. He's fine with however long it takes; in the mean time, I get to play them all I want during the repair process.

It helps that he's agreed to pay for the replacement parts. It's always much easier to do repairs / restorations when it's not YOUR money on the line for parts.

[opt2not]

3. Tetris - I believe it's dedicated, but not sure based on the pic I see on KLOV. Works, but controllers are sloppy and intermittently unresponsive. Both coin mechs work. Monitor clear and bright.

That is actually a Williams cabinet, looks like a Robotron. I'd recognize it anywhere!

[smalltownguy]

3. Tetris - I believe it's dedicated, but not sure based on the pic I see on KLOV. Works, but controllers are sloppy and intermittently unresponsive. Both coin mechs work. Monitor clear and bright.

That is actually a Williams cabinet, looks like a Robotron. I'd recognize it anywhere!

Thanks, that helps a bunch! Getting replacement coin mech parts and such is always easier when you know what kind of cab you're dealing with.

[Bender]

I think you ought to get a least one cab for yourself out of the deal for all your time!

Take your time and have fun

[IG-88]

Great project  You should learn alot. Make sure you post as much as you can here so we can learn too! 

What happens if/when the parts bill adds up to more then the guy is willing to spend? I hear a "It's going to cost HOW much to fix that?" in your future...

[jennifer]

   Not sure where you live, but does it get cold there??? If so your house will soon look like mine!!!
   

[smalltownguy]

Great project  You should learn alot. Make sure you post as much as you can here so we can learn too! 

What happens if/when the parts bill adds up to more then the guy is willing to spend? I hear a "It's going to cost HOW much to fix that?" in your future...

The owner stopped over today, to drop off keys for the DK and Ms Pac cabs. Little did he know that I'd already picked the locks 

I told him I'd start a list (excel spreadsheet, actually) of the breakdown by game of what parts he'd need. If the price gets too high for his liking, I will barter for some of the non-working or lesser desirable cabs. He's actually got a secret jewel in this mix that I'll write about later.

I got a chance to get a better look inside each of the cabs tonight. Here's what I found:

Mortal Kombat II: monitor is an e-home G07, very common monitor. Looks good, even though there's a bit of Defender burn in. Game looks and plays good. Owner SWEARS that it shuts down occasionally. We'll see. I'll leave it running 24/7 for a few days and see what happens. BONUS: I found about $100 in quarters in the locked coin box. *grin* That'll make paying for parts a bit easier.

Tetris: Turns out this IS a Robotron conversion, as correctly pointed out by opt2not (thanks!). A decent conversion, I guess. Found the manual inside the cab, and the original keys. Monitor is a Wells Gardner 19K4901. Looks good, plays OK -- joystick needs cleaning.

Donkey Kong: This baby's all original, with the exception of the back panel - it's been replaced with plywood It's even got the original Sanyo monitor with very little burn. Found a spare NOS Sanyo flyback still in the bubble wrap in the bottom of the cab! The manual is there, though it seems a bit 'crisp' to be an original - probably a repro. Game has minor sound issues with bass -- the audio board is up on the monitor chassis. Has anyone worked on this before? Joystick responds about 80-90% of the time - it needs a serious teardown and rebuild.

Final Fight: And here we have our Jewel. I knew it was a Midway cab conversion, but I couldn't tell which. Imagine my surprise when I saw the PMMS tag with a serial number inside! A Ms Pac Man cab! The stamped number on the outside (#5310) confirmed it. The original isolation transformer and power supply is still bolted to the floor. The cab is rock solid with no water damage or wood rot. Coin mechs are perfect. The back panel will likely need to be replaced -- it's got a caved spot where someone must have hit it with a small sledge hammer -- but I might be able to put a backer board on there and flatten it out again. Cab doesn't currently power on. I haven't traced power yet, but I'm sure I'll find a failed switch or interlock, possibly the power supply. If I have to barter for a cab because of cost, this is it. It's a PERFECT candidate for a restoration! Monitor: WG 19K7951.

Neo Geo cab: Indeed, as pointed out by the boys over at KLOV, it's a Wizard of Wor cab conversion. Two switching power supplies and frayed cord tell me that there are definitely some electrical reasons why this cab wont power up. The monitor is newer, though. It's a Wells Gardner 19K7302 with the optional remote board, manufactured in 1997. No burn that I can see. Hopefully she fires up -- I'll be taking THAT monitor for my personal Double Dragon cab

Arkanoid II: Yep, it's a Centipede conversion. Crappy one, too. Found the kit manual in the bottom. It's a really funny read. There's actually a step in the manual where it says, 'now kick back and relax a bit, you've done a lot of work so far. Your NEW GAME is almost ready!' LOL Monitor: Electrohome G07, and it needs serious work, or the power supply is failing, because all I get is red signal, and I can't keep it synced for more than a few minutes before it scrambles again.  I'm thinking cap kit. Needs a marquee too.

Ms Pac Man: This is pretty much a complete restoration unit - the only reason the owner brought it over is because the screen is starting to show some flagging on one side. It needs a cap kit, which should be simple enough. I did notice that the coin mechs are missing some parts though - it appears that they are missing the reject mechanism? I compared them to the mechs on the Final Fight cab (also a Ms Pac) and the Final Fight cab's coin mechs appear complete. This one looks like it needs more pieces to divert the quarters in the proper direction to the coin box. Does that make sense? Monitor: E-home G07.

Head On: I did find the original manual (on one of the swelled access doors) and the PCB appears complete. I had no idea how to ID the monitor -- it looks so primitive! The chassis is like 10 chips total. I'm not touching this one for a bit yet.

So that's it. I still have lots of diagnosis to do; I need to check coin mech lights, and marquee bulbs and fixtures. New locks are in order for almost all of these cabs except the DK and Ms Pac.

My list of parts needed so far:

1. 2 Cap kits for G07 (Ms Pac and Arkanoid)
2. Two Possible switching power supplies (Neo Geo and Final Fight)
3. 5 sets of locks
4. Arkanoid II marquee
5. Additional coin mech parts for the Ms Pac Cab.
6. 2nd coin mech for the DK cab
7. Replacement leg levelers for 3 cabs.
8. Sanyo monitor audio board cap kit??
9. Find another owner (sucker) for the Head On cab

Sorry for the long post -- lots to share!

[smalltownguy]

Well, got up this morning, and yep, the Mortal Kombat cab is dead. Unplugged it, waited 30 seconds, plugged it back in, and heard the rom sound, but no image. Unplugging, I get red image collapse on the monitor, but no image on screen when plugged in.

I'll wait 30 min or so and see if that makes a difference.

Any ideas?

[Roo]

I have no ideas for you.      I've never owned or even been allowed inside an arcade cabinet, so I know nothing about working on a real cab.

I just wanted to thank you for posting.  I like reading your descriptions of the cabinets.  It sounds like a lot of fun!

[smalltownguy]

I have no ideas for you.      I've never owned or even been allowed inside an arcade cabinet, so I know nothing about working on a real cab.

I just wanted to thank you for posting.  I like reading your descriptions of the cabinets.  It sounds like a lot of fun!

Hey thanks! You know I never really know how many people are reading my posts. I know there's a few die hard readers of the forum, but sometimes I wonder whether I'm just talking to myself, talking too much, not enough, you know, that whole 'among strangers' feeling.

Anyhoo, I went out after 30 minutes and tried plugging in the Mortal Kombat cab, and got some different behavior this time. This time I would hear the boot beep, then some very quiet ticking (presumably the processor crystal clocking, perhaps?) and then nothing. Shortly thereafter, I heard another boot beep. Then another. Unplugging and plugging resulted in more boot beeps, and once I got garbage on the screen. Never got to the ROM check though. I'm beginning to think the power supply is bad. Good thing I have a few more to swap in and try

[EvilNuff]

I'm reading too...I have no input for you but I am enjoying reading about the projects.

[jennifer]

  You could take a voltmeter after it.....

[smalltownguy]

  You could take a voltmeter after it.....

I'm going to. I have an older analog multimeter that I was using before this summer, a 'hand me down' from my Dad for some project I was working on years ago. Acutally, I don't think it was a 'hand me down' as much as I borrowed it, and then after 10 years, well, they say possession is 9/10ths of the law, right? 

Anyways, the Radio Shack in a town near me closed up shop earlier this spring, and I picked up a bunch of great parts including this multimeter:

http://www.amazon.com/Radio-Shack-Digital-Multimeter-20-Range/dp/B003E2YXJK

Looks like it's high time I learned how to use it!

[Dr Zero]

Very cool congrats on the nice find and taking on the job! 

Not many people care about games any more it seems (general public) but love to see places who still have them and working well is really a great find!

If you need a final fight bezel there was a fellow on KLOV with one for sale I was tempted but had to pass for right now.

Talking about coin door lights I ordered these http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5789 from deal extreme and have been real happy with them, they fit with no issue and there is no heat and will probably outlast me LOL

[smalltownguy]

Talking about coin door lights I ordered these http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5789 from deal extreme and have been real happy with them, they fit with no issue and there is no heat and will probably outlast me LOL

Dr Zero, thanks for the kind words. I really want to do these cabs some justice. The pizza place in my home town is the only place that I see cabs at this point, so I want them work, so kids (ME) can enjoy them.

I installed similar lights like those in my MAME cab, and I noticed that they have a sort of 'directional' inensity to them. Do you know if these bulbs diffuse better? If you look at mine head on, they're very bright, but from an angle they appear as spotlights on the coin reject inserts.

[abzman2000]

No helpful words from me, but I will be coming back/researching problems you have when I have more time, as I have never worked on an arcade cab before (except my half finished mame cab) I would be interested to see how your repairs go.  If you get stuck, then just post a pic and ask a question, I like the people here and they all tend to be helpful when they can. 

actually, you could just hit the LEDs with some sandpaper or a file to diffuse them

[Dr Zero]

I installed similar lights like those in my MAME cab, and I noticed that they have a sort of 'directional' inensity to them. Do you know if these bulbs diffuse better? If you look at mine head on, they're very bright, but from an angle they appear as spotlights on the coin reject inserts.

I was able to slide mine back some so they were not as deep into the plastic they just are in a bit and they look good to me 


http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.35621 these have 2 small led around the base to help with the spread

[RonnieC312]

my wife would kill me LOL

[smalltownguy]

my wife would kill me LOL

With a 60 inch MAME setup, I'd say you've used up all the WAF stock you own at this point. 

[smalltownguy]

So I went to the bank today to cash in the quarters I found in the cash boxes.

*drumroll...................*


$190!! SWEET! That should more than cover the cost of most of the small parts I need to get like bulbs, locks, cap kits, etc. Even a few switching power supplies and possibly a game PCB will fit in that budget, if I'm careful.

[RonnieC312]

my wife would kill me LOL

With a 60 inch MAME setup, I'd say you've used up all the WAF stock you own at this point. 

LOL  HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

I just brought home a old machine "Time Killer"  its a great bad game.   So I better stop before she makes me sleep in the Man-Cave and to be honest that wouldnt be that bad HAHA

[IG-88]

9. Find another owner (sucker) for the Head On cab

I'm kinda a sucker for hard luck cabs. Where you located at?

[smalltownguy]

I'm in Osceola, WI.

I learned a valuable lesson tonight, which I will share in a bit.

So I was perplexed by the whole Mortal Kombat 'shut down' phenomenon. Since I haven't figured out why it's acting the way it is, I figured I'd swap the monitor (a G07) with the monitor that was in the Arkanoid cab. I knew the monitor in the Mortal Kombat cabinet worked, so that would rule out the possibility of a problem with the Arkanoid monitor.

When I put the monitor in the Arkanoid cab, I got the same result: game played nearly blind, red color only, inability to stabilize the picture. At this point I suspected either the power supply was bad or the PCB was hosed. Just for kicks I plugged one of my spare Double Dragon boards into the jamma connector in the Arkanoid cab. Bam, perfect picture, and the game coined up and started properly. So, the power supply is good. That left the PCB. Remembering the problems I had with an older Double Dragon PCB jamma connection causing issues, I decided to examine the jamma connector and harness.

I should have started there to begin with.



Voila! Re-seating the jamma harness and cleaning the jamma connector contacts was enough to get this game going again. So, valuable lesson learned is: start with the simple stuff first before you go doing things like removing monitors 

[smalltownguy]

On a whim, I picked this up:



It's an Operation Wolf cab converted to Golden Tee.

The flyback is hosed on the monitor, otherwise the game plays blind.

Make that 9 cabs to work on

[IG-88]

Ocseola 'eh?  About an 8 hr drive for me.    You wouldn't happen to know anybody heading towards Des Monies/Omaha/KC in the near future would you?

[Nicodumas]

Dude, you are making us all look bad! 9 at once? Heck, I am struggling to get my 1st project off the ground!

[mgb]

Man, You're gonna be busy.
 As far as the Donkey Kong goes, You're probably best getting an audio rebuild kit from Bob Roberts.
How's the picture on the monitor. I recently did a cap kit on a Sanyo in a DK and I rebuilt the sound board and adjusted the B+ voltage (108vdc).
unfortunately on that job, I had to adjust the convergence rings too, but man it looked great when I was done and the audio rebuild kit got rid of the loud hum.

Definately make sure you have a meter (digital) (Autoranging helps)

Remember one of the first things to check is your 5volts. I usually shoot for around 5.1 volts on the game board. best place to test is either on a test point on the board or right on a chip.
pin1 on most any chip is the 5volt.

[smalltownguy]

Very good tips! Yes, I just got ahold of a decent auto ranging meter this summer, so I guess I'll be learning how to use it.

I was just reading one of the stickies on the KLOV forums monitor repair thread tonight -- very good stuff in there about testing the B+ voltage.

I don't notice too much in the way of foldover or flagging on this Sanyo, so I'm inclined to leave it as is for now. I will test the B+ voltage though.

Thanx for the 5v tip too, I'll keep that in mind for all my games.

Definitely an audio rebuild kit in my future....

[mgb]

yeah more than likely the audio rebuild kit will fix the sound issues on the DK.

[sstralkowski]

I'm really enjoying this thread.  A lot of it is ove my head, but I'm loving it anyway. 

[Donkey_Kong]

Your garage must have been immaculate in order for the 9 cabs to fit so nicely! Great games! May the force be with you in getting them repaired...

[smalltownguy]

Your garage must have been immaculate in order for the 9 cabs to fit so nicely! Great games! May the force be with you in getting them repaired...

DK, it WAS clean....

On a more serious note, I'm trying to keep things contained by cab, so as not to get the 'bomb went off' effect going on. I've kind of been jumping around a bit from cab to cab as I've been trouble shooting. I'm waiting for parts for a few of the cabs that are first in line.

I'm really enjoying this thread.  A lot of it is ove my head, but I'm loving it anyway. 

Thanks sstralkowski! You know, a very short time ago I would have said the same thing. A lot of what I'm undertaking will be things I'm doing for the first or second time. I've replaced capacitors before, but I've never recapped an arcade monitor. I've tinkered with arcade cabinet mechanical parts before, but never really worked on replacing or servicing things like leg levelers, interlock switches, jamma harnesses, switching power supplies, ground cables, marquee lights, coin mechs, volume potentiometers, etc.

Speaking of coin mechs, I dug into the coin mechs on the Ms Pac Man cabinet last night. Owner told me that one side didn't work (and so he taped it off with electrical tape), and the other side seemed to only work 1/2 of the time. The other 1/2 of the time, the quarters just fell into the cabinet and not the coin box. I opened up the coin mech door, and here's what I found:



Yes, folks, your eyes are not fooling you that a TOILET PAPER ROLL TUBE scotch taped to the inside of the coin mech opening!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOL I've seen some jerry-rigged things before, but this one comes close to the best yet. And this is supposed to be a 'restored' Ms Pac Man cab, too. The left side mech is totally missing, which would explain why it 'wasn't working' .... DUH.

Needless to say, I ripped out the poop paper roll solution, and fitted 2 coin mechs from the Neo Geo (Wizard of Wor) cab. A shot of WD-40 and 10 min later Ms Pac Man has 100% fully working coin mechs. Now I just need to cap the monitor, and she's done.

[abzman2000]

This may seem like nit picking, but in reality you shouldn't use wd40 for that, it may work for now, but it drys out and gets sticky, I recommend tri-flow teflon lube. 

[smalltownguy]

Emboldened by my success at getting the Arkanoid cab up and running, I decided to look at the Neo Geo Cab and see if I could figure out why it wouldn't power up. The monitor in it, a Wells Gardner 19K7302 has a manufacture date of 1997, clearly the newest of the bunch here, so I was betting that it would perform pretty well in my Golden Tee 99 cab as a drop-in swap. I soon learned later that it wasn't. Read on....

I pulled the monitor and moved it to a table next to my Golden Tee cab. Since both are Wells Gardner monitors, the pinouts for RGB, ground, and sync were similar, so the connectors fit without any modifications.

I powered on the Golden Tee and nothing. Game still plays blind, monitor shows nothing. Tweaking the settings on the remote board did nothing. I can see a little bit of neck glow, but my untrained eyes cannot tell if it's not enough neck glow or not. Damn, and I thought this monitor was going to look good. So, back into the Neo Geo cab it goes. I guess I'll have to see if I can at least get the PCB on the Neo Geo cab to fire up, and I'll address this monitor later, when I have more time to read about it.

The back end of the Neo Geo cab was a mess of tangled wires, some tight, some loose. Whomever converted this from Wizard of Wor to Neo Geo cut some corners, because none of the interlocks are used any more, the power switch has been bypassed, and several wires from the jamma harness are just spiderwebbed everywhere. It looked like this cab had been rolled down a hill somewhere.

There were 2 power supplies in it, one older, and one newer. I presume the older one died at some point, and the operator never bothered to remove it. Instead, they just fitted another one in the cab and just laid it on top of the old one. Not screwed down, not secured in any way. Just flopping around in the cab.

The power cord coming out of the back had about a 6 inch length of cord that had been spliced together. I'm guessing that's where the cord had originally gone to the power switch, and then from there to the isolation transformer, but someone just bypassed the power switch altogether and wire tied the cord in one length. Rather than go through the hassle of hooking up the back switch again -- really, at this point, why bother?? -- I decided to tie a knot in the cord downstream from the splice and left everything inside the bottom, coming out the cord hole. The knot will provide the proper strain release necessary to ensure that no one pulls the cord apart.

Examining the plug at the other end revealed why the cab wouldn't power on. After removing what seemed like 14 miles of duct tape wound around the plug end, I discovered that the plug fixture was loose. Taking apart, I found the ground wired to one of the hot/neutral contacts, the hot wired to the other, and the neutral wired to nothing. Hm....that's not right. Good thing I was using a breaker protected power strip when I plugged THAT cab in 2 days ago. *eek!*

I wired up the plug correctly, did a smoke test. I heard the familiar 'bah dah da DING' of the Neo Geo start sequence, and the marquee lit up! Woo Hoo! It works!

The monitor shows an image, but it's VERY faint, and I can see almost no color. Adjusting the controls on the remote board works, but since the image is so faint, it's hard to tell what's going on. What's wrong with this stupid monitor? Does it need a cap kit? Flyback? Sledge hammer? The chassis looks nice and clean, and the screen shows ZERO burn. Shame this won't work.

The PCB goes through the start sequence, and then it starts to get loud and scratchy when the game starts to load League Bowling. Then the game restarts. Is it possible that my Neo Geo cartridge is bad? The owner says he has a few more cartridges in his garage somewhere, but he couldn't find them. I'd sure like to try another one to see if that's the problem.

Anyway, that's where I'm at for now. At least I know that the Neo Geo cab might be salvageable. The monitor, however worries me. I really can't find anything out there about it -- it's like WG didn't make them. The serial number doesn't come up on their website lookup, and I can't find a manual or schematics anywhere. Anyone have any other ideas? Should I just forget about it? Can I put a different chassis on it?

[smalltownguy]

This may seem like nit picking, but in reality you shouldn't use wd40 for that, it may work for now, but it drys out and gets sticky, I recommend tri-flow teflon lube. 

OK, thanks for that! Would silicone spray be better? I have that.

[KagatoAMV]

This thread makes me want to track down my old arcade repair manual from my days working at an arcade.

Good luck on this project, do you plan to restore cabinets as well (paint/body work) or just get the games playing right?

[abzman2000]

silicone spray should be perfect

[smalltownguy]

This thread makes me want to track down my old arcade repair manual from my days working at an arcade.

Good luck on this project, do you plan to restore cabinets as well (paint/body work) or just get the games playing right?

KagatoAMV, as much as I would like to strip, bondo, repaint, and redo each cab, unfortunately, I'm not superhuman. My wife is casting me sideways glances, and has laid the gauntlet: clear the garage by the time the snow flies. I'm on a deadline here. But, I'm also willing to move them into my 'man cave' if need be. (that's where my MAME cab is) It's just a lot tighter in there, since it's doubling as my woodworking shop too.

So, short answer, get them playing right. Fix stuff that should be fixed to allow them to be ready to be in the field with teenagers beating on them.

[MaineEvent]

This thread makes me want to track down my old arcade repair manual from my days working at an arcade.

Dream job!

I'll be checking in often...Good Luck!

[smalltownguy]

Anyone in the US have an Arkanoid II marquee they'd like to part with? I found one on the 'bay, but it's in Canada, and shipping is WAY too much.

Thanks in advance!

[smalltownguy]

I just wanted to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Dr Zero for his instantaneous PM with GREAT info on my lesser known WG monitor. Dr Zero, you ROCK!

 

[Dr Zero]

I just wanted to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Dr Zero for his instantaneous PM with GREAT info on my lesser known WG monitor. Dr Zero, you ROCK!

 

Well thank you but ya know even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while happy to help cant wait to see them all up and running.

[smalltownguy]

Damn, I hit a road block on 1 of my monitors.

It's a WG 19K7602. This one came out of the Golden Tee cab. Right after I took the monitor out, I could tell that the flyback was blown, so I ordered a replacement from Bob Roberts. I was all set to go at my soldering bench when:



In this picture you can clearly see the blown flyback, but you can ALSO see something that doesn't look right. I circled it in red. It appears that someone has installed some components to either bypass something, or jumper a connection. Either way, it doesn't belong I don't think?

Then I turned the board over and it just got worse:



Wow, that's ugly. I don't even think it's worth trying to recap this board and/or replace the flyback. There's no way I'd feel comfortable putting power back to this chassis again. Does anyone have a spare chassis that will work for a 19K7602 I can have/buy?

Grrr.........

[abzman2000]

nonsense, if you can find the schematic and follow the traces around the modifications then it might become apparent what the hacks were for (and maybe you can clean up the soldering a bit while you're at it)

[IG-88]

Get a new chassis from 8liners perhaps...?

[Ond]

Hey STG,

Add my own best wishes to those from other folks, it will be interesting to see what you do with them.  Seeing any real cabs in the wild these days is pretty rare, one place there are quite a few are airports.  I spent a happy hour the other day checking out a bunch of cabs and pinball machines while waiting for a flight.  Keep the detail coming (I need the motivation  )

 

Ond

[smalltownguy]

Hey STG,

Add my own best wishes to those from other folks, it will be interesting to see what you do with them.  Seeing any real cabs in the wild these days is pretty rare, one place there are quite a few are airports.  I spent a happy hour the other day checking out a bunch of cabs and pinball machines while waiting for a flight.  Keep the detail coming (I need the motivation  )

 

Ond

Oh my gosh! The great and powerful Ond!!! He commented on my thread!!!

[atomikbohm]

I never realized it but if you but a flame pot on either side of Ond's avatar and add some flying monkies you totally get with wizard of Ond ... um I mean the wizard of Oz

[opt2not]

Looks like this thread should be moved to Restorations, amongst the other glorious resto threads

I'm assuming you're keeping that Robotron cab as a Tetris?
Wondering if you could transplant that Tetris kit into another cab, and restore this one as a Robotron?  Though that might push you over-budget.
Just seems like a shame to have an original high-action game cabinet like Robotron kept dormant as a puzzle game. No offense to Tetris (the greatest selling game of all time), it's just that Tetris can be thrown into any cabinet really...Robotron cabs in the wild are very few and far between. Also, it's my opinion that the Robotron cabs were built for rough-housing. The way the side panels jettisons out in front, creating more squared stability for rocking and shifting leads me to believe that they knew this game would get pretty physically intense.
I don't know how intense Tetris can get...I usually fall asleep after 5-10 mins of playing (I kid you not, when I was younger I suffered insomnia and the only way I could fall asleep was to play Tetris on my gameboy, or read...who the heck wants to read??)
 

[smalltownguy]

Lots to share today...I spend several hours in the shop / garage last night.

I finished and sent out the Ms Pac Man cab last night -- the owner was very happy to have a nice looking screen again, as well as working coin mechs. I very much wanted to ask him who the toiled paper roll engineer was, but I bit my tongue I ended up pulling the Electrohome G07 out of the Mortal Kombat cab and using it in the Ms Pac. The monitor that I pulled out of Ms Pac needs a cap kit that hasn't arrived yet (ordered yesterday from Bob Roberts), but I wanted to get this cab back to the pizzeria ASAP. There's a big town festival this weekend (Wheels and Wings) and the pizzeria will be very busy, so he didn't want to miss out on the chance to have it place to make $30 or $40 over the weekend.

My plan was to recap the G07 from the Ms Pac later and swap it into another machine when the time was right, but after I extracted it, I noticed that there had been a hood with smoked plexiglass installed on the front of the monitor. Removing it revealed some SERIOUS pac man screen burn. This monitor won't be able to go ANYWHERE but right back into a pac cab when it's recapped. I informed the owner of that, and he said it would be fine for me to swap the monitors on site some time after I'm done with the cap kit. I think what I'll do is swap it for a 'no burn' Wells Gardner from my own collection, and keep this one for a possible tube swap later this winter. I'll just keep my eyes open for a compatible CRT TV to show up for free on Craigslist, and swap in a new tube. This site lists the donor TV's -- I'll keep my eyes out for one.

The Arkanoid cabinet is also finished, with the exception of a new tube in the marquee fixture, and a marquee, which I have already ordered from EMDKAY. When those parts arrive, I'll send this one off. I'm considering changing out the monitor plexi to clear, though to aid in being able to see the bezel.

The Tetris cabinet is ready, with the exception of a new tube in the marquee fixture, and locks for the coin doors. The joystick needed a cleaning -- other than that just a wipe down. I am considering replacing the monitor plexi with clear plexi though, instead of the smoked plexi that's on there. You really can't see the bezel at all.

So that's 3 down, and 6 to go!

Here's the status of the remaining 6 cabs:

1. Mortal Kombat II: dead. Won't power up. Currently without a monitor, as it's donated to the Ms Pac Man cab temporarily, and I can't use the swapped G07 b/c of screen burn. Not sure what to do here -- I will ponder it a bit more and work on the other 6 cabs first.

2. Donkey Kong: works, but has sound issues. Parts on order from Bob Roberts.

3. Final Fight: Monitor has been pulled and needs a capkit, bad. Color is way off, and can't be adjusted. I'm hoping to get this done tonight. I won't be putting the 19K7951 back in there, though, I'm going to try and re-use it for the Golden Tee 99 cab. I've started my 'planting of the seed' with the owner on this cab to persuade him to let me have it. "You know, I'm really concerned about this cabinet, I really don't feel it's worth trying to get going again....it looks pretty rough....." hee hee.  *note* I may have already bought This replacement Ms Pac Man CP on a whim.......... am I putting the cart before the horse? Hmmmm....

4. Neo Geo: Some progress here! I re-examined the edge connectors inside the League Bowling cartridge, and re seated in in the slot. Next time I fired it up, it worked! I still have no picture b/c it's got the major PITA (= pain in the arse) WG 19K7302 monitor in it, but my cap kit just arrived yesterday, and I plan to cap it tonight. Hopefully I can get the monitor back up again so I can see the Neo Geo LOVELINESS! I'd really like to get a few Metal Slug cartridges and try them out if I can. Maybe I'll try my new monitor extension cable when it arrives and see if the picture will come up on a nearby cab.

5. Golden Tee 99: I tried pulling the monitor out of the Final Fight cab to test it on this one, but that's when I realized THAT monitor needs a cap kit real bad. So, I tried the monitor from my personal Double Dragon cab, but the horizontal size is just a touch too big, and I already know I can't adjust the width coil on that monitor, b/c I've tried. So, last resort is to fix the monitor that was in the Golden Tee cab. Unfortunately, that's the one where the flyback sizzled and I'm really not that confident about my ability to repair it given the pictures I've already posted. Dr Zero (thanks man!) pointed me to All Good USA and I spoke to Carl who says they can fix it. So I may send that chassis in to him to repair it. In the mean time, I found a friend over on the KLOV forums who was kind enough to sell me a pair of K7xxx chassis' for a good price. Thanks, Chris25810! So, by next week, I should have a working monitor in this one and it will be ready to roll.

6. Head On: *yuck*

That's where I'm at for now. This weekend I'll have a bunch of free time to get some cap kits done, so I should be well on my way to 4 or 5 cabs ready by next week.

Thanks for reading!

[smalltownguy]

Looks like this thread should be moved to Restorations, amongst the other glorious resto threads

I'm assuming you're keeping that Robotron cab as a Tetris?
Wondering if you could transplant that Tetris kit into another cab, and restore this one as a Robotron?  Though that might push you over-budget.
Just seems like a shame to have an original high-action game cabinet like Robotron kept dormant as a puzzle game. No offense to Tetris (the greatest selling game of all time), it's just that Tetris can be thrown into any cabinet really...Robotron cabs in the wild are very few and far between. Also, it's my opinion that the Robotron cabs were built for rough-housing. The way the side panels jettisons out in front, creating more squared stability for rocking and shifting leads me to believe that they knew this game would get pretty physically intense.
I don't know how intense Tetris can get...I usually fall asleep after 5-10 mins of playing (I kid you not, when I was younger I suffered insomnia and the only way I could fall asleep was to play Tetris on my gameboy, or read...who the heck wants to read??)
 

I may actually buy the Tetris cab from the owner. He's not that crazy about it, and my wife loves the game. So do my kids. It'd be nice to have the conversion kit to slap into another cab. And yes, it would also be nice to get my hands on an original Robotron cab. If I did try to restore it, though, it would come 2nd to the Ms Pac resto. That's MY 2nd fav game (behind Double Dragon, which I already have).

[newman117]

Dude there's a pizzeria here in my town that has 2 cabs effed up! Do you think I should talk to the owner? Anyways what's up with Ond replying? He replied on my thread giving me advice about a girl. Hahaha the great and powerful Ond? He's a cool guy.

[smalltownguy]

Dude there's a pizzeria here in my town that has 2 cabs effed up! Do you think I should talk to the owner? Anyways what's up with Ond replying? He replied on my thread giving me advice about a girl. Hahaha the great and powerful Ond? He's a cool guy.

Ond replying to your thread on the BYOAC forums is like The CREATOR reaching down from the heavens themselves to stroke your ego. I'm humbled.

/endB.S.    


 

[Dr Zero]

WOW you are really cranking 

Your going to give the rest of us slackers of the world a bad name LOL all kidding aside congrats on the good job!

Carl is great fellow I highly recommend him and his work!

[smalltownguy]

Crap.



That's what happens when you're rushing and not being careful. One of the back panels of a nearby cab toppled over on the monitor from my Final Fight cab when I wasn't looking. Heard the tell-tale 'hisssssssssssssssssssss' -- that means bye bye tube. Dammit. Now I have to find a donor tube.

Oh well, Lemonade, right? I decided to pull the chassis off this broken monitor, and swap it in place of the ugly chassis from the Golden Tee monitor. Both 19K7xxx monitors, so there's a pretty good chance it would work just fine.

And here we go:



Yee Haw! One more cab up and running! This one is super exciting because I own this cab, so now I can sell it. I'll need the money to support my yoke snapping habit.  

[BadMouth]

D@&!  YOU ARE KNOCKING THEM OUT!!!!!!

Downright inspirational.
That pizza shop owner has to be overjoyed. 

[Bender]

D@&!  YOU ARE KNOCKING THEM OUT!!!!!!

Downright inspirational.
That pizza shop owner has to be overjoyed. 

I say you get free Pizza for life!!!
man you are cranking. I initially though this would be a multi year thread, not a couple of days

[smalltownguy]

BadMouth and Bender, thanks so much! Your kind words are very encouraging. I hope to have the Tetris cab totally done today, and that will be it for a day or two, unless I can get around to recapping the 19K7302 from the Neo Geo. If I can get that monitor working, then I may try to move it to the Mortal Kombat cab.

The rest of my projects will need to wait until Monday until my care package from Bob Roberts arrives.

FYI, the Golden Tee cab is up for sale now:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?p=1333863#post1333863

[sstralkowski]

Dang, dude!  You're a beast!  Great job, btw.

[smalltownguy]

I found some more free time during Badger's halftime, so I decided to get a look at the Tetris cab quick. I didn't like the way the buttons felt when playing the game. Sure, I'm not going to be toally restoring EVERYTHING on these cabs, but one thing I'm a stickler on is the controls and coin mechs. They HAVE to work. Especially the controls. There's nothing worse than walking up to a cab and finding semi/non functional controls. I'll walk away in a heart beat.

After pulling the buttons off the control panel, I quickly found out why they were giving me trouble. They were VERY VERY dirty:





No wonder they don't work right. Ick.

So, a few minutes in the sink with a toothbrush and warm soapy water, and they look great!



I put them back in the game, plugged it in, and began testing. All was well until *poof* the game shut off and wouldn't come on. 

After a few swipes with the multi-meter, I determined that the power supply had failed.

So, I pulled the known working one out of the Neo Geo cab, and moved it over. Problem solved. Tetris is alive again!

I also replaced and adjusted the coin reject lights, and gave the mechs a good spray silicone treatment.

Since this is an old Williams Robotron cab, it uses the lesser common 15" tube in the light fixture. I considered widening it, but I'll just order a 15" tube.

Once the tube arrives, Tetris is done!

[Roo]

Ond replying to your thread on the BYOAC forums is like The CREATOR reaching down from the heavens themselves to stroke your ego.

Unless of course, it's the evil side of Ond...  Trust me I know from experience

All kidding aside, Ond is a great guy

[Ond]

@STG- Bummer about the back of that CRT, reminds me of a time years ago when our TY needed a replacement valve (yes that long ago) and my dad acidently elbowed the tube and sssssssss it was ages before that TV got fixed.

@newman117 & Roo - I've heard tell of this "great and powerful Ond"   but I know the guy and he's a crap artist.   .  Take STG's comments with a grain of salt, he's a regular (and loyal) attendee at the church of 'The Retro-Futuristic cab' - all said in fun.

[dlbagna]

Finally got to read up on your project... (great archiving by the way )

Looks like your cranking through them...  Good job...

What's the stronger motivation... keeping your wife happy or saving a few bits from the 80's?

I can't believe I missed out on a few games on the Ms. Pacman.     Did the pizza man pick it up?

(Garage doors were closed when I picked up the car... I figured that was a sign that you might be tending to other things)

[smalltownguy]

Finally got to read up on your project... (great archiving by the way )

Looks like your cranking through them...  Good job...

What's the stronger motivation... keeping your wife happy or saving a few bits from the 80's?

I can't believe I missed out on a few games on the Ms. Pacman.     Did the pizza man pick it up?

(Garage doors were closed when I picked up the car... I figured that was a sign that you might be tending to other things)

Bout time you read up! I'm nearly half done! You know, I'm not sure what possessed me to take on this project. I can tell you that I have a new respect for the operator's job back in the day, though. Getting these done is slow, tedious work. I do feel that I'm making progress, though.

Yes, Ms Pac has already been whisked away back to the pizza joint. She's standing proud next to Centipede and Super Mario Bros. Soon she'll be joined by a few more friends....

You, my friend, NEVER need to worry about ringing the doorbell, at any time. But I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for the note!

I'm off to pull a chassis in preparation for my cap kits arriving from Bob Roberts on Monday........

[smalltownguy]

So today I turned my attention to some of the 'trim' details on the games. While it's my opinion that the controls and coin mechs MUST work in these games properly, I'm ambivalent about the coin lamps and marquee light fixtures. But the owner wants them done, so I'll be digging in.

The Tetris cab uses the old Williams (Robotron) fixture, which is a 15" tube. I haven't tried sourcing this tube yet. Anyone know where I can get one? If I have to, I'll re-work the fixture to accept 18" tubes. I'm still stewing on this one.

My Arkanoid II cab (Centipede conversion) appears to missing parts. I cannot find a ballast anywhere in the speaker / light fixture area. Has anyone ever heard of a marquee lamp that DIDN'T use a ballast and starter? I thought that was pretty much 'florescent lights 101' info. As I understand it, the basic layout of a florescent fixture is this:



The Arkanoid fixture only has the starter fixture, I don't see a ballast.

Anyone know how these things work?

[Dr Zero]

So today I turned my attention to some of the 'trim' details on the games. While it's my opinion that the controls and coin mechs MUST work in these games properly, I'm ambivalent about the coin lamps and marquee light fixtures. But the owner wants them done, so I'll be digging in.

The Tetris cab uses the old Williams (Robotron) fixture, which is a 15" tube. I haven't tried sourcing this tube yet. Anyone know where I can get one? If I have to, I'll re-work the fixture to accept 18" tubes. I'm still stewing on this one.

My Arkanoid II cab (Centipede conversion) appears to missing parts. I cannot find a ballast anywhere in the speaker / light fixture area. Has anyone ever heard of a marquee lamp that DIDN'T use a ballast and starter? I thought that was pretty much 'florescent lights 101' info. As I understand it, the basic layout of a florescent fixture is this:



The Arkanoid fixture only has the starter fixture, I don't see a ballast.

Anyone know how these things work?

If you cant find the tube in the local hardware shops cruise over to the pet department at wal-mart or the fish section pet-smart fish tanks use that size tube for their florescent light hoods also.

[Roo]

You've found something I know a little bit about!  

Yes, you've got it right.  It's 'fluorescent lights 101'.  You have to have a ballast if you want the pretty glow.

As far as I know arcade machines don't use anything fancy here, you can get a replacement at any electrical supply.

Inside standard FL fixtures, the ballasts normally look like this, but I guess they could look different in an arcade cab.  I'd be surprised if they did.

[smalltownguy]

My local hardware store had the 14" lamp I needed. Sure, it was $12, but I don't care. I'd rather give some money to my local hardware store than ship if off to Mr Sam Walton or some other thousand chain store. Sorry about the soapbox, but we just lost a 100 year old hardware store in the town 5 miles down the road last month. They packed up because of the big box stores.

I asked them if they had a ballast, and they took me to the aisle where they had them. I dug around a bit on the back of the shelves, and lo and behold, I found a dusty old box in the back behind several other boxes. Inside was a perfect replacement for the ballast I needed on my fixture. There were on labels or anything on the box, and the ballast inside had been screwed down once, and there were cut wires on it. I didn't care. I flipped the store owner a fiver and took it home.

Wired everything up and:



Let there BE LIGHT!!

Now, for posterity, here's a shot of some fallen soldiers:

[Roo]

Excellent!  Now, let there be GUITAR!  






Sorry, got carried away there air jammin...

[DillonFoulds]

I'll keep an eye on this thread here and KLOV. I'm up in canada, but I've got an arkanoid clone cocktail I'm mame'ing, so i'll have an extra power supply floating around. I know, generic power supply, no big deal... but it appears to be brand new and i'd really hate to see it go to waste.

If you need a power supply, we'll work something out (something along the line of you pay the shipping and it's yours)...

[BobA]

Great thread.   Most guys have all they can do to take on 1 or 2 cabs at a time.  Keep up the good work.  Very instructive reading for cab repair.

[smalltownguy]

I took care of the audio board repair kit for the Sanyo monitor in the Donkey Kong cab last night.

When I turned it back on I was greeted with some very serious line noise. I realized the volume pot was turned all the way up on the monitor board. I'm not surprised, some of the caps just broke off in my hands as I was replacing them; they weren't held on by much.

I lowered the volume to an acceptable level, and the noise went away for the most part, but it's still there, just quieter. Game plays fine, but if you place your ear near the speaker when you're not playing it, you can hear the humm/buzz/rhythmic beeping Do I have a ground issue, I wonder?

[DillonFoulds]

If it's rhythmic, i'd almost suggest checking the caps on the audio board. ALMOST. I say this because I've got a set of desktop computer speakers that rhythmically charge up and turn off. Basically they sound like a heartbeat. I'll plug in the speakers and *Thump* (bright LED, audio slowly decreases volume, light dims) *Thump* (bright LED, audio slowly decreases volume, light dims).

To remedy it, I plug them in turned on, then turn off the power switch, and slide it back on, and they work fine.

No idea what happens, but turning them off and on by switch works fine...

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/creative-lab-creative-gigaworks-2-0-speakers-t40-51mf1615aa002/10144694.aspx?path=1d6dc0b52b627baa0db39600a5fc2962en02

It's that set, and I got them for a great price (free) so it's hard to justify throwing them out.

[smalltownguy]

Yes, it's a fast paced rhythmic beeping (in a tone similar to part of Mario's jump) and a hum.

I can hear all of the other game sounds just fine while playing, and as I mentioned, the noise is pretty quiet when the volume is adjusted to normal levels. I only noticed it because the volume pot was cranked all the way up with I turned on the game the first time.

I'm beginning to think I should double check my solder joints to makes sure I don't have any cold joints or solder splash anywhere on the foil side the board.

[mgb]

Did you install the whole audio rebuild kit, including the transistor.
Because that sounds a lot like what I had and the rebuild kit took care of it.

I guess a ground on the audio line can also give similiar

[smalltownguy]

Yes, I did the whole kit, including xsisters.

Interesting...when I booted the cab today, I no longer get audio noise. I rebooted it several times. The sound is normal now ?? Oh well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right? I'm calling Donkey Kong done, save for a marquee light bulb, which I will pick up tomorrow.

I took some great strides forward tonight. I installed an under cabinet fluorescent fixture in the Tetris cab, and I also changed out the smoked plexi to clear:



Looks good! She's ready to go!

Here's a shot of one of my steps when cutting plexi for my monitors for the Tetris and Arkanoid cabs. I used a plywood board for clamping to the table (to prevent the plexi from cracking under the clamping pressure), used the original smoked plexi as my guide, scored my line with a utility blade, and gave the plexi a quick bend of the wrist to hear that satisfying 'SNAP.'



After getting the kiddies to bed, I turned my attention to the G07 monitor with the flagging. This was the monitor that I'd taken out of the Ms Pac Man cab, substituting the G07 from the Mortal Kombat in it's place as a temporary solution.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to report that I have completed my first successful recapping of a monior! WOOT!  

I know, trivial to some, but a victory to me. Especially since my first attempt at recapping a monitor was the WG 19K7302, wich had over 2 dozen caps. Took me 2 hours to change them all out, and in the end the flyback was the issue. THAT chassis is currently on its way to Orlando to the capable hands of Carl Blessing at Allgood repair.

The G07 has like 12 caps. It was easy peasy. OK maybe 18 caps. I'd recap THAT monitor every day of the week.

Once I get the monitors swapped back, I'll be waiting on a marquee for Arkanoid from EMDKAY, and a few lights and locks.

Ok, status update:

1. Final Fight: currently without a monitor, since I smashed the neck on my tube. I called a TV repair place today and asked if I could pick through their boneyard to find an old 19" TV to rob a tube out of.
2. Donkey Kong: 90% -- just need to get a light bulb for the marquee.
3. Tetris: DONE!
4. Mortal Kombat: 90% -- just need to swap monitors with the Ms Pac at the pizzeria.
5. Ms Pac Man: DONE! (but I need to swap the monitor back)
6. Golden Tee: DONE!
7. Arkanoid: waiting on marquee, and I need to fabricate a retainer top bracket for it.
8. Neo Geo cab: needs power supply, coin mechs,  and monitor chassis (out for repair). Control panel needs a rebuild too.
9. Head On:  

[Dr Zero]

Awesome Job you have done here! 

You might just parlay this into a partime job for good and now that you have shown that fellow you can do it and the quality of your work Im sure will start to come your way, maybe put a card under the plexi offering your services or stating you buy games.

I'm sure carl will take good care of ya and the board, he was featured in replay magazine last month I think I was going to try and stop in take some pics when I was at the auction but missed it do to scheduling issues.

Congrats again on a great job and tackling new challenges like learning to recap a board!

[Roo]

Couldn't you just send that DK to me instead of giving it back to the guy?  He wouldn't notice, right?   

[smalltownguy]

Couldn't you just send that DK to me instead of giving it back to the guy?  He wouldn't notice, right?   

Heheh...I think he has the MOST attachment to that game. Me, I'm ambivalent. It's kinda fun, but I just can't seem to get that into it, I guess.

Hard to believe it's only day 9 of this little adventure...it seems like so much longer.

Since I have a bit of time while I'm waiting for more ordered parts to come in, I thought I would try to resurrect one of the dead power supplies. Indeed, 2 of them had blown fuses. Replacing 1 fuse did nothing; it blew right away. Replacing the fuse in the 2nd one, though, seemed to do the trick. My meter verified that voltages were in spec, so back to the Neo Geo cab it went. Now I'm just waiting for Carl to finish my chassis, and I'll be able to see League Bowling again

Later on tonight I'll head over to the pizzeria and swap back my newly capped G07 monitor into the Ms Pac. Of course, I'll have to have a game or 2. Then I can put the original monitor into the Mortal Kombat and button that one up.

Tomorrow I think I'll try to begin tracking down the power issues with the final fight cab. I started tracing out lines with the multimeter a few days ago, but I got distracted. I have a feeling the isolation transformer might be causing the issue. There's no AC power at the leads that plug into the power supply, yet I have power at the point of entry to the cab. There's a line break/crack or blown fuse somewhere in between.

[jennifer]

        My games have seen a lot of shop time over the years, one thing I"ve noticed is the backdoor interlock switch gets bypassed
and becomes a power problem area. It"s a good place to start looking anyway. Good job on posts and  thank you for saving those
games.

[smalltownguy]

        My games have seen a lot of shop time over the years, one thing I"ve noticed is the backdoor interlock switch gets bypassed
and becomes a power problem area. It"s a good place to start looking anyway. Good job on posts and  thank you for saving those
games.

EXACTLY the case here too. I'll start there. Thanks for the heads up!

[smalltownguy]

Just thought I'd post a few more pics of the progress as it happens. The owner stopped by on Wednesday to pick up 3 of his cabs -- Donkey Kong, Tetris, and Ms Pac Man are headed back to the pizzeria

Loading the cabs. My girls decided they needed popsicles for the event





And a few shots of the Ms Pac Man, taken later that evening, right before it was loaded up. Here's my newly capped monitor!





I got a shipping update yesterday from EMDKAY, my Arkanoid II marquee will be shipping Priority Mail this weekend, so hopefully I'll be able to get that cab out early next week. Mortal Kombat just needs to be put back together and that one will be ready too. I should have some time later this morning to do that.

There's a local winery near me that does an annual fall festival and grape stomp every September, so I'll probably be doing that today. I need to start getting out and doing some 'other stuff' with my spare time, since I've been spending nearly every spare moment working on these 8 cabs. My lawn looks like a hayfield -- I'm sure my neighbors are pleased. But I have an excuse, I had a busted wheel on the mower, which just arrived in the mail yesterday. I gotta put that back together this weekend too.

Family reunion on Sunday. Life's busy this weekend.

[smalltownguy]

Sorry about not updating for a few days -- I've been busy trying to get some other items taken care of.

Sunday night the owner called me to tell me that the Donkey Kong cabinet was acting up. The screen is all jumbled. The game plays just fine blind, but the image is scrambled. I knew I should have done a cap kit on that Sanyo monitor. Off to Bob Roberts I went....

The owner also asked me to take a look at his Centipede cabinet. The trackball was rolling pretty rough, and colors needed adjusting on the monitor. So he dropped that one off on Monday too. Unfortunately, on the way over, he had to stop short with the trailer, and since the cabs were not tied down, they both tipped forward, landing against the sides of the trailer at a 45 degree angle. 

Without knowing what damage there might be from the 'slight' mishap, we decided to just plug them in and see. The Donkey Kong cab showed no signs of any issues.

The Centipede cab, however, sizzled upon power up. Luckily I was standing a few feet away from the cab when I applied power. I used my 'power strip' method -- long extension cord, to a 6 way switched power strip, and I flick the switch from several feet away. That way if anything blows up (like in THIS CASE!!) I'm not standing nearby.

I shut it off after only about 1 second. I caught a glimpse of where it was arcing -- it was sparking around the anode cap. Have I fried something? I'm a little leery about turning it back on again, for fear that I'll blow the flyback or something. Or has it already failed, and that's what's causing the arcing?

Any help would be appreciated. If needed I'll poke my head in there and get the monitor type, but I'm pretty sure it was an Electrohome G07. (it had metal pots on the deflection board)

[smalltownguy]

Took a closer look at the anode hole on the G07 monitor on the Centipede cab last night. We've had a lot of rain lately, so after doing some reading here at BYOAC -- gotta love these forums! -- I suspected that moisture and dust/dirt was causing a path for electricity to arc at the anode cap. I discharged the monitor with my handy dandy discharge tool (thanks, Bob Roberts!) and cleaned the area around the anode hole with alcohol, as well as the anode lead suction cup, inside and out.

Fired it back up, and there was a little bit of sparking, but not nearly as much, and it only lasted about 10 seconds or so. I'm guessing it was burning off any remaining moisture that may have been in the tube. Seems to be working fine now. I have cycled the power 3 or 4 times since then and everything seems to be working fine.

Still no sound though. I called the owner and asked him if he remembers ever hearing any sound, and he couldn't remember. I can hear game sounds if I put my ear RIGHT UP to the speaker (like the spider jumping around, etc) but there's no amplification going on. I'd like to check to see if the volume pot is working properly, but I'm not sure how to meter it? If that's working OK, then I guess it's the ARII board that needs a rebuild. Bob Roberts has the kit, so it looks like there might be another order.....

I got my shipping update from EMDKAY today on my Arkanoid II marquee. Priority Mail from New Jersey to WI will be 2-3 days, so I won't see it until Monday at the earliest. *sigh* THAT took a bit longer than I preferred. Hopefully the results are worth the wait.

My cap kit for the Sanyo monitor should arrive today from Bob Roberts, so with any luck, I'll get that kit installed over the weekend to get the DK out of my garage again.

[DillonFoulds]

I believe if you set your DMM to resistance, and put one probe on each lead (outers?) you'll get an Ohm reading. adjusting the pot should reflect on the DMM from this point... hope you got 3 hands!

[smalltownguy]

I believe if you set your DMM to resistance, and put one probe on each lead (outers?) you'll get an Ohm reading. adjusting the pot should reflect on the DMM from this point... hope you got 3 hands!

Alligator clips, baby

[smalltownguy]

Last Sunday Donkey Kong arrived at my door again. Needless to say I was not happy with a cab returning so quickly after I sent it out. Luckily it's a semi-easy fix: just a monitor cap kit.

My Sanyo 20EZ cap kit arrived today, so off to the soldering bench I went. I must say, my recent purchase of a de-soldering iron was a very wise decision. What used to take me 3 hands I can now do with one. Very cool tool:



After I got everything swapped out, I re-installed the monitor to the cab. MAN there are a lot of pieces / steps to working with that monitor.

Checked my B + voltage just to be sure. It was WAY high -- like in the 129 volts range. I dialed her down with the help of my exciting new friend, my digital multimeter:



108.2 is about as close as I'm going to get.

When I connected the video feed, this is what I got:



Hm....THAT doesn't seem right. I did some more reading on the monitor chassis, and found the horizontal sync adjustment pot. With the help of a tall mirror, I slowly began turning the pot and.......



BINGO! Locked in. A bit out of focus, though. A quick adjustment on the flyback control fixed that. I turned the screen adjustment to bring the blacks in line, and in mere minutes I was looking at a thing of beauty:





What a difference a cap kit makes! All the caps I pulled out were original Sanyo caps too, so this monitor was easily almost 30 years on the original chassis. Not too bad.

One final detail was to take care of the power cord for this machine. Someone had snapped off the ground terminal -- a common thing, I'm seeing. I went ahead and wired up a new 3 prong plug:



Earlier this week I received new starters for the light fixture, as well as a new bulb. The marquee now lights up in all of its original glory.

I'm calling this one done! (again  )

[severdhed]

great work...how do you find the time to do this so fast?  every time i start a project, it takes me months to finish it. 

[smalltownguy]

Thanks, Severd, I really have to hand it to my wife on this project, she's really been very supportive. At night, when the kiddies go to bed, I usually get a chance to get in the garage for a an hour or so before we go to bed. I've been doing lots of reading and research online here and at the KLOV forums during lunch breaks at work, and early in the morning before I start getting ready for work. I'll admit, many of my other pursuits have fallen by the wayside in the past few weeks - the biggest being yard work. I can't ignore it much longer, though. The leaves are changing, and I have 5 mature maple and oak trees on my property (100+ years old) and leaves will become a full time job very soon.

I'm right with you on the timeline for 'typical' cab work. My own Mame cab has been under a rebuild for the past 9 months, after I swapped in a new hard drive, motherboard, monitor, and I'll eventually be adding a shotgun setup with a recoil feature. I'm saving THAT project for the winter. I have to get the garage cleared out, soon.

Today, I think I'll try and see if I can troubleshoot the Centipede cab sound a bit more. I'll test the volume pot with my multimeter, and I'll also try hooking up an external amplifier to the sound output from the board to see if I can get sound. If I get sound that way, I know I have to address the ARII board.

I'm also going to troubleshoot the Final Fight cab today. I just want to be sure that the PCB works, so I can sell it if the owner agrees to give me the cab. I've already put it in my mind that I'm going to restore this cab to a Ms Pac Man again -- Bob Roberts has a terrific write up on the wiring, and I've already bought a replacement control panel for it. I just need to source another monitor tube for the one I snapped the neck tube on. I'm watching one on the 'bay that ends today -- with any luck I may get it for a halfway decent price.

[Funnel]

Dude the owner must be pretty happy! Is he really going to give you free pizza? This thread should be stickied, it has a lot useful information!

[abispac]

Dude the owner must be pretty happy! Is he really going to give you free pizza? This thread should be stickied, it has a lot useful information!

agree with that....keep the good work small town guy 

[smalltownguy]

I checked into the Centipede cab yesterday and did some more testing. Testing the volume potentiometer was easy: I just clipped my two multimeter leads to the the outside ears of the pot, turned it, and watched the value on my resistance reading go up and down. On the side of the pot it says '50K' and my reading went from 48 down to 10 by turning the knob, so I'm assuming things are good there.

Next I used the meter to check voltage on the ARII sound regulator board. The voltage was fine on some of the test lugs, but not on others. I'm definitely due for a rebuild. Bob Roberts has the kit, so I sent off order number 4

On a positive note, I left Mortal Kombat, Donkey Kong, Arkanoid II, and Golden Tee 99 running all night last night to make sure the PCB's weren't freezing or any thing. I did notice a slight vertical roll on the Mortal Kombat monitor, but a slight turn of the vertical hold pot on the G07 inside of it cleared that up. It hasn't rolled since.

No hits yet on my Craigslist posting for the Golden Tee. I know $300 is a bit high for a converted cab like this, but I also know that with the weather getting colder and football season in full swing now, there are going to be folks looking to outfit their 'man caves' soon since they'll be spending more time indoors. I think I'll wait until Thanksgiving and if I don't get any serious interest I'll lower the price.

[EvilNuff]

I really dig hearing this much info on your restores...thanks and keep the info coming.

[IG-88]

How do you like that multimeter? I was looking for a new one today. What did you have to give for it if I may ask?

[smalltownguy]

How do you like that multimeter? I was looking for a new one today. What did you have to give for it if I may ask?

You know, after stumbling along with an old analog meter with very limited selections, this one almost seems like I'm cheating. It even measure capacitance, to a certain degree. The 'auto' selection is just fantasic, however. Just set it to 'voltage' and it automatically senses positive or negative, DC or AC, and auto ranges it to give you the maximum number of decimals of voltage that will fit on your screen. Like I get -5.0235, or I get 121.45. It's awesome.

I got a great deal on it -- normally $80, I found it on the back of a shelf in a Radio Shack store that was closing, and the entire inventory was at 75% off. $19 was definitely worth it. I also picked up some solder, terminal blocks, a great logic probe, batteries, and a whole bunch of other goodies for like $20. I should have looked around a bit more.

I replaced a leveling leg on the Mortal Kombat cab today. I pulled it from my MAME cab, since I will be re-doing the legs on that cab with Bob Robert's uber cool leg leveling system.

I also took measurements for a replacement marquee top retainer for the Arkanoid cab, and gave the measurements to my buddy. He's an engineer at Polaris, and he's got access to machinery needed to fab a new retainer for me. Since the Arkanoid is a Centipede conversion, I just took the top retainer off the Centipede sitting right next to it and he traced the angle for me

I replaced the wedge lamps in the coin door of the Mortal Kombat cab today, but both of them burned out in a few minutes / hours. Maybe I got the wrong voltage lamps? I'll measure the voltage to the sockets and see. Do they make these lamps in different voltages? Perhaps I've plugged 6 volt lamps into 12 volt sockets?

[DillonFoulds]

Yeah, for sure they do. There's 5v, 6v, 6.3v, 7v, 12v that I've seen. I ended up wiring them straight for 12v, and went into Canadian Tire here and picked up 12v trailer bulbs with matching wedge base. They're BRIGHT, but not too bright. For sure worth the 3$cad/pair that I paid for them. They look gorgeous in the coin door, for sure.

[amendonz]

Not too much to add but.. Excellent work, you're a freakin legend for this.   
A+

[smalltownguy]

Not too much to add but.. Excellent work, you're a freakin legend for this.   
A+

Thanks for that! I appreciate the kind words. It really is encouragement to keep going.

Just for kicks, I thought I'd start making a list of the time and money I've spent on this project so far:

Neo Geo Cabinet:
  - Monitor Chassis Repair (sent out for repair): $50
  - Replace power supply: $25, .25 hrs
  - Clean & recondition coin mechs - .5 hours
  - Diagnose sound & PCB problems (edge connector, jamma connector re-seat, speaker joints): 2 hours
  - Marquee lamp bulb: $5
  - Marquee starter: $1

Final Fight:
   - Diagnose PCB: .25 hrs
   - Diagnose power supply issue: .5 hrs

Donkey Kong:
  - New Audio board rebuild kit: $20
  - Recap audio board: 1 hrs
  - Sanyo 20EZ cap kit: $15
  - Recap Sanyo 20EZ monitor: 3 hours
  - marquee lamp bulb: $10
  - marquee lamp starters, pack of 2: $15
  - Replace 3 prong cord plug: $5, .25 hrs
  - Diagnose missing 'stomp sound' on PCB: 1 hr

Ms Pac Man:
  - Monitor cap kit: $15
  - Recap E-home G07 monitor: 2 hours
  - Install 2 new coin mechs: $15
  - Clean & lube coin mechs: .25 hrs
  - Replace coin lamps: $3
  - Replace marquee lamp & starter: $6

Mortal Kombat:
  - New Power Supply: $25, .25 hrs
  - Leg Leveler: $5
  - Replace power cord: $10, .5 hrs
  - Diagnose & repair marquee light fixture w/ new CFL lamp: $7, 1 hr
  - Clean & lube coin mechs: .25 hrs
  - Install new locks: $10, 1 hr

Tetris:
  - New Plexi: $30, 1 hr
  - New Power Supply: $25, .25 hrs
  - New Marquee light fixture: $10, .5 hrs
  - Replace coin lamps: $3
  - Clean, lube & rebuild coin mechs: .75 hrs
  - Replace 3 prong cord plug: $5, .25 hrs
  - Remove, clean & reinstall buttons: 1 hr
  - Remove monitor bezel, iron flat, press & reinstall: 1 hr
  - Install new locks: $10, 1 hr

Arkanoid:
  - New Plexi: $30, 1 hr
  - New Marquee: $25, .5 hrs (fabricate plexi for marquee)
  - Replace marquee lamp & starter: $6
  - Replace marquee top retainer: $5
  - Remove, clean & reinstall buttons: 1 hr
  - Install new locks: $5, 1/2 hr

Centipede:
   - Replace marquee lamp & starter: $6
   - Remove, clean & reinstall trackball assembly (includes reflowing solder joints on optic boards): 2 hrs
   - Remove anode cap, clean, reinstall: .5 hrs
   - Diagnose 'no sound' issue: 1 hr
   - AR II power / sound regulator board repair kit: $15, 1 hr

Looks like I've invested about 24 hours, give or take, and about $420 in parts so far. At $10 an hour labor (cheap, in my opinion) we're at about $660 in parts & labor at this point. There was $191 in quarters found in the Mortal Kombat cab, so that leaves a balance of $469.

[smalltownguy]

Got this note this morning from Carl Blessing at Allgood Technical Services:

Brad,
 
The flyback appears to be bad. We replaced the ferrite but no change. The
flyback is no longer available. The board is no longer supported by the
manufacturer.
 
We are shipping the board back to you at no charge.
 
Carl

BIG bummer. Does anyone know where I can get a replacement flyback for a 19K7302? Should I just look into a replacement chassis?

Also, just wanted to send up a flag for those of you who didn't know -- Bob Roberts isn't feeling well right now, according to his website. Please keep him in your prayers. Somehow he managed to wade through 3 confusing emails from me and still cross-shipped my order yesterday for Wednesday arrival. What a class act. I hope he feels better soon.

[opt2not]

Also, just wanted to send up a flag for those of you who didn't know -- Bob Roberts isn't feeling well right now, according to his website. Please keep him in your prayers. Somehow he managed to wade through 3 confusing emails from me and still cross-shipped my order yesterday for Wednesday arrival. What a class act. I hope he feels better soon.

His website note is a bit concerning...a cardiologist?  I hope he's alright.
The guy is like my Yoda.

[mcfreak]

This has been a daily read for me.  I love the content and the updates.  Keep em coming!  I have a garage full of about 10 games that need work and I still don't see where you find the time.  Your wife is a saint and the catch of the century!

[smalltownguy]

This has been a daily read for me.  I love the content and the updates.  Keep em coming!  I have a garage full of about 10 games that need work and I still don't see where you find the time.  Your wife is a saint and the catch of the century!

Thanks for the kind words! And you're SOOO right. My wife is AWESOME. I acknowledge her every day for how awesome she is.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

What cab is that?
 

[smalltownguy]

I'm not telling

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I mean it certainly looks like a Tempest, but the red color was unusual.

[IG-88]

Got this note this morning from Carl Blessing at Allgood Technical Services:

Brad,
 
The flyback appears to be bad. We replaced the ferrite but no change. The
flyback is no longer available. The board is no longer supported by the
manufacturer.
 
We are shipping the board back to you at no charge.
 
Carl

BIG bummer. Does anyone know where I can get a replacement flyback for a 19K7302? Should I just look into a replacement chassis?

Also, just wanted to send up a flag for those of you who didn't know -- Bob Roberts isn't feeling well right now, according to his website. Please keep him in your prayers. Somehow he managed to wade through 3 confusing emails from me and still cross-shipped my order yesterday for Wednesday arrival. What a class act. I hope he feels better soon.

I got that same monitor that I've been posting about over on KLOV and they said the same thing. Wonder if a K7xx flyback would work? I put a shout out to Tim over on ART to see if he has had any experience with them and he said no. I wonder if Michael, their monitor guru, would know anything about them??

Man that sucks about Bob. I really hope he will be OK. Don't know how old he is but he is retired. Nobody should be working 20+ hrs. a day anyways  

[Roo]

I hope Bob is ok!

On a side note, I remember when you first posted this and I thought to myself "this sounds really cool but that would never happen to me"

Then the tech showed up today to install my new AT&T UVerse and he saw the stuff laying around from my build and said "hey can you fix my Space Invaders cocktail?"

Your progress in this thread got me thinking I could.  So if I get in over my head, it's all your fault!  

[mgb]

For monitor questions and parts and such. try contacting arcadecup.
Chad is super helpful and I know hes on the forums over at KLOV.

[mgb]

This place is also worth a try for flybacks. They have been helpful to me in the past.
http://www.technotronic-dimensions.com/Products2b1.html

That is really sad to hear about Bob Roberts.

[smalltownguy]

It's time for a thread Haiku:

Oh, will I get done?
Forever, this process is.
I've learned a lot, though.

[smalltownguy]

I found a nice Manual on the American Gaming and Electronics, Inc website containing quite a bit of Wells Gardner information. Here's the link the .pdf document:

Short Form Buyer's Guide

I hope it's okay to post the link. Several models of the WG monitors are covered in the manual, starting on page 105. My mysterious 19K7302 is covered around page 115 or so.

I've sent an email to the parts sales department at Wells Gardner to see if they can offer me some help on finding a shelved part somewhere to replace my blown line output transformer (flyback)

I believe it's T402 on the schematic, listed in the guide as part number 5CL4120190. We'll see if I get lucky...

[IG-88]

Cool manual! Nice find    Seeings as I think I have the exact monitor, where on that chassis diagram did you find the number for the flyback?

[smalltownguy]

Cool manual! Nice find    Seeings as I think I have the exact monitor, where on that chassis diagram did you find the number for the flyback?

There isn't a labeled diagram in that book, but there is a schematic available on the WG website:

http://www.wellsgardner.com/pdf/Schematics/K7300.pdf

It's there that I was able to determine that the flyback was labeled part T402. I then looked at the parts list in the manual and found the WG part number.

I got no word back from Wells Gardner today, but I did strike gold at www.arcadecup.com

Chad over at Arcade Cup answered his phone right away, and happily fed me information for 10 minutes. What a nice guy. We got to talking about my orphaned 19K7302, and as luck would have it, he had a flyback in stock for it! He told me it was a 'prototype replacement' and it was the only one he had. I bought it. Who knows, with any luck, I may be able to repair this chassis on my own.

I received my replacement 'Revenge of DOH' marquee from EMDKAY yesterday. Once I opened it, I realized I made an error when I placed my order. I had forgotten that the cab that Arkanoid II was put in used to be a Centipede cab, and the marquee is smaller than the usual cab. I ended up having to trim their beautiful work. Oh well, live and learn I guess. It didn't turn out too bad:





As usual, pics don't do it justice -- the marquee really did turn out great. Shame I had to cut it down, but hey, how it really looks like a conversion, right?

With that Arkanoid II is ready!

[IG-88]

Wow, that was lucky. Hopefully mine will hold on for a while.

I'm a little confused. When you say replacing the flyback I would assume you mean the flyback transformer correct? Yet that part designation you are talking about, T402, is a transistor isn't it?

[Ond]

I also check this thread daily, apart from the practical and useful restoration info, it's just a very nice read.  My own progress has halted just for the regular mundane reasons (household projects taking priority).  Great work so far, and you're not afraid to document the various little challenges and mishaps along the way.  It makes far more interesting reading to hear about the details of a challenge overcome than some projects  where all you see is the shiny bling results.  I'm learning.

 

Ond

[atomikbohm]

It makes far more interesting reading to hear about the details of a challenge overcome than some projects  where all you see is the shiny bling results.  I'm learning.

 

Ond

Ond... listen to the sound of my voice, er.. key strokes, you are getting sleepy ... you want to forget what you've learned here and get back to work on your cab... when you awake you will feel an over whelming need to post an update on your retro project thread with lots of pics... (God I hope this worked) 

[smalltownguy]

Ond! I'm not WORTHY! Clearly it can't be good for you to be seen posting in a peasant thread like mine. I bow to thee.......

Todays updates:

Sold the Golden Tee! Yay! Glad to see someone else will enjoy it (glad to be rid of it    )

I got my Atari ARII rebuild kit tonight from Bob Roberts. I went ahead and plowed ahead with it:



And an action shot....trimming legs off a cap



And my 'all done' shot:



Now, before I go into what happened when I plugged the Centipede back in, is there anyone out there that notices something?

Hint: Look at the before and after pictures....

I've had enough fun for one evening. Time to go watch some mindless TV.

[trevski]

Am I seeing things or is one of those replacement capacitors the wrong way around?  

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Looks like the one next to the big heatsink.
Oops.

I guess that's why he sent those chassis's off instead of doing them himself D:

[trevski]

I guess that's why he sent those chassis's off instead of doing them himself D:

Oooh, SNAP!

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Snap fizzle and pop, if the current subject line is any indication ^_^

[smalltownguy]

Yep, POP! Fizzz......the capacitor at C18, to be exact. That'll teach me to not have the schematic with me when I'm doing this work. I blew the fuses at F4 and F5 too.

It was one of those cases where the capacitor fell out as I was desoldering it, and when it fell to the bench surface, it turned. I couldn't tell what orientation it was  originally. Of course the SMART person would have looked at oh, say maybe, THE FRIGGEN PICTURE I TOOK 20 SECONDS AGO???!!? 

Instead, I looked at the screened side of the PCB and saw the '+' sign, and guessed that the PCB was printed correctly. Obviously it wasn't.

Terrible part was the schematics and manual were in the plastic sleeve up in the garage, with the correct cap orientations clearly illustrated. *sigh*

While I wait to get my hands on another 3300uf 35v axial, my buddy had ordered a couple of 3300uf 35v radial caps from Bob Roberts too. Using cutoffs as leg extensions, I'll be able to at least continue testing the ARII once I get new fuses for F4 and F5.

Dammit. This work is challenging enough without committing simple mistakes too. I should have known better.

On the plus side I have an extra $260 in my pocket from the Golden Tee. That's more than $100 profit.

Anyone know whether or not I should be concerned about any other components on the ARII board with this little mishap? Maybe someone with some experience with these could share some tips on what I may want to check before my next smoke test?

[Malenko]

pop pop fizz fizz (alka seltzer reference?)

[smalltownguy]

pop pop fizz fizz (alka seltzer reference?)

Congrats, Malenko, you win the prize for catching the double entendre. 

[smalltownguy]

SUCCESS! Centipede lives!

I replaced the slow blow fuses when I got home from work, plugged in, and voila! Centipede with SOUND! Woot! Looks like the volume pot I bought today will be able to go back to Rat Shack. By the way, it's a good thing I will never need to buy any capacitors at Radio Shack any time soon. I walked in and asked the guy there if they had a 3300 micro-farad 35 volt axial capacitor and he looked at me like I was martian or something. Seriously? I think I could see the smoke of confusion coming out his ears, er, his bluetooth earpiece.

At least they had fuses and a pot. Believe me when I tell you I had to dig them out myself. Anyway, I digress. I really wish I had a component store near me. I hate paying $6.00 shipping for a .50 cap. 

I metered the sockets for the Mortal Kombat II cab today, and they were 13 volts. So, that would explain why my 6v wedge bulbs burned like the sun for sixteen seconds and smoked.    So I need some 12v wedge bulbs. Since I work at an auto dealership, I think I know where I can get them

I'm taking a break for a few more days, now that I'm waiting for parts. I have to get some transistors for the DK board to try and get Kong's 'pounding' sound back. I also got a lead from a fellow KLOVer on a pair of Nintendo coin mechs for a great price, so I'll pick those up on Sunday night.  I'm also waiting on my chassis to come back from Carl Blessing at Allgood. I'm getting a replacement flyback from Chad at arcadecup.com for it, and hopefully I'll be able to get that 19K7302 up and running again. But that's Monday & Tuesday.

Tonight, I'm enjoying some of the fruits of my labor. First a little pizza from the pizzeria:



And the perfect companion for pizza....BEER! But not just any beer. NEWCASTLE *drool* in a fridge keg 

[smalltownguy]

Okay, since I have 6 working cabs in my garage that are about ready to turn back over to the pizza place owner, I'd like to get the details of our bartering agreement signed off on before the cabs leave the garage. Basically, I'm asking for the Final Fight cabinet outright, and free pizza for life in exchange for completing his large repair project as well as remaining as his 'goto' guy for future repairs. Here are the terms of the agreement that I've written up so far. Does anyone have any other terms that I should be adding to this agreement?

Additional terms:
1. Offeror shall be retained as the permanent first contact for repairs of video games owned by offeree.
2. Free pizza is to be picked up only; delivery is not included in the offer.
3. Repair parts will be paid for by offeree.
4. Ongoing free pizza offer will be limited to a maximum of the value of two 18 inch Paradise Supreme pizzas per month, or equivalent menu value as of the date of this agreement (currently $24.99 each retail).
5. Unused months may be rolled over, but total earned value shall never exceed more than $150.
6. A value of $20 per hour, rounded to the nearest quarter hour,  shall be used in logging labor time spent doing repairs.
7. A detailed breakdown by individual game for the introductory repair project is attached to this agreement.
8. Offeror agrees to repair machines to such degree that they meet typical video game operational standards. This includes acceptable working gameplay, display, controls, lights, coin mechanisms, and sounds.
9. Offeror agrees to maintain up to a maximum of 12 games total for Offeree. Should the Offeree purchase and own more than twelve games, this agreement shall be re-negotiated.

[jimmy2x2x]

Sounds like a friendly gentleman's agreement!

[wxforecaster]

I think you need a clause in there regarding heart attacks and medical issues related to excessive pizza consumption. 

[gShooter]

Okay, since I have 6 working cabs in my garage that are about ready to turn back over to the pizza place owner, I'd like to get the details of our bartering agreement signed off on before the cabs leave the garage. Basically, I'm asking for the Final Fight cabinet outright, and free pizza for life in exchange for completing his large repair project as well as remaining as his 'goto' guy for future repairs. Here are the terms of the agreement that I've written up so far. Does anyone have any other terms that I should be adding to this agreement?

Additional terms:
1. Offeror shall be retained as the permanent first contact for repairs of video games owned by offeree.
2. Free pizza is to be picked up only; delivery is not included in the offer.
3. Repair parts will be paid for by offeree.
4. Ongoing free pizza offer will be limited to a maximum of the value of two 18 inch Paradise Supreme pizzas per month, or equivalent menu value as of the date of this agreement (currently $24.99 each retail).
5. Unused months may be rolled over, but total earned value shall never exceed more than $150.
6. A value of $20 per hour, rounded to the nearest quarter hour,  shall be used in logging labor time spent doing repairs.
7. A detailed breakdown by individual game for the introductory repair project is attached to this agreement.
8. Offeror agrees to repair machines to such degree that they meet typical video game operational standards. This includes acceptable working gameplay, display, controls, lights, coin mechanisms, and sounds.
9. Offeror agrees to maintain up to a maximum of 12 games total for Offeree. Should the Offeree purchase and own more than twelve games, this agreement shall be re-negotiated.

If you want a real contract, hit me up.  I do contracts for a living.

[jennifer]

      A contract? what, am I seeing this right? If it"s true that should have been done BEFORE the job. pizza for life, parts, labor, free
game? Man thats the kind of mafia style shakedown that took down the industry. Just let your work stand on it"s own, he"ll be back
soon enough.

[IG-88]

      A contract? what, am I seeing this right? If it"s true that should have been done BEFORE the job. pizza for life, parts, labor, free
game? Man thats the kind of mafia style shakedown that took down the industry. Just let your work stand on it"s own, he"ll be back
soon enough.

Well said. Kinda what I thought too.

[dfmaverick]

Yeah, I thought you made it sounds as if there was already a gentleman's agreement. 

[smalltownguy]

Yeah, I thought you made it sounds as if there was already a gentleman's agreement. 

There already is a gentleman's agreement, but it's nice to know where the boundaries are. I really didn't want to be in that space where you are either overextending yourself, or not feeling like you've gotten enough value out of the deal.

As it stands, I brought him my spreadsheet breakdown today of all the work I've done. Total of $200 in parts (after I spent his $191), and 30 hours labor. I was cautious about choosing $20 per labor hour. I figured most arcade repair places would have a shop rate of easily 3 to 4 times that, with a minimum charge to boot. But I also didn't want to price my labor time at minimum wage, since it IS somewhat skilled work.

So he agreed with all of my assessments of parts and labor costing, and he has set me up with $800 in credit today. Any time I call in an order, it gets subtracted from the bartered total. Any time I do more work, it gets added to the total. Easy enough to keep track of.

 

[jimmy2x2x]

That sounds like a good compromise, 'free pizza for life' seemed a bit OTT and would have soured the relationship in time.

Excellent thread btw, I'm really enjoying it - quite an education for me

[Funnel]

So... no free pizza for life? 

[smalltownguy]

So... no free pizza for life? 

It depends. If he continues to call on me for periodic repairs, it's $20 per labor hour added to the store credit. Since I'm starting with $800 in the bank, and 8 mid-80's to early 90's machines on location in constant use and on 18 hours per day, I'll have no trouble with him having to call me for at least 2-3 service calls per month. At an average of 1-2 hours per call, depending on the repair, I have no doubt that this arrangement will yield more pizza than I'll ever want to eat. And the kicker is there's no limit to this proposed agreement. I could let the total credit just continue to climb and climb, until I host a superbowl party in Jan and order 50 party pizzas. 

I feel this is a great deal. He's also got burgers, gyros, ice cream, cheese curds, funnel cakes, a lunch buffet, etc etc etc.

[Funnel]

Whoa awesome deal! Is the owner happy about the machines being repaired? Did you get to keep the Final Fight cab?

[smalltownguy]

Yes, and YES! I will start the Ms Pac Restoration this winter, in my basement wood shop.

I need stencils for Ms Pac.....*checks to see if Midway is looking*........anyone? anyone?

[gShooter]

Stick with your current arrangement.  Either fortunately, or unfortunately depending upon your perspective, once you have something in writing then that's exactly what you get and have liability for.  

With your current arrangement, while its true he could back out, so could you.  You, or he, would then be limited to small claims court and the enforcement of your 'gentleman's agreement'...a verbal contract.

And Jennifer is correct about the sequence.  While nothing precludes contracting after the fact, its generally preferred to have the contract in place before the performance of work.  Unless, the contract you were thinking about is a follow-on service agreement in which case defining those requirements now is probably appropriate.

Keep the receipts from your purchases and a running log on a spreadsheet with dates as back-up; a huge bonus is if the receipt shows the remaining balance on your account.  You might want to speak with the owner as well for large purchases (Super Bowl Party). It's one thing to make an extra pizza or two a week which probably doesn't have an impact on the day to day business. It's a different matter, I assume dependent upon business size, to make 50 pies on one of the busiest/most profitable days of the year.

Instead of a running log, if I were in your situation, I might ask for a gift card/certificate instead of a running total (unless the receipts show your balance).  I only mention this as protection for you...just in case.

[smalltownguy]

Stick with your current arrangement.  Either fortunately, or unfortunately depending upon your perspective, once you have something in writing then that's exactly what you get and have liability for.  

With your current arrangement, while its true he could back out, so could you.  You, or he, would then be limited to small claims court and the enforcement of your 'gentleman's agreement'...a verbal contract.

And Jennifer is correct about the sequence.  While nothing precludes contracting after the fact, its generally preferred to have the contract in place before the performance of work.  Unless, the contract you were thinking about is a follow-on service agreement in which case defining those requirements now is probably appropriate.

Keep the receipts from your purchases and a running log on a spreadsheet with dates as back-up; a huge bonus is if the receipt shows the remaining balance on your account.  You might want to speak with the owner as well for large purchases (Super Bowl Party). It's one thing to make an extra pizza or two a week which probably doesn't have an impact on the day to day business. It's a different matter, I assume dependent upon business size, to make 50 pies on one of the busiest/most profitable days of the year.

Instead of a running log, if I were in your situation, I might ask for a gift card/certificate instead of a running total (unless the receipts show your balance).  I only mention this as protection for you...just in case.

You know I really like the idea of a gift certificate in exchange for the 'up front' work that I did for the big resto project. Although I feel that if I asked him for a hard gift certificate, that might stray too far away from the bartering concept, and move more into the 'independent contractor' arena, which is about as close to an employee as you can get. I don't really want this to be something like employment. Apart from the tax implications, (1099 and the like) I think I'll let the 'note on the wall' concept work for him at this point, b/c it's working for another one of his clients (the guy who services his coolers), and it's easy to keep track of. Since I physically have to come in to pick the pizzas up, I can make sure that our records always match as far as how much the current running total is. I'll keep documentation on my end just as a fail safe, and I'm sure he will too.

As far as placing a huge order on a busy day like Super Bowl Sunday, I totally agree, that would be way out of line. I was simply stating that I could stockpile the credit for a party if I wanted to (at his suggestion, I might add -- "You want a big pizza party?" ) An offer for a barter like this is something that needs to result in both parties feeling like they've achieved something of value out of the deal. Common Sense needs to be exercised with respect to redemption of my end of the deal. If the situation proposed 'just doesn't seem right,' then it probably isn't, and either one of us should reconsider. Besides, he's a good acquaintance of mine with many other friends and business owners in our network -- in a small town like this your reputation precedes you wherever you go.

With good sense and integrity, there's no reason why a long lasting relationship won't be favorable for both of us. I get something cool and unique - free pizza whenever I want it, and he gets something cool and unique - a fully functional, regularly serviced, profitable coin-op arcade. Can't say many people have that these days.

I'm also very much on board with the verbal 'gentleman's agreement' concept. I know enough about him that he'll keep his end of the bargain, and he knows enough about me that I won't abuse it. Intruducing legal documentation opens up a can of worms that I really don't need, and would probably hurt our relationship more than help it. You're right, either one of us can walk away from it at any time, with no regrets. We've both already realized value -- he's got 8 cabinets repaired, and I've learned a ton of knowledge on someone else's equipment. I'm already satisfied; the free pizza is a bonus that makes it even better.

[dfmaverick]

Sounds like you both made out well.

[gShooter]

You know I really like the idea of a gift certificate in exchange for the 'up front' work that I did for the big resto project. Although I feel that if I asked him for a hard gift certificate, that might stray too far away from the bartering concept, and move more into the 'independent contractor' arena, which is about as close to an employee as you can get. I don't really want this to be something like employment. Apart from the tax implications, (1099 and the like) I think I'll let the 'note on the wall' concept work for him at this point, b/c it's working for another one of his clients (the guy who services his coolers), and it's easy to keep track of. Since I physically have to come in to pick the pizzas up, I can make sure that our records always match as far as how much the current running total is. I'll keep documentation on my end just as a fail safe, and I'm sure he will too.
...
With good sense and integrity, there's no reason why a long lasting relationship won't be favorable for both of us. I get something cool and unique - free pizza whenever I want it, and he gets something cool and unique - a fully functional, regularly serviced, profitable coin-op arcade. Can't say many people have that these days.

I'm also very much on board with the verbal 'gentleman's agreement' concept. I know enough about him that he'll keep his end of the bargain, and he knows enough about me that I won't abuse it. Intruducing legal documentation opens up a can of worms that I really don't need, and would probably hurt our relationship more than help it. You're right, either one of us can walk away from it at any time, with no regrets. We've both already realized value -- he's got 8 cabinets repaired, and I've learned a ton of knowledge on someone else's equipment. I'm already satisfied; the free pizza is a bonus that makes it even better.

Sounds like you have solid options and a decent path forward and are aware of what and how you want your agreement.  I totally forgot about the tax implications as a small independent contractor.  I usually deal with corporate accounts except for consulting agreements/professional services agreements which I was making most of my references to.

On a totally seperate side note, does the usage of these machines in your state require a tax stamp?  If so, whats the charge per machine for the stamp?

[smalltownguy]

To my knowledge, only the 'crane' style games are required to be registered in the state of WI, but I can't say for sure.

[JustMichael]

One thing I found out a long time ago is that Common Sense isn't that common.

I am glad the situation is working out for both of you.  It also sounds like he has a nice selection of menu items.  May he stay in business for many years to come!

[smalltownguy]

I received my replacement flyback for the WG 19K7302 from Chad at arcadecup.com last Saturday, and today my chassis arrived back from Orlando.

Unfortunately, the neckboard was cracked when it arrived

I did my best to repair the broken traces with jumpers. The monitor did fire up, but I only got blue garbage. I'm throwing in the towel on this one. This Neo Geo cab was only given to me as a parts cab anyway -- I was the one who tried to revive it.

I'm going to put the finishing touches up on the DK (coin mech, new joystick ball, etc) and that will pretty much wrap up this project.

After this week I should be back to a clean garage....

[JustMichael]

After this week I should be back to a clean garage....

   And we all were enjoying this saga...

But I guess it is ok if you have a full belly...   

[smalltownguy]

I got my replacement CR1815 transistors tonight. I am going to try and attempt to get Kong's 'stomping' sound back on the Donkey Kong PCB.

I replaced the transistor at Q4, and no change. Mike's Arcade repair logs mentions reflowing solder around C22 and the 2 sound eproms. I know where C22 is, but can someone tell me (or better yet, show me) where the 2 sound Eproms are?

I also got a call back from the owner on Tuesday, apparently the Mortal Kombat machine was re-booting again. When I went back out to check on it, I found that the ribbon cable for the sound board was causing the problem. Wiggling it caused the sound board to come on and off, and the change in current draw when the board would connect / disconnect must have been what was causing the board to reboot. Lifting up on the edge of the board seemed to correct the issue. So, 5 minutes and a corner of a pizza box folded up later, the board is firmly wedged into place. Use what you've got eh?

[IG-88]

Not to sound like a vulture here but that neckboard that came back cracked, was it from the WG 19K7302? If it was wanna sell me that flyback 

[smalltownguy]

Not to sound like a vulture here but that neckboard that came back cracked, was it from the WG 19K7302? If it was wanna sell me that flyback  

I just may do that

I'm waiting on a replacement neckboard from Carl Blessing for the 19K7302. In the mean time, I attempted some minor surgery on the current cracked neckboard, in an attempt to repair the broken traces. When I plugged the monitor back in to my Neo Geo cab, this is what I got:

Any thoughts?

[smalltownguy]

I decided to dig into a few spare chassis tonight to see if I could get them up and running. At the very least, if I can get a few chassis going, I'll at least be able to sell them to offset the parts I'll need to start my Ms Pac Man restoration. I'm still waiting for my neckboard from Carl......

I had the K76xx chassis from the Golden Tee that had the blown flyback that I tackled first. I've never changed a flyback before, so this was a first for me. After I finished up all the soldering, connecting the screen wire and the focus wire to the neckboard, I took it upstairs to my Double Dragon cab -- the only one I have with an 8 pin neck. Powered it up and....

Nada.

??

Pulled the monitor back out, double checked the chassis again. Hm....fuse looks a bit brown on one side. Pull it, test for continuity, nothing. Bingo. I inserted a new fuse, flipped the switch and heard the familiar crackle! Image! But very dark. A small touch of the 'screen' button, and behold! Double Dragon! Woot! After a few adjustments, I feel that I have the picture looking pretty good, although I can't seem to adjust the horizontal width. I can turn the ferrite inside the width coil, but it does nothing. Looks good though, it's only about a 1/8" too narrow - the bezel will cover it.

The 2nd K7000 chassis was the first of 2 chassis I got from a fellow KLOVer. Found one of the AC wires had come unsoldered from the PCB, and the fuse was also blown. Fixed both, and yay! Another working chassis!

The 3rd K7000 chassis fires up, but there's serious color issues. I didn't leave it on long enough to try and adjust any of the pots on the neck board, but I'm betting the issues lie there. Maybe if I get time I'll swap neck boards between the working K7000 and this one to see if the problem follows the PCB or the neck board.

Meanwhile, the hunt for a 19" TV with a compatible tube for any of these 3 chassis continues. I've looked at about a dozen different TV's in the past few days, and none of them have a thin neck tube (CR31, 8 pin). I'll keep searching.

[smalltownguy]

Yay! I found my CR31 tube! Now I should finally be able to swap out my tube with the broken neck to get my 19" K7000 chassis monitor up and running again.

Here's my likely candidate:



It's a Westinghouse 19" TV, model WT-1942, manufactured September 1998.



After removing the back of the TV and looking for the tube number, I see:



That tube number, A48LGS30X18, is found in the B&K rejuvenator setup guide charts (click here) and lists as the correct heater voltage (6.3) and correct socket, a CR31, a thin neck tube with 8 pins.

I ohmed out the horizontal and verticals, and they're very close to my broken tube, so I may be able to get away with not having to swap yokes. I wrote down the ohm readings somewhere; when I get back to the workbench, I'll post them here.

I also got a 19K4900 from a fellow KLOVer with bad Pac burn. I found an Orion 19" TV, model 1929. Took the back off that one, and yep, it's a CR-23 10 pin fat neck. Here's a shot of the tube sticker:



A48AGY13X77 shows up on the B&K chart as a 6.3v, CR-23. Good candidate for the K4900, but it ohms out around 14.4 and 2.5, so the TV's yoke is not gonna work with my K4900, which ohms out at 35 vertical. Looks like I'll be swapping yokes on this one.

An old high school buddy of mine is coming over on Saturday morning, so we'll do these 2 tube swaps then. I'll try to document as much as I can for the community's benefit.

In the mean time, I should be getting my cap order from Digi-Key today or tomorrow so I can replace the caps on the audio section of the DK board I have. Maybe that will get me my pounding sound back from Kong. We'll see.

[Rick]

An old high school buddy of mine is coming over on Saturday morning, so we'll do these 2 tube swaps then. I'll try to document as much as I can for the community's benefit.

Please document as much as you can - I'm excited to see (specifically) the decasing of the monitor, as well as your mounting ideas.  (This part of my build scares me the most.)

[smalltownguy]

Ok, so today I worked on my 2 tube swaps. It was definitely a learning process. I started with a CR31 tube to replace the broken tube from earlier last month, and a CR23 tube to swap out my Pac Man burned K4900 monitor. In the end, I had one sucess, and one failure. Unfortunately, my failure involved rendering my ONLY CR31 tube useless, so now I'm on the hunt for another CR31 tube.

First, I'll document some pics of the 'failed' attempt.



My Westinghouse TV, with the back off.



TV chassis removed.



Here's the tube, removed from the TV case. At this point, I needed to make a choice to try and use the TV's yoke, or keep the old yoke from the broken tube. I should have swapped yokes.



Bolting the TV's tube into the monitor frame.



Here we go, the monitor is ready for my waiting chassis.



Chassis mounted and ready to go. Shortly after this picture was taken, we tested the monitor on my Neo Geo cab, and after mistakenly crossing 2 wires, the neck flashed bright white for a 1/2 second, and then nothing.  The tube blew. Damn.

After that, we tried moving the original yoke over to the tube, but to no avail. The guns inside the tube were blown. Since I do not have another donor TV with a CR31 neck socket, I'll have to wait before I try this again.

the 2nd swap went much better. I already knew that my K4900's yoke readings were much different than the donor TV's yoke, so I was planning on swapping yokes up front.



Here's my 19K4906, with really bad pac burn. Perfect candidate for a tube swap.



The yoke from my K4900, removed.



working on removing the degaussing coil and grounding strap. I ended up keeping the original degaussing cable, but I had to use the TV's grounding strap.



The burned tube, completely extricated



My donor TV, an Orion TV1929.



The TV's yoke, removed.



The donor tube, completely free from it's TV surroundings.



The new tube, bolted into the frame. I've already reinstalled the K4900 yoke, and here I'm ensuring the purity ring assembly is aligned to the marks I made before removing them. Remember, the purity rings stay with the tube, so these are the rings from the TV.



The chassis is installed, ready to go.



Done! Let's fire it up and see what happens!



Not too bad! A little bit of color adjustment is needed, but I should be able to tweak the color pots to get a nice picture.

So, with that, I'm able to button up the Neo Geo cab, since I now have a fully functional, burn-free monitor in it.

I wish my first swap attempt would have gone better, since I now have 3 K7000 chassis with CR31 neckboards, and no tubes to go with them.

As a side note, does anyone know whether or not I can use the flyback transformers from the TV chassis I have? Seems to me that since they drove the same tube, they should work. Anyone ever reclaim one?

[Rick]

Whoa. That's a huge undertaking. How much of this is involved in a simple monitor to MAME integration? (Usually?) Would I need to relocate the circuit board in a normal instance? Remove many of those other parts?

[smalltownguy]

Decasing a monitor for your mame cab? Not too hard. I'd say the most difficult part of that venture would be finding a way to bolt down the monitor's chassis, since there won't be any standard mounting holes. Other than that, if it's a 19" monitor, the dog ears should line up with an arcade monitor frame easy enough.

19" CRT monitors are pretty cheap these days, so give it a shot! What's the worst that can happen? You break something and have to get another 19" monitor.

FYI, I decased a 19" CRT computer monitor for my mame cab too. I ended up using a cardboad backer for the PCB, and I plastic strapped it in place. The monitor I bolted in using angled wood corner braces. Took me a few hours, but it's rock solid.

[Rick]

Good info, thanks!  (For the record, mine's gonna be a 27" TV decase... Wish me luck.)

[Razzer]

Good info, thanks!  (For the record, mine's gonna be a 27" TV decase... Wish me luck.)

Hey Rick

Here's how i mounted the tv (25") in my cab. Works like a charm.

PCB mounting was done by simply cutting that part of the original tv case out and screw it in place in the cab (not shown in the pics).

A little tip: You may want to do a little research into how to adjust the picture of the TV (tv service mode or similar) before you take it apart.

Razzer

[smalltownguy]

Sorry about the lack of updates the past few days....I have a TON of leaves and yardwork that comes up every October, so most of my waking daylight time has been spent on that. I was able to complete a few more things in the past week, though:

• Put the K4900 from my tube swap into the Neo Geo cab, buttoned it up *DONE*
• Cleaned up and rearranged the tools and spare parts all over the garage
• Recapped the audio section of the Donkey Kong boards, to no avail - Kong's pounding sound is STILL missing.
• Got a call from the owner on Wednesday - the Mortal Kombat cab was not working again. No lights, no coin lamps, no monitor, no game. I suspect the line fuse.
• Repaired / diagnosed and fixed / cleaned THREE laptops for a co-worker, a friend, and a relative. Made some nice CA$H.

Last night I stopped by the pizzeria to see if I could figure out what was going on with Mortal Kombat. I pulled the machine out, tested the AC at the line entry, good. Tested the fuse, good. Tested the continuity on any plug/wire/connector I could, all good. DAMMIT! Looks like this one had to come back. I made the decision to pick up the cab in the AM, and drop off the Donkey Kong at the same time.

Now, dropping off the Donkey Kong was a bit of a challenge for me, since it's not 100% working. There's STILL no 'pounding' sound in the game when Kong stomps on the girders. Everything else works, right down to the last detail, EXCEPT that sound. I've reflowed more sections of the board than I care to count, replaced tons of semiconductors, checked, re-checked, and RE-CHECKED every cord, jack, fitting. Nothing. I have a feeling a ROM chip needs replacing. Grrrrrrrr. But, I digress. At this point, I need to just let this go and let the game start making some money again. The owner's customers have been asking about the game, and it's time to get it back to the pizzeria. In all honesty, only a handful of people playing the game will ever really know that the sound is missing, since it only happens only a few times during gameplay. Besides, it's not my pcb, and the owner has told me that $85 to swap boards from Mike's Arcade is not in his best interest. So, that's that. I picked up my free extra large sausage pizza and went home to enjoy some quality time with my 2 girls.

This morning, I ran the Donkey Kong down to the pizzeria and picked up the Mortal Kombat. I'm getting pretty good at wheeling these games around with my new hand truck -- a GREAT tool to have in this hobby, for sure. I unloaded the DK, swapped it in for the Mortal Kombat, and drove away. As I'm pulling out of the parking lot, I look in the rear view mirror to make sure the MK game is riding nicely in the trailer (I'd laid it down on its back), and I spot it: a TEEEENY tiny little hole in the top corner of the cab. ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---, are you kidding me? REALLY? Did I totally miss something obvious?

So I get home, unload the game, plug it in, and flick the little switch I found in the hole. BAM! Mortal Kombat lives again. And cue the image.....





Guess I should have checked for the obvious, eh? Someone must have switched off the game, and no one (myself included) even knew there was a power switch on the cab. I'd never seen it before -- now to my defense, the cab DID have a lot of cobwebs on top, and the hole was partially covered. It's possible that I could have missed it when working on it before. Oh well, at least it's working again, and I get another 1/2 hour added to my tab at the pizzeria

Later today I'll call the owner and ask him to come and get the Mortal Kombat, the Neo Geo, the Head On, and I'll finally be rid of these cabs. Then I can start my Ms Pac Man Restoration. I think before I start that though, I'll take the guts from the Ms Pac (Final Fight) and see if I can build myself a little JAMMA test rig. I've got enough spare parts floating around that it shouldn't be too tough, and it'll be nice to work on monitors on my bench top versus having to move them near my Double Dragon cab to test them.

[BobA]

Very enjoyable, glad to see got a bit of time in on your repairs.  You will soon have the material for a full fledged How To Repair an Arcade Machine blog.   

[shateredsoul]

=( for no pizza for life.. but at the same time.. you'd probably get bored of pizza if it was unlimited.

[smalltownguy]

Ok so tonight I played a bit more with the various parts of my 19K7302 monitors tonight to see if I could put together a working monitor from various pieces. I have a replacement neckboard from Carl Blessing, and I bought a deflection board from bkchang79 over on the KLOV forums. My yoke connector's plug didn't match the pins on the replacement chassis -- must have been a different revision of the 19K7302 board. I was able to splice in the correct one, however. Hooking everything up, this is what I got:



And another shot:



The image is totally bathed in red, and there's scanlines on it. Ajusting the red bias makes minor changes to the red, but the 'red bath' remains. Adjusting the flyback control makes the whole image brighter or darker red, white if I turn it all the way up, and black if I turn it all the way down.

Thoughts folks? Do I have an issue with the neckboard? Do I need to take a look at a transistor?

I don't believe the yoke connection is the issue, since the image is perfect, just tinted red. Hopefully someone here will see this and recognize the symptoms and recommend a course of action.

Some background info: the board has NOT been capped, but was sold to me in a supposed 'working' condition.

[smalltownguy]

Okay, taking pinballjim's advice, I decided to see if swapping the drive transistors would cause the problem to change colors, or stay the same. If I swapped transistors with, say the transistor on the green line, then the problem would migrate to green if the transistor in the red line was bad.

So I swapped them, and plugged it in. Nada. Problem remains. But I did notice one thing. Not sure if it's worth mentioning, but I thought I would put a picture of it up for all to see. The resistors on my other cracked neckboard are all oriented the same way, whereas the resistors on my problem neckboard have one that is reversed. See this pic:



My red tinted neckboard is on the left, and my cracked neckboard is on the right. Notice how the middle resistor on my red tinted neckboard is reversed in relation to the other two resistors above and below it. On my cracked neckboard, they're all mounted the same direction. Is this something I should be concerned about? I'm not sure.

Just for kicks, I took a look at the neckboard in my brand spankin' new 19K7302 in the box. That neck board has one resistor installed opposite the other two as well, but a different one. And I KNOW that monitor works. So maybe it doesn't matter. I don't know.

But since I was already digging inside the box, I figured I'd pull the neckboard off the new monitor and see if it would clear up my issue. My reasoning was that if I used the known working neckboard and the issue went away, then I can be SURE that the problem lies in my red tinted neckboard. Of course I was a bit hesitant to do this. I absolutely HATE taking things apart that work. It's like a recipe for disaster. Against my better judgement, I pulled the neckboard and installed it on my suspect chassis.

Here's what I got:





Well, that pretty much clears THAT up. It's DEFINITELY a problem with my neckboard. So now what? It's not the transistor, because I swapped the red with the green, and the red tint remains. What's my next course of action?

[BurgerKingDiamond]

I'm not an electronics expert, but I believe that resistors have no polarity, as opposed to LED's for example. In other words they can be installed either way.

[smalltownguy]

After wrestling with several concerns about transistors, resistors, and studying the neckboard I'm working with here, I decided that this neckboard is not compatible with this revision of this main board for this 19K7302. The schematics don't match, and the foil side of the neckboard doesn't match either.

I decided to turn my attention to the cracked neckboard, to see if I could repair it. I mean really... all I need to do is figure out where I have broken traces, and re-connect the dots, right?

Here's the end result of my 'brain surgery.'



Well, you never know -- this just might work!

Plugged it in and...










Hell Yeah! One more monitor saved from the scrap heap!!

[eds1275]

I think you need to have a post now and then mentioning how much weight you're gaining eating all this pizza

Good job on fixing these beasts!

[smalltownguy]

I think you need to have a post now and then mentioning how much weight you're gaining eating all this pizza

Good job on fixing these beasts!

Haha! Actually, I don't really eat that much pizza -- most of the time I've ordered so far, it's been for a house full of people and I've only had a few pieces myself. All good things in moderation you know ... 

Thanks for the compliments! I think I'm actually going to try and tackle the Head On cab now, since I'm running out of things to do 

[Malenko]

thats pretty good soldering, its hilarious looking but as long as it works! 

[smalltownguy]

The spinner stopped working on the Arkanoid II game today. When I arrived on site, I powered down the game and powered back up again, and I could get the ship to wiggle when I turned the spinner, but it wouldn't move. After work, I stopped by again and powered up the game (after it had been off for several hours) and the spinner worked again. 5 minutes later it stopped working. Ship just wiggled. Powered down and up again, and now the ship is still.

I looked over the optic PCB, and the solder appears good. Wheels spin fine, gears are all good and greased. I suspect a board issue.

Found this thread about a bad IC on the board causing the spinner input to crash. Luckily, my friend has an arkanoid cab that I can test this board in, so tomorrow I'll test the board to see if it works in his cab or not. If it does (for more than 30 minutes), then I know my problem lies with the spinner.

Also, on a side note: this board seems to NOT like anything less than 5.3 volts on the 5v line. When I dial the power supply voltage back to 5 volts, the board won't power up. At 5.2, it will power up, but it wont coin up. It has to be fed about 5.4 volts to remain stable. Is this too high? Could this have caused my issue with the spinner?

Of course it could be something as simple as re-seating the JAMMA connector. I guess I should try that, eh?

In other news, the Neo Geo cabinet is now on location!! I spent a few hours with it today getting it route ready. The coin mechs weren't working, but that turned out to be a missing ground wire. Player one 'up' was also not working, but that fixed itself when I re-seated the JAMMA connector. Special thanks to Ross (rmackie6661) for the Wells Gardner K4900 monitor -- I swapped the tubes on it and she's beeeeeeautiful! This cab was given to me at first as a 'parts' cab, as nothing on it worked. Now it's at the pizzeria, making some money!

On a more sad note, the Mortal Kombat cab has now been moved into my basement. It's still rebooting, and now the monitor won't turn on either. The image on the G07's screen was beginning to shrink vertially, so I knew it was a matter of time before it went. Looks like it's time to recap it. My buddy has a MK cab, and I'll be testing his boards in this Dynamo cab to see if it will work.

So 2 down, and 1 back up. Hopefully this Arkanoid II issue is minor.

[smalltownguy]

Ok, so I pulled the G07 out of the Mortal Kombat cab today. Nothing, nada. I have a feeling I'm going to have to get a 'get well' kit from Bob Roberts soon with a cap kit, flyback, HOT, and other goodies to get her alive again. In the mean time, I put my recently resurrected 19k7302 on the Mortal Kombat to see how it would look. It's been on for over 15 hours and it's running just fine.

I'm beginning to think that as the G07's flyback was beginning to fail, it was drawing extra power at times causing the board to reboot. I just can't think of any other reason why this game would be running fine on a new monitor, but not on the old one.

Anyone else see a failing flyback manifest itself in other game performance concerns?

[smalltownguy]

This past weekend I placed the Mortal Kombat machine back on location with a new monitor, the repaired 19K7302 that I sucesfully fixed the neck board on. Sunday night I get a text from the owner that the machine is still wigging out and rebooting. WTF???

I ran the machine for 48 hours straight in my shop with multiple play sessions and it never hiccuped even ONCE. There has GOT to be a starved power issue going on with the hallway outside the pizza joint. There are 6 cabs plugged into a single receptacle, using a simple plug extender. I'm thinking we either need to get a few power strips going, or move the MK cab to it's own power supply.

My buddy has an MK cab that he's willing to donate to the cause. If I can get that one to stay running reliably, then we'll sell the other MK cab to a private party for home use.

In other news, I brought the Arkanoid II cab into my workshop for testing yesterday. After 3 extended play sessions last night and another this morning, the only blip I saw was a board reset. Checked the 5v line and it was low at 4.9 under load. I cranked it up a bit and no issues since then.

I have requested that my wife play several sessions on the cab today to see if we can replicate the 'ship not moving' problem that was going on when the machine was on route. So far so good. Imagine my wife's chagrin when I told her it was her JOB to play the cab multiple times over the next few days. I'm sure she's very sad about that.

It seems that the problem may have been as simple as re-seating the JAMMA connector again. Back on page 1 of this thread, you'll read that the original problem with this game was a loose JAMMA connector. If I continue to have problems, I may have to cut this connector off and replace it with a new one. In the mean time I'll clean up the contacts as best I can and make sure that once placed on route, no one moves the cab around much. It seems that they re-arranged the cab lineup a few times in the hallway outside the pizza parlor, and I'm thinking the jiggling around is knocking the JAMMA connector loose.

Since this is cab #8, and the owner only has room for 7 cabs in the hallway, this one gets to stay in my basement arcade for a few weeks/months/years until further notice 
 

[Funnel]

Kudos to smalltownguy for having a lot of patience dealing with those beasts! Hey take some pictures of the cabs in the pizza hallway.

[smalltownguy]

I'll do ya one better -- I'll shoot a quick video. I have to stop by there tonight to snap some pics of the Mortal Kombat to sell it, so I'll bring the video cam.

Thanks for the kind words!

This project's not done yet - I'm going to tear into that Head On cab and get it working. Why? Because I can. 

[HaRuMaN]

Head On

Apply directly to the forehead.

[Rick]

Apply directly to the forehead.

Fix'd.

 

[JustMichael]

Apply directly to the forehead.

Fix'd.

 

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

[smalltownguy]

Heheh....you guys are too much.

As promised, here's a quick tour of the games at the pizzeria!

[Rick]

As promised, here's a quick tour of the games at the pizzeria!

That's more of an arcade than I've seen in years.  That's an amazing venue.  How much play do these games get?

[Funnel]

Dude that really is an amazing hall. You must feel really proud by fixing these machines.

[yotsuya]

That's pretty neat. Does he have a Skee Ball machine anywhere? It's not the same without taking the kids to cash in pizza-stained tickets!

[VanillaGorilla]

You're not far from sheboygan, I got a cousin up there. Might have to plan a trip up from chicago

[Rick]

Might have to plan a trip up from chicago

He DID offer free pizza.  I say "ROAD TRIP!"

 

[VanillaGorilla]

Are we talking about a caravan up from chicago? Pizza and arcade games? I'm getting too old to let such an opportunity pass me by. I have to grab as many chances to regress into my 13 year old self as possible. My fiance would think otherwise, but she can stay home

[jennifer]

      Me too, Oh yes me..me.. I want to go too!!!!!

[smalltownguy]

Hotel in town is cheap - $40 a night.

Minneapolis / St Paul is 40 minutes West.

Folks, you make your way up, and I'll give you all the free pizza you can eat. I still have over $700 in credit at the store, and it will be YEARS before I can use it all up.

After we've had enough fun at the 'Pizzacade, we can retreat to my basement arcade for some Area51 and other Aim Track goodness on my MAME cab. Beer's on me. (or liquor, if you prefer)

Cheap stay -- Free food, free booze, cheap classic arcade games, and good times. Can you really afford to pass it up?

 

[HaRuMaN]

we can retreat to my basement

[smalltownguy]

Trap? In MY basement? The only trap in my basement is a lint trap in the dryer. Or maybe the fish trap for ice fishing.

heheheh

[Rick]

heheheh

Why do I picture you wringing your hands when I read this?

 

[DirtyDachshunds]

Hotel in town is cheap - $40 a night.

Minneapolis / St Paul is 40 minutes West.

Folks, you make your way up, and I'll give you all the free pizza you can eat. I still have over $700 in credit at the store, and it will be YEARS before I can use it all up.

After we've had enough fun at the 'Pizzacade, we can retreat to my basement arcade for some Area51 and other Aim Track goodness on my MAME cab. Beer's on me. (or liquor, if you prefer)

Cheap stay -- Free food, free booze, cheap classic arcade games, and good times. Can you really afford to pass it up?

 

Pizza, beer, and arcade goodness is my kind of party.  I'd make the trip, especially if we could find a few other guys to come.

[smalltownguy]

Pizza, beer, and arcade goodness is my kind of party.  I'd make the trip, especially if we could find a few other guys to come.

You won't set FOOT in my house until you remove that avatar.

J/K

[DirtyDachshunds]

Pizza, beer, and arcade goodness is my kind of party.  I'd make the trip, especially if we could find a few other guys to come.

You won't set FOOT in my house until you remove that avatar.

J/K

Deal!

[flashiv]

I'll be watching this thread for possible dates as I am only about 1 1/2 hours west of Sheboygan.

You have to watch those lint traps, they are dangerous!   

[yotsuya]

I'm jealous. I'm all the way out in Phoenix, AZ.

[EvilNuff]

...Minneapolis / St Paul is 40 minutes West....

I was just in Msp this weekend and now you tell me! 

[Ond]

Can I hang out with you guys at the Pizzacade too?   

[smalltownguy]

Can I hang out with you guys at the Pizzacade too?   

Ond, the price of admission for you is a significant update on your project thread.

[HaRuMaN]

I'm jealous. I'm all the way out in Phoenix, AZ.

Hey, me too!

[yotsuya]

I'm jealous. I'm all the way out in Phoenix, AZ.

Hey, me too!

We can have our own pizza party!

[Jasonmm]

Can I bring 1 cab and 2 monitors for you to look at real quick ? Inbetween slices .... J

[VanillaGorilla]

I'm in if we can agree on a date, hopefully on a Friday or Saturday? I can also offer an empty seat on the ride up if anyone needs one.

Can I bring 1 cab and 2 monitors for you to look at real quick ? Inbetween slices .... J

So are we having a fix em' up or an arcade party? I have a couple of chassis that could use some lovin too

[smalltownguy]

No offense to you all, but I just brought 9 cabs back from the dead (or dying) in 6 weeks. If it's all the same to you all, I'd rather take some time to enjoy PLAYING the fruits of my labor at this point.

I'll be more than happy to help out a fellow BYOAC'er in need...but just PM me and I'll see what I can do.

[smalltownguy]

So it snows here last Friday, and in my haste to get the garage re-organized and cabs moved to the basement, I quickly make the space I need to park the car in the garage.

And then I got screwed.

Literally.



That, my friends, is exactly what it looks like. Screws. More spefically, screws that have the heads worn off. How? By riding around in my cars tires for a couple hundred miles. Guess that's my punishment for not sweeping well enough. Oh well. At least I work at a car dealership so plugging the tires was pretty easy

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

+1 to automotive work benefits! We've do hazardous waste transportation so we've got a full diesel/machine shop.
We also shred old tires, so i've had every tire on every vehicle i drive plugged at least once after running over left over tire wire.

where are our hover cars, damnit.

[BobA]

I've had studded tires but those were definitely pointed in the wrong direction. 

[jipp]

well im a hour from pehonix in apache junction.. i guess arizona is quite popular   heh.. this time of year you are all welcome to call it home    even tho i have a bad leg so i do enjoy the summers as long as i can get out of the heat in a/c for a bit.  heh nice work on keeping the cabs alive.

safe to say when i was a kid arcades where every where.. not so much rather sad..  lots of good memories i have of arcades, ooo girls, and game s:D

chris.

[yotsuya]

Jipp-

Did you ever go to an arcade in Mesa called Starship Fantasy? I never had a chance to, but I heard it was awesome.

[JustMichael]

That, my friends, is exactly what it looks like. Screws. More spefically, screws that have the heads worn off. How? By riding around in my cars tires for a couple hundred miles. Guess that's my punishment for not sweeping well enough. Oh well. At least I work at a car dealership so plugging the tires was pretty easy

So you weren't making a set of "redneck" studded tires?

[jipp]

yotsuya -
  Hi, im afraid i hvae not heard of it.  Im a transplant moving here 10 years ago. i was in a bad accident, shattered my left leg hitting a tree on a dirt bike. had to crawl for two days with compound fracture.. drag my self a mile and half in two days sat,sun.. for help. took me two years to learn to walk.  fake knee in 2004.  died for 2 mins.. etc..   doctors told me AZ would be good for my bones.  thats the short version of how i ended up in the desert.  i bet it was a great arcade tho.. phoenix is huge!!! 

i grew up in Oregon, and went to the local .5 arcade in Portland.  you spent 5.00 for kids probably more for adults..  to get in and all the games were .5 some where two nickles..  was some great years back in the day.   great times and that arcade was open for a long long time so i guess they made a profit..

chris.

[HaRuMaN]

A good arcade to visit in Phoenix if you haven't been there yet is Castles 'n' Coasters.  2 floors of arcade goodness, and a bunch of pins.

[yotsuya]

Visit Castles N' Coasters? 

I pretty much grew up there! I take my daughter there now! Best place in town for games.

I was just in Portland this summer. My son moved there last year.

[HaRuMaN]

We've had a couple of forum meet ups there...  good times.   

[yotsuya]

I gotta get in on the next one! I'm going there for a corporate Christmas party in two weeks, but I'm actually just 5 minutes away.

[smalltownguy]

OK folks, after much deliberation, I have decided to let the Mortal Kombat cab go up for sale. I've already replaced it on location with another Mortal Kombat cab, so this one can now be sold. There was some concern as to the whole 'rebooting' issue, but I simply cannot get the problem to repeat itself outside of the pizzeria. I'm convinced it's an amperage issue. There were simply too many games running on 1 circuit at the pizzeria. At home, I ran it for 5 days straight in my garage with multiple play sessions and never even a hiccup. So, off to Craigslist it goes. I'm sure someone will get a LOT of enjoyment out of it. I know I sure had fun

http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/wsh/vgm/2077049291.html

[eds1275]

Cheesiest ad EVER! lol I like it.

[ivwshane]

I must say I really enjoyed this thread! Thanks for all the pics!

[Jdurg]

Simply amazing thread.  Thanks for the read!  My interest in building a MAME cabinet has slowly been returning for me lately.  Back in the fall of 2007 I bought my first house and the idea of building my own arcade cabinet was running high.  Had all the plans worked out, built myself a great control panel, picked up a VERY badly beaten up coin door and restored it to brand new condition, then realized one major thing;  I have absolutely no room in my house for an arcade cabinet aside from a spare room upstairs, and there is no possible way for me to get it up there without dismantling my whole house.  lol.  Ah well.  On the bright side, I still have the parts for building one and in the future, when a new house comes my way due to years and years of saving up money, or winning the lottery, I'll be building my own.

I do have to say that with the experience I gained building the control panel and restoring the coin door, I could see myself building a little "box on wheels" with the control panel and coin door built into it, and the computer and parts inside so that I could just roll it to wherever I have a TV setup and get some playing.  Or I could take the parts from the control panel and make a bunch of individual Joysticks that I could plug into my laptop and play with those.  (I can also hook my laptop up to my A/V receiver, and use the controllers to play on my 42" hi-def TV in my living room with the high quality speaker system.  Hmmmm........

Anyway, got off-topic there, but thanks for posting this thread.  Great inspiration and a great story.   

[smalltownguy]

Thanks everyone for the kind words on this thread! I never knew that keeping a record of my bumbling adventures with this project would spawn into something so huge.

Just to let everyone know, I have NOT walked away from what's left on this. There are, to date, a few things that I'm still working on:

1. Head on: I've successfully read the manual, and cleaned the main PCB. I need to test fire this machine to see if the power board works or not. Next will be to see if there's neck glow.
2. The pizza joint: I've had zero calls in the past 6 weeks. 2 weeks ago I strolled through to make sure everything was still working. All still looks good! I see that someone trumped my high score on the Ms Pac. I'll have to do something abou that.
3. Monitors, monitors everywhere: I have 3 complete monitors (G07, Disco, WG19K49xx) in various stages of 'working-ness' that need attention. I also have 4 complete chassis - 2 that work, and 2 that need work.
4. Conclusion, and moving on to Ms Pac: If and when I can ever clean out my accumulation of goodies in my shop, I will begin my Ms Pac resto. I'm hoping that someone sprung for a complete wiring harness setup for me for Christmas from Bob Roberts

That's all I've got for now. FYI, Arkanoid II is currently residing in my shop, since it has no home. I told the owner I'm keeping it safe for him.

[smalltownguy]

Wow, it's been 5 months since this thread started. There's a TON of stuff still going on with this project.

The Head On cab has been cleaned up as much as I can. The board freezes during post. I can't see throwing this cab out, though. I think I'll keep the original hardware in there, and I will grab an old PIII mobo off the shelf and do a custom linux/mame setup booting directly to Head On. I'll drop a 19" VGA monitor in there. No one will know the difference

Paradise Pizza: The free food just keeps coming...and no calls. I'm actually kind of proud about that. It means I did a good job shopping the machines.

Monitors, monitors, monitors: The G07 has been completely rebuilt. The disco is still in the 'troubleshooting' stage. The 4900 still need a cap kit done.

Ms Pac: still on the fence here. I may just plunk down some $$$ and buy a restored Ms pac from someone here in the BYOAC/KLOV community. My time is worth the ching.

On a related note: I was finally able to obtain a 19" TV with a CR-31 tube today. So the chassis from the Final Fight now finally has a home. But the horizontal width coil is frozen - the slug is stuck. I warmed up the monitor, then shut it down, lubed the tube with silicone spray, and worked the slug back and forth with my plastic tool -- no luck. Anyone have any other ideas? If I can't get this unstuck I'm going to change out the width cap to narrow the pic a bit. I suppose I should check the B+ too.

[Funnel]

Yay this thread is alive again! Did you ordered pizza for your Superbowl party? 

[DirtyDachshunds]

Sounds like your on the path to free pizza for life.

[smalltownguy]

Yes I did order pizza for the big game, but not the Superbowl. I had friends over for the Packers / Bears game, which was MUCH more important for folks around here (especially the Bears fans....)


They have a party pizza that's great - it's basically 2 extra large pizzas laid side by side (like the mastercard logo). It's HUGE.

My resurrected Wells Gardner 19K7951 needs a cap kit, and I'm not too impressed with how the TV yoke looks on the tube. Since the cap kit needs to be done anyway, I'll do that first and then see how things look. If I can't get a decent enough picture going then I'll have to swap in a used yoke I have. The convergence is JUST a bit off.

Tonight I'll get some more pretty pictures up.

[garwil]

Sorry to derail your thread but I was absolutely seething when I saw Jay Cutler's "I've Quit" face when he was sat on the sidelines. And I'm talking about before he hurt his knee. I'm still angry about it now lol!

[smalltownguy]

Heheh....this one?

 

[yotsuya]

Maybe someone should have offered Jay a slice of free pizza?

[Epyx]

Awesome work on those cabs...love the frankenstein crt transplant as well but that is way out of my comfort zone. 

[smalltownguy]

I think you need to have a post now and then mentioning how much weight you're gaining eating all this pizza

Good job on fixing these beasts!

Funny you mention that....I started a weight loss plan 2/15. I'm down 12.5 pounds since then. Dr. says my LDL's are too high. Looks like I'll be laying off the pizza for a while.

Awesome work on those cabs...love the frankenstein crt transplant as well but that is way out of my comfort zone. 

Thanks, Epyx, your Aliens cab was truly an inspiration for me to get started on my Ms Pac resto. Your attention to detail and fine work is top notch. Thanks for reading!

Sorry for the lack of updates here folks, I've sort of been stuck on my Atari Disco monitor lately (STILL troubleshooting it) as well as getting my Ms Pac restoration underway. I've been spending an inordinate amount of time over on the KLOV forums. I have a thread similar to this one over there, and I've been updating it a bit more regularly.

[smalltownguy]

Well, I've gone ahead and done it again....I've stumbled across 10 MORE CABS!

This time, it's an owner of a local IT repair shop about 8 miles north of me. The owner there, Chuck, is a really nice guy who's also into classic arcade games, but he's more into the web design/virus removal/computer sales end of things, and not so much into the PCB and monitor repair end of things -- yet.

He's got 10 cabs in various stages of functionality that he wants help with. Am I a glutton for punishment? Maybe.

1. Surf Planet - needs monitor work
2. Rampage (dedicated) - needs monitor and sound pcb work
3. Killer Instict 2 (TMNT conversion) - needs monitor work
4. Final Fight - (Taito conversion, maybe zookeeper?) - needs controls work
5. Sharpshooter - works great
6. Soul Edge (dynamo cab) - needs monitor work
7. Marvel vs Capcom (blue) - needs monitor work
8. Marvel vs Capcom (red) - needs monitor work
9. Primal Rage - currently a police trainer, needs to be 'deconverted' back to a dedicated PR
10. NBA Jam Maximum Hangtime - needs monitor work

I know, I know, pics or it didn't happen....I'll get pics by tomorrow.

This is going to be fun!
 

[BobA]

Not as much fun as Pizza but maybe he has some spare gear around.

[yotsuya]

That's awesome! How are you going to be compensated for your time?

[AlienInferno]

What's going to happen to the police trainer parts when it's deconverted back to a Primal Rage?

[ArcadeAddict77]

Again? Wow, impressed and excellent all at the same time. After reading through this thread with the last 10 I am eager to see you bringing more cabs back to their glory days 

Rock on!

[patm95]

That's awesome dude.  You are going to be a master at fixing cabs by the time you are done.

[smalltownguy]

As promised -- pics! Can anyone identify the non-dedicated cabs?

[Vigo]

Final Fight is a Taito cab, probably was an arkanoid...

Edit: Actually I take back the Arkanoid on account of the horizontal screen....but I can't think of what other taito games commonly used the white decals.....Elevator action? 

[leapinlew]

Those aren't bad conversions. Did this guy ever actually play primal rage? Blech.

[Funnel]

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! More smalltownguy threads! Awesome! Really loved your first post on this thread, it was very informative. Please keep it that way and post a lot of info for us noobies.

[Rick]

Here's my problem.  "Smalltownguy" lives in a small town (obviously) and yet, he's found more than TWENTY arcade cabinets to work on.  I live in a 'medium-sized' town, and dammit if I cannot find a single arcade game to play ANYWHERE around here!

       

 

[yotsuya]

That's why you need to finish building your own!!! 

[frustrated_gamer]

That's why you need to finish building your own!!! 

My thoughts exactly... that was my inspiration!

[Rick]

That's why you need to finish building your own!!! 

My thoughts exactly... that was my inspiration!

Don't worry.  I'm getting back to it SOON!  (Next week, in fact, I am buying a mini-enclosure for my deck, so I can continue!)

[eds1275]

Here's my problem.  "Smalltownguy" lives in a small town (obviously) and yet, he's found more than TWENTY arcade cabinets to work on.  I live in a 'medium-sized' town, and dammit if I cannot find a single arcade game to play ANYWHERE around here!

       

 

Well, those small town folk know about values. And arcade games are like gold. And gold is valuable.


...or maybe small town people are packrats, for better or for worse.

[smalltownguy]

Heads up....

Couple of us are getting together on Saturday for some repairs.

We'll be working on monitors (cap kits & flybacks, mostly), control wiring, and general cab cleanup. We'll have a rejuvenator on site for tubes if you have a need...

We have a 500 sq foot empty space next to the owner's shop that we're going to set up work tables and go to town! I'll be there around 11am til late at night. Free beer and Pizza all day. (courtesy of me and the owner)

We'd love it if you can make it - shoot me a note or call me at 715-417-2097.

Weather's gonna be crappy this weekend, so no point in doing anything outdoors, right?

128 South Washington Street, Saint Croix Falls, WI, 54024

-Brad

[smalltownguy]

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! More smalltownguy threads! Awesome! Really loved your first post on this thread, it was very informative. Please keep it that way and post a lot of info for us noobies.

Ask and you shall receive, my friend...

First of all, I apologize for the long post, but there's lots to document here.

Okay, I'd have to say that our repair party was a great success! We managed to get quite  a bit of troubleshooting done, and 3 of the 8 non working cabs are up and running fully, with another 2 cabs very close. Started the day at 12 noon, and I left at 10:40pm and the owner and Ryan (ballytablewiz on KLOV) were still working!

BIG thanks goes out to ballytablewiz for bringing FOUR rejuvenators to use. We ended up getting a TON of use out of them - very valuable tools indeed!

Chuck (the owner) and I started the day with moving cabs into the work space, and setting up our spare parts and work areas. Chuck wanted to address the NBA Maximum Hangtime cab first, so we went to work on it. The power switch on the cab was completely broken, and the wiring for it had been hacked together. I spent over an hour creating a new input power cord and re-crimping proper monitor AC inputs so I could use my monitor extension cable from Bob Roberts. Powered up the game and the PCB was working, but the tube was all blue - no red or green No rejuvenators on site yet, so we had to move on to other troubleshooting. To make sure that the issue wasn't neckboard related, I pulled the neckboard off the Marvel vs Capcom (blue) which also had a Wells Gardner 25" chassis in it too. Tried the neckboard on the Maximum Hangtime chassis and got the same blue image, so it was definately a tube issue. We moved on.

Chuck and I moved on to the Marvel vs Capcom cab (blue) to see if we could get that chassis up and running. Fuse was blown on the chassis - replaced it and it blew immediately on power up, so we know that chassis need a complete rebuild - caps are all original too. We both had spare 25" chassis lying around, so the next hour or so was spent testing each chassis on the tube in that cab. Both worked OK.

My friend Dave (dlbagna) took on the biggest project of the day - a complete rebuild of the G07 inside Chuck's Surf Planet cab. The chassis was totally dead, so Dave replaced everything in Bob's Deluxe kit: caps, flyback, HOT, regulator, both fuses. We skipped the horizontal width coil since the one onboard was fully functional and the slug turned properly. When Dave re-installed the chassis, he noticed that there was a neck pin stuck in the neck board socket. One of the pins had broken free from the back of the neck -- bummer

It was right around this time that Ryan showed up (ballytablewiz) and he just happened to bring a 19" donor tube for our cause...sweet! We proceeded to immediately do a tube swap to remove the broken (and burned, as we later found) G07 tube from the Surf Planet cab. We swapped both the tube and the yoke, discarding the TV's yoke. After everything was done, we still couldn't get the new tube and repaired G07 chassis to fire, so I punted and dropped in my spare G07 we'd been using for testing. That pretty much took care of that. I'll keep working the the rebuilt G07 in my spare time and I'm sure we'll get her up and going. If not, I'll call Chris25810

After that, we moved on to rejuvenation....Ryan pretty much gave a clinic on how to use the B&K and sencore units for testing, restoring, and rejuvenating the guns in a tube. We were able to test/fix/repair three 25" tubes and 2 19" tubes. Chuck bought one immediately - this will be a great tool to have in the toolbox!

We turned our attention to the Soul Edge cab next. It had a 19" Wells Gardner 19k7000 series monitor in it. I tested the game on my spare 19K7951, and it worked perfectly on that monitor. So I dropped my working chassis into the cab on the tube inside, and got a picture that was all red with retrace lines all over. Then I power cycled the cab and got a good picture. Power cycling again brought the red back. Strange, since this chassis is working perfectly on my tube. We tested the tube with the Sencore, and it checked out OK. The issue is either with the game board (or wiring coming from it to the chassis) or with the tube, not sure which. This one is perplexing me - next step is going to be to pull the monitor and test it with another known working game to see if any issues follow the monitor. So this one is still in the diagnosis stage.

By this time, it was starting to get pretty late in the day, and we were running out of time. I was starting to get tired, and was making some mistakes. Two times I mistakenly powered on a chassis without connecting the anode cap - not a good idea.

Before we left, I took a quick look at the Marvel vs Capcom (red) cab with the Hantarex Polo. Testing the cab's power supply revealed that there was no power getting to the monitor. So this cab needs the power supply replaced before we can get much further. Chuck tells me that the monitor was arcing pretty good when he had it, and he believes the flyback has toasted. I inspected the flyback knobs and housing, and there was not just dust on it - there were scorch marks and soot, so I believe him when he tells me that it's toast. I also noticed that the anode cap was riding pretty high, and when I lifted the cup, I saw that only 1 of the anode lead's teeth was clipped in. My diagnosis is that the anode was arcing due to the fact that the anode wasn't clipped in properly, ultimately leading to the flyback's demise. First things first, this cab needs a new power supply, then we can worry about pulling the chassis and replacing the flyback.

That's as far as I could get in one day. There was lots of 'hands on' learning and teaching yesterday, so the progress was slow, but it was a very productive day. Ballytablewiz was able to get his 13" monitor recapped as well.



1. Surf Planet - fixed, (I dropped in my G07)
2. Rampage (dedicated) - 19K7xxx monitor, not addressed yet. Also needs sound board repair.
3. Killer Instict 2 (TMNT conversion) - 25K74xx monitor, needs cap kit. Not addressed yet.
4. Final Fight - (Taito conversion, probably was a Pirate Pete) - needs controls work - not addressed yet.
5. Sharpshooter - working
6. Soul Edge (dynamo cab) - working. Original monitor has intermittent issue that is still being troubleshooted.
7. Marvel vs Capcom (blue) - working - needs new monitor signal calbes created.
8. Marvel vs Capcom (red) - Hantarex Polo needs flyback replacement. Cab needs new power supply.
9. Primal Rage - currently a police trainer, needs to be 'deconverted' back to a dedicated PR - not addressed yet.
10. NBA Jam Maximum Hangtime - fully working.

[elkameleon]

Oh man, thats too bad I missed the party! I spent all day (at work ) reading this thread from start to finish. I would love to know if you have another get together, Im just north of Mankato, MN. I've got a dedicated Nintendo playchoice 10 dual monitor. The top monitor has some issues though. Then I have a virtua fighter cab that was converted to nfl blitz, that i'm in the process of mame-ing out. I feel very motivated by your thread, time to go out to the garage!

[smalltownguy]

Thanks for the kind words!

Yes, there will most DEFINITELY be another get together soon, to finish up details on the remaining 4 cabs that still need work.

I have promised pictures of the repair party, and I'll get them to you. Chuck (the owner) has been super busy the past 2 weeks and that's a good thing for his store, not so good for our monitor work

I have more updates on these cabs to share too, but I need to get some pics taken to go along with the boring words. Need eye candy too, right?

[smalltownguy]

Just wanted to bump this thread with some updates:

1. Surf Planet: switching power supply died last month. Replaced it, and then the boards died. My friend Dave (dlbagna) has a spare set of boards, so we may try swapping them in.
2. Rampage: monitor has been repaired, still need to work on sound board. This one is high on the priority list.
3. Killer Instict: fixed. swapped in another monitor chassis, and this one is playable. The original k7400 monitor is on my bench, awaiting a recap. As soon as it's done, we'll have another free 25" chassis to use in one of the capcom cabs.
4. Final Fight: fixed.
5. Sharpshooter: fixed.
6. Soul Edge: monitor has a bad tube. We have a spare monitor to drop in, but it will require cutting a slot in the opening to accomodate the G07 frame. This one is low on the priority list, since it's currently in storage.
7. Marvel Vs. Capcom (blue): no progress. Needs video cables terminated with new connectors.
8. Marvel Vs. Capcom (red): Hantarex flyback replaced, now we get wierd 'light-to-dark' washing happening with the image. This cab should get a new monitor (when the 7400 for the KI is done).
9. Primal Rage: Neotec monitor won't sync, suspect bad caps. Since this one is a de-conversion, we're waiting on it until some of the other cabs are finished. It's in storage.
10. Maximum Hangtime: fixed.

The past few months have been pretty busy for the store owner, signing a new lease on a larger store space, and purchasing a new home. So there's lots going on. I would like to get up there some time this week to work on some more repairs. I have a few things around my place to do (including 2 new pin pickups, and an Asteroids cab to repair), but I should be able to get there soon.

I know I've promised pics - I will try to remember to take more of them as we document our repairs.

[joeb1355]

I am looking at doing a very similar swap with a cr31 neck tube on a WG7602 monitor and have the same question about keeping the original neck or not.

What happen with you swap how did you blow the tube, by not swapping the yoke?

[smalltownguy]

Not sure what happened with the first swap. I remember there was an extra wire going to the TV's neckboard that I couldn't find a home for on the arcade chassis. Likely I was trying to use an incompatible tube. *poof*