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OMG What have I gotten myself into -- 10 MORE CABS!
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:
--- Quote from: abzman2000 on September 09, 2010, 10:04:49 am ---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.
--- End quote ---
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
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