my 5 year saga to get my arcade machine working! help!

[BilldaCat]

Wow what a mess..

that seems to be the consensus.  how this worked in the first place is a bit of a mystery.

so i'm not understanding something very basic -- how am i hooking the monitor up now since the jamma harness is worthless?  I thought I would be soldering the wires onto the J-PAC, but you're saying to scrap the j-pac .. so where am I hooking the wires up to?

thanks for your patience and help so far!

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Go find a broken LCD monitor and take it a apart. Most of them connect to the board inside the LCD with a little plastic connector like this:


Here you can see the reg, green, and blue wires, along with the black ground and white h-sync (the v-sync wire is not in this picture) that came from my original monitor hook up connector. I just slipped the pins out of the plastic connector from the LCD monitor and used them to crimp onto the original arcade monitor wires. a drop of solder or a quick wrap in electrical tape and it's good to go.

[BilldaCat]

Zenith tube -- the only other identifying name I can find on the board is 'Brady Dist.'.  don't know it this helps at all.

So that plastic connector looks similar to the one in my machine, this one:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2542/3964606916_0a42e9bd92_o.jpg

I'm still being stupid and missing something though.  Where are those wires supposed to go to?  That plastic connector plugs into the board, and the wires that run off of it  .. connect to what exactly inside of my machine?  Sorry for being dense -- feel free to talk to me like I'm 5.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

The plastic connnector in my picture does not connect to your monitor. Your original plastic connector stays in place and the wires from it connect to the wires from your vga cable. I referenced that plastic connector because it is a convenient way to splice the cables together.

[BilldaCat]

The plastic connnector in my picture does not connect to your monitor. Your original plastic connector stays in place and the wires from it connect to the wires from your vga cable. I referenced that plastic connector because it is a convenient way to splice the cables together.

Ok, I think I got it.  The original connector I have stays there.. I then cut the wires running from it (since it runs and connects to the 'wiring block' then out to the VGA connector and god knows where else)

actually, I may just go through and cut the wires running from the plastic connector, cut them a few inches from the VGA connector pins, and then splice/electrical tape those wires back together.  That should be fine, right?  Then run the VGA cable from the VGA connector to the ArcadeVGA card..

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

If we're understanding each other then yes that should be fine.

One small thing to consider however is the possibility of interference from the electrical components in the cab causing image problems. Decent vga cables have sheilding to help protect against this. You may never notice a difference but it's something to be aware of.

[BilldaCat]

If we're understanding each other then yes that should be fine.

One small thing to consider however is the possibility of interference from the electrical components in the cab causing image problems. Decent vga cables have sheilding to help protect against this. You may never notice a difference but it's something to be aware of.

cool cool.  i'll have some time this weekend to get cracking and hopefully get some results.

still need to get a new PC for the cabinet.. hopefully woot has a cheap deal on something soon.  if anyone has any suggestions, all ears.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

what do you call cheap?

newegg.com:
$55 - Western Digital Caviar Green WD8000AARS 800GB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822136517

$60 - ASRock A785GM-LE/128M AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813157179

$40 - FSP Group SAGA+ 400R 400W ATX12V Power Supply
Item #: N82E16817104953

$33 - A-DATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model AD2U800B1G5-DRH
Item #: N82E16820211066

$79 - AMD Athlon II X3 445 Rana 3.1GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor ADX445WFGMBOX
Item #: N82E16819103872

Subtotal:   $266.96

use an old case of just bolt it inside the cab.