A Lion in the Dog House.

[SavannahLion]

I just netted myself a gutted Super(?) HangOn cab in what appears to be in decent shape. Some Happ buttons, T-molding and a box of 20-30 Marquees, most of them glass. On top of that, I walked away with most of a Kenmore stereo (no amp though), misc SEGA MS components, about 15 Atari 2600 games, A box of Mad magazines, a bunch of Star Wars EP1 posters, a 17" PC monitor and some other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting. I was secretely hoping for a GGG controller or at least a Ipac, but beggers can't be choosers

The entire deal set me back six hours of drive and pick up time and $40 in gas. It would've been only 4 to 5 hours of time and $20 or $30 in gas but I got lost following Google's craptastic map directions. Should've taken the longer route, I would've got there and home sooner. The trip also totally drained all my funds for the rest of the month. So I've got a truck with 1/4 tank of gas and I don't get paid until the 1st. That ---smurfing--- sucks.

Boy is my GF PISSED. I'm in the dog house on this one. The garage is a massive mess and needs to be cleaned out so there's really no space in there for the cab to hang out. I'm going to shove some crap around or stuff it in the shed. I just have to be really careful because there's a leak in the shed. 

The garage has to be cleaned out before I get my next cab.

I got the cab from an old member here on BYOAC. He got a killer job in a different state and couldn't take his MAME stuff with him. He was planning to MAME the cab (I could visualize what he was planning and it was a pretty cool idea). I'm not sure if I want to MAME it or revert it back to a HangOn cab.

All in all, for being a lion in the doghouse, I think I made off like a bandit. 

I'll get some snapsots and upload them later this afternoon.

[Kaytrim]

Sell some of those marquees here to get you some funds for the rest of the month.  Some of the other stuff you could eBay.  I don't think the GF will be pissed so much if you can recoup some of the money you spent.

TTFN 
Kaytrim

[SavannahLion]

From studying photos, it would appear that it was originally a HangOn cab that was converted to a Super. The cab lacks the molded plastic of the Super and is definately the shape of the original, but the side art is different. I'll snap some photos and post for verification later.

[shardian]

I have to say, spending your month's salary to the point you can't afford gas for a few weeks probably wasn't the brightest idea, but congrats on the score anyways.

[horseboy]

I have to say, spending your month's salary to the point you can't afford gas for a few weeks probably wasn't the brightest idea, but congrats on the score anyways.

One's perception of brightness depends on how long one has been in the dark.

[TOK]

You've done well by remembering the prime law of bringing arcade machines, guns and motorcycles home:
Its ALWAYS better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. 

[Fozzy The Bear]

OUCH!!!    hide all the carving knives, hide any guns you might or might not have, if there are any sharp gardening tools in the shed DIG A BIG HOLE AND PUT THEM IN!! and watch your back while you're digging the hole or you might end up at the bottom of it... LOL 

Good score though

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[FrizzleFried]

I'm  looking for marquees to decorate the cave...interested in selling a lot of 10 or so?

[SavannahLion]

OK, I got home and waited... waited... waited... and my friend was a no show. Go figure. So I embarrassed myself and asked my neighbor to help me offload the cab from the truck into the shed. First thing he asks is, "what do you want this for?"

At least he had a dolly and just happened to be some kind of mover for a living. How convenient. I'm sure they think I'm sort of nerd... oh wait. He warned me that in exchange for helping to move the cab he wants me to clean my front yard.

Anyhow, got the cab off and into the shed. First things first, I decided to take stock of the condition of the cab.

Contrary to my initial memory of last night, it is indeed a 100% Hang-On cab, not a conversion or anything of the sort. The Marquee appears to be in excellent shape except for some sticker residue. The tax sticker?

The steering bars are not so great. I removed the plastic cover last night (which I almost lost during transport). It appears both the throttle and brake controls are missing. There appears to be some damage to the harness as well. Movement feels right, but I don't know if it works without wiring it up for a test.

The monitor looks like it was flat out removed. Whoever did it just cut through the wires and left them dangling. I'm guessing the previous owner used it for another Arcade cab, but that's neither here or there.

The trim needs some minor work. Most damage seems to be out of sight, such as around the left side where it has some strange rippling. The side art looks very good. It's not a sticker, but painted on, so it might be possible to touch it up with some color matched paint rather than strip it bare.

Except for the locks, the coinbox looks 100% complete. The buttons say ".25 x2" so I assume this was originally set for $.50 play. There are pairs of 1/2"(?) bolt holes above and below the coin box, I assume from lock bars of some kind. Putty and paint should fix that right up. To my surprise, a set of keys were hanging from a coiled spring. Turns out these belong to the lock around the back! Even better, while I was looking into the space for the coin mech, I saw shadows of what appeared to be a bunch of IC's. I was told the cab was lacking a PCB, so I figured this was some stray PCB for the coinbox or something, but I was hoping.

I was happy as soon as the key turned in the lock, it would save me the hassle of drilling the lock out. The less destruction I do to finish the job, the happier I am. As soon as I opened the back door, I knew I struck gold. The entire PCB appears to be mounted and intact along with the power supply and some other misc components. SWEET!

Another surprise is that I found an instruction card for some version of columns, a sheet of conversion side art(?) Road Riot 4WD, the smoked plastic monitor cover (damaged), and two shadow masks one with an official SEGA product sticker. Some misc metal parts and an unidentifiable PCB board. The mounting posts were damaged so I assumed they fell off of the PCB stack, but I couldn't find an obvious mounting place. There's no real identification other than what appears to be serial numbers and the SEGA logo. Maybe it's the monitor PCB?

About this time, my friend decided to show up. He was all over the cab like white on rice. He's really pressuring me to rip everything out and convert it to MAME. He did, however, confirm some of my suspicions, but couldn't (or wouldn't) tell me anything about the PCB's other than it's a Jamma (KLOV says otherwise).

All in all, it looks to be a very salvageable cab. I can rebuild it as a Hang-On cab and use it to help pay for a different cab or completely gut the cab for MAME. Unlike my friend, I'm a big fan of original hardware. Even though I generally play classics on my PC, I still like the feeling and quirkiness of firing up old hardware and playing it just for  and giggles.

I checked out KLOV, but they don't seem to have the schematic for the wiring harness or PCB. Major suckage. It's too early to tell what wire does what, so I can't say how much damage the harness has. Worse yet, I have a limited idea what kind of monitor it will accept, much less what cut wire does what. Most of the wiring throughout the cab appears intact, it's just the ones that I think lead directly to the monitor that've been cut.

I haven't inventoried anything else yet.

[SavannahLion]

A couple more

[SavannahLion]

Last set of this cab, I promise.

[Kremmit]

I've got two of those here, and I used to have a third.

The boards you've already got on the door are the complete boardset.  The only other board in those is a little tiny sound amp that should be attached to the bottom of the cab.  And the monitor PCB. 

The dude that told you it's JAMMA doesn't know JAMMA from a hole in the ground.  It's not, and anybody that knows what JAMMA means would know it about ten seconds after looking at those PCBs.  JAMMA is a wiring standard, all of the wires for the PCB go through one single 56-pin connector.  Hang-On has about 6 different connectors going from the rest of the cab to the boards, along with several board-to-board cables. 

What you really want to hope for if you're looking to restore it is that the wiring harness is intact.  That's a ton of wires to do from scratch, and Sega used some really weird connectors, I dunno where you'd find replacements.  Your missing brake and throttle cables turn up on eBay pretty often, the brake handle not so much.

If you decide to MAME it, I'll be curious to see how you attach a control panel to it.

[Naru]

NICE!...
I've lost girlfriends for lesser things
than a Hang-On cabinet.
Heck, I would trade pretty much all of them for one.
Hope you can fix it up nice.
Good luck.
I'll be watching your progress.

[SavannahLion]

The dude that told you it's JAMMA doesn't know JAMMA from a hole in the ground.  It's not, and anybody that knows what JAMMA means would know it about ten seconds after looking at those PCBs.  JAMMA is a wiring standard, all of the wires for the PCB go through one single 56-pin connector.  Hang-On has about 6 different connectors going from the rest of the cab to the boards, along with several board-to-board cables.

From what little I've read about JAMMA while reading these boards, I would've gambled that the Hang-On PCB wasn't JAMMA by any measure. But since I don't have any direct experience with JAMMA equipment, I wasn't going to make any assumptions about what is or isn't JAMMA unless I verify it.

I haven't seen his MAME cab, but from what I've heard, it wouldn't be a design I would be happy with. I know he's already broken one cardinal rule with my design sketches by suggesting I add a MAME based marquee. ---fudgesicle--- that.

[SavannahLion]

What you really want to hope for if you're looking to restore it is that the wiring harness is intact.  That's a ton of wires to do from scratch, and Sega used some really weird connectors, I dunno where you'd find replacements. 

From what I can tell, the wiring harness is intact with the exception of, what I think, are the leads to the monitor. I haven't traced the wires back to the board yet, so I don't know if the leads connect to a sub connector before heading off to the board. If that's true, then all I think I need to do is figure out which wire does what and splice new leads on.

If I can work out the wire leads, would it be better to return an arcade monitor back into the cab or can I adapt the signal to a PC monitor instead to keep my costs lower? Maybe Randy or someone else has something like a reverse ArcadeVGA.

[Kaytrim]

If I can work out the wire leads, would it be better to return an arcade monitor back into the cab or can I adapt the signal to a PC monitor instead to keep my costs lower? Maybe Randy or someone else has something like a reverse ArcadeVGA.

I don't remember reading anything about a reverse ArcadeVGA board.  I have a feeling that the only option to you is to get a replacement arcade monitor.  Another option is to MAME it and put the motorcycle games on it.  This way you would be able to sell the board set to help pay for the project.  The only real issues that I see are the size of the monitor space and interfacing the controls.  It looks like was a 24" or 27" so getting a monitor/TV to fit there properly could cost a bit as well.  Though it would be cheaper than an arcade monitor.  I think that Ultimarc might have the interfaces for you but I am not sure.  The handlebars are more than likely on a pot.

Kaytrim

[Kremmit]

If I can work out the wire leads, would it be better to return an arcade monitor back into the cab or can I adapt the signal to a PC monitor instead to keep my costs lower? Maybe Randy or someone else has something like a reverse ArcadeVGA.

There's no reasonable way to output from a gameboard to a computer monitor.  You could use a JROK, to output to a TV, but the picture quality won't be as good. 


But really, you'll want a real arcade monitor. 

[Extreme8]

One's perception of brightness depends on how long one has been in the dark.

That's deep.

[Fozzy The Bear]

From what little I've read about JAMMA while reading these boards, I would've gambled that the Hang-On PCB wasn't JAMMA by any measure. But since I don't have any direct experience with JAMMA equipment, I wasn't going to make any assumptions about what is or isn't JAMMA unless I verify it.

SEGA didn't produce much JAMMA stuff at all.... This is certainly a dedicated machine. Much like their other stuff from this period.

After this they went on to further develop the boards in your machine into the SEGA NAOMI System... House Of The Dead... Virtua Striker.. Virtua Tennis.. Virtua Cop... 18 wheeler... etc etc etc... All effectively dedicated machines because although the NAOMI ROM boards could be swapped the machines all had pretty dedicated control designs.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Crowquill]

Found pinouts over at CrazyKong.com

http://www.crazykong.com/pins/

They also have the manual and schematic PDFs you might want to check out.

Hang-On was pretty cool but I'm not sure it would be a great long-term game. It would still LOOK cool, though. All-in-all, as long as you can find the parts and the board works, doesn't look like a very hard restoration.

I'm not sure how it would work out as a MAME cab. I guess it could just be an unconventional racing cab. You might be able to swap the handlebars for a wheel and add pedals. Maybe.

[modessitt]

If I can work out the wire leads, would it be better to return an arcade monitor back into the cab or can I adapt the signal to a PC monitor instead to keep my costs lower? Maybe Randy or someone else has something like a reverse ArcadeVGA.
[/quote]

Would an RGB-to-NTSC converter do this?  I know you can adapt the arcade signal to work on a TV with this.  Guess you could have it input to a TV tuner card on a PC, then display on the monitor.