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Author Topic: I need some help troubleshooting a Joust Cabinet  (Read 818 times)

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rjpadin

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I need some help troubleshooting a Joust Cabinet
« on: June 14, 2009, 08:43:11 pm »
I'm an absolute newb to this stuff so please be patient with me.  I got a Joust cabinet yesterday that I plan on restoring.  It didn't work at first, but once I broke the back locks and got to the back I accidentally figured out the white switch in the back needed to be pressed in order for the game to switch on.  I got it to the point of playing for a couple of minutes, but turned it off and kept putzing around and seeing how the thing worked.  Eventually I turned it back on and now get vertical lines on the screen or it won't turn on at all.  I saw a code flashing on the board on the door either 13 or e1 not sure which one it is.  The last thing I did was unlatch the control panel and play with the buttons and joysticks.  If anyone has experience with this stuff it would be great.  I can take pictures and retrace my steps if necessary.  Any help is appreciated.  Once I resolve this I'm going to start 1 of my planned 4 projects of restoring this cabinet to decent shape.  Thanks ahead of times for the help.

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Re: I need some help troubleshooting a Joust Cabinet
« Reply #1 on: June 14, 2009, 09:58:29 pm »
First -- welcome!

First step is to get yourself a copy of the manual. The troubleshooting instructions there are pretty good.

Next thing is to get yourself a multimeter so that you can test voltages at various places. You don't need to spend a ton of money on one, but, if you are going to work on arcade games (even if only one game), you need to have one of these.

This will all seem a little daunting at first, but basic troubleshooting isn't that difficult if you take it a step at a time. You will need to have some basic knowledge of how to use the multimeter and some basic electronics knowledge.

You have come to the right place as we have at least one resident expert on Williams board repairs (RA -- are you out there ?)

There are also some good resources listed in the Restoration section of the BYOAC wiki, some specific to Williams games.

In the immediate term, you can check all of the connectors to see that they are seated properly (with the power off) -- I've had problems with bad connectors and pins before.

Oh, and definitely take some pics (of the screen and of the innards so that we can see if anything is obviously amiss) and let us know what the code is.
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