Tekken 2, decent price? *WARNING LOT OF PICTURES*

[Beretta]

seen someone selling what looks to be a konami 4player 25inch cabinet (simpsons, tmnt, sunset riders etc)  that has been converted to tekken 2.

they're asking 150.. but the true cost will be about 250 as it's a 300 mile round trip in a v8 truck (8-10mpg)..

is this a decent price? i have no real love for tekken series so most likely i'd trade/sell off the marquee and pcb, only seen pictures which was'nt very good but the cabinet looks to be in good shape from what i can tell.. and the monitor definitely works.

this is the kinda cabinet im looking for to start my project a 90 style midway (mk,nba jam,etc) or a late 80/90's konami 4player.

but is it a decent price?


need advice QUICK, it might be 250 to me but it's only 150 for the locals where they're at and i need to decide quickly (thats if it has'nt already been sold)

or are long distance buys like this just a bad idea period, i'd hate to get down there and they had already sold it or misrepresented the game.

[TOK]

If the monitor works and it coins up and plays, its worth it.

[Beretta]

talked to the guy (seems real decent) , no one bought it yet, i asked him a few questions.

he's had a few arcade games but does'nt know a whole lot he said he intended to mame it but does'nt have time so he just wants to get it out of storage.

apparently he believes it is an original tekken cabinet, but it has 2 coin doors 2 mechs each.

so no way this is original tekken.. anyway he said he bought it off his buddy for 300 about a year ago.

he said it's in good shape, "7/10" was his exact scoring (7/10 is 70% not exactly good shape in my book), some cosmeitc chips and scrapes which is of course expected.
but said there was no splitting, warping, or mushrooming from water damage.

he does'nt know if the coin mechs work.. or if they're even there.. although he said there are no door locks on them (wanted to make sure he had key's to get in the damn thing)

but i figure if worse case i have to replace the coin mehs and buy some barrel locks it's not the end of the world.

anyway he's gonna send me some more pictures tonight, but unless something serious is wrong im gonna try to make plans to pick it up tomorrow night, it's about a 2 1/2 hour drive (one way)

which i told him to consider it sold and if anyone else was to call it's already been sold since im so far away i dont wanna spend 50 bucks in gas in a v8 truck and find out oh it's been sold from under me.. which he understood.

all and all the conversation went rather well and he seemed like a decent guy hopefully by late tomorrow i'll have her back home and can finally work out the fine details of my project.

[Paul Olson]

As long as there is no monitor burn, it should be pretty good. I started with the same thing, Tekken 2 board is actually still sitting in the cabinet 6 years later. Back then I paid a lot more - $300 + $350 shipping. Now that would be absurd, but back then I couldn't find an empty cab for less than $500 locally (or I didn't know where to look). That cabinet is great for a mame cab, either for a normal fighter layout, or a modular setup like I have. Burnin is the only thing hard to fix on the whole cab, it will need to be replaced. I am going to do a tube swap on mine because the light Tekken 2 burn still annoys me once in a while. The Tekken 2 boards don't sell for much, which is why I just kept mine.

Paul

[Beretta]

well i wont know about burn in till i get down there.

i suspect it's a konami 4 player.. least thats what it looks like to me.

so i'd figure if the monitor is original it's from the early 90's, so who know what kinda action it's seen.. a little burn in i wont mind, he's gonna send more pictures tonight hopefully i can tell better from them, he said it's in storage the pictures he had atm was from when it was setup at home.

so i asked him to make sure it was still intact from sitting in storage before i made the trip down.

so he said he'd take pictures inside and out tonight after work and send them to me.

but lets say worse case scenario the monitor has heavy burn in and should be replaced..

what does 25inch standard res monitors normally go for?

[Paul Olson]

Usually $100-$150, depends how bad someone needs the space it is taking up. You can swap a TV tube in there, but it can be a challenge. I am planning to do it, but haven't found a good donor tube yet. You are basically buying the monitor with a free box around it, so I would make sure it is a nice monitor.

[Beretta]

ok i heard back form him with some pictures..

now i need advice, i've no real experience with cabinets, the most i seen the inside of them in real life is watching someone clear a jam or empty them out..

other then pictures i've seen on the internet this will be my first cabinet so please point out any thing that looks like it might be a problem (even the stuff that might be obvious for a lot of you here)

the cabinet looks fine to me, it looks like it needs some filler and paint to cover up the cosmetic holes by the coin door but other then that i see no glaring problems with this cabinet.

quick question, the hole in the bottom.. whats the for? i would assume a fan but does'nt seem to be one mounted and it's aweful close to the floor.

the coin doors look liek they're in good shape, the coin mech's look nice and shiny.. the inside looks pretty clean actually.

also the last picture shows the screen.. it looks ok to me for the most part.. i think the dark spot is actually a shadow from the marquee over hang, as it looks like it extends to the bezel if i crank up my monitors contrast/brightness you can see it but you guys give me your opinion on this.

it looks like there might be "lite" burn in at the top in the middle.. perhaps some text? i dont see anything large like life bars or anything.. but again you guys tell me.

i have'nt contacted the seller yet so i want your guys opinions before i do. although i can't keep him waiting for long.. i'll have to call him by early afternoon tomorrow i'd say.


here's the pix.

[Paul Olson]

Looks just like mine did.  All I can see on the screen is the reflection of the speaker hole. The cab looks pretty good to me. It won't be hard to fill the little holes in front. Mine has the same vent hole on the bottom, not really sure what it is for though. Click the little web icon below my name to see how the MAME controls will fit on there. The first pic is a standard layout.

[Beretta]

i  think you're right, good eye, it does look like the speaker holes reflection now that you mention it.

so the monitor looks pretty good.. i'd say all systems are go, so you'ed say the monitor is in good shape as well?

you've been a great help, if you think the monitor is good burn in wise im going for it.

EDIT: oh btw i did a check on maws so being what looks to be a konami 4 player cab with mono audio, i've narrowed it down to

1. tmnt
2. punk shot
3. main event.

cab pictures of main event i seen used a different pannel and i think 19inch monitor.

so it's either a tmnt or a punk shot cab... i figure.

[smalltownguy]

Yeah, if there's no burn, then the monitor's worth the trip alone. I agree with Paul Olson; if you see a good picture with no burn, then it's worth the price. The box, PCB & coin mechs are just a bonus.

If you are hesitant IN ANY WAY about the monitor, offer him $75. He'll know by your facial expression that you're not pleased with the monitor, and neither will anyone else be. He'll take the money knowing it's too much of a hassle to try to set up another sale only have another buyer walk away too.

Do not be afraid to walk away. Yeah, it's a long drive, and lots 'o gas. But what's worse? $100 in lost gas, or a lifetime of owning a monitor that is 'just not right'?

[Beretta]

ok i stared at it and stared at it and stared at it.

on 2 different monitors.. near as i can tell if it has any burn in at all it must be to lite to show up.

so im gonna bite, i got a feeling this guy did'nt leave it on 24/7 anyway since it was in his house.

i sent him a email telling him i'd take it.. to late to try and call his cell dont wanna wake anyone up 11pm, not everyone is as disfunctional as me

anyway thanks for the advice guys and i'll post pictures when i get her, HOPEFULLY.. she'll be home by this time tomorrow night.

although finding space and time work on it will be a challenge im still working out the details of the project but i'll be asking a lot of questions on joy sticks and such soon if everyone works out.

[Paul Olson]

Have fun with it. play Tekken 2 for a while until you are ready to convert it, maybe even pick up another cheap pcb or 2 to swap in there. That will give you something to play during the planning stage. My first control panel was really easy on this cab. I just had to make a new cp top, cut and drill, and wire up the new controls. Don't rush it though, you want something you will be happy with. If you are not a fan of the fighting games, you may not even need the 6 or 7 button layout that is used by most people. Build it for the games you want to play.

Unless you are crazy like me, then build it to play everything. 

There are a lot of knowledgeable people around here, so help is always available.

[Beretta]

ya im not a fan of tekken, i mean i've played them and not half bad i like paul phoenix but i think SF, MK, & snk fighters are better.

im sure i'll play it for a while though.. im in the middle of doing work to the house.. so i dont know when i'll get the meat of the project, not to mention the garage is full of 2x4's and osb flooring, but i figure once i got a starting point i'll go from there i have been wanting to make a mame machine for a very long time, and it's always something i had in the back of my head off and on.

i have a pretty good idea of what i want to do.

i mainly like fighters & side scrollers.. especially the 4 player ones.. the more the better (this is why i was looking for a large 4player cab).

i know i want to keep the out side of the cab as arcade as possible.. no admin buttons, or pull out draws, and i dont plan on using free play.. the current idea is to either 1. modify the coin mechs to accept tokens.. or 2. sit a bowl full of quarters out (and hope they dont walk off).. i think plunking a quarter in is part of the "arcade" experience.. and also on free play you tend to just MUSH your way though the game cause credits dont mean anything, i like to set a challenge of sort.. like beat it with 3 dollars or something, i definitely wont be going with a franken panel.

while those give a lot of flexibility i want a clean look, so im gonna aim for quick change of the CP..

i'll start out with a 2player fighter panel.. i was leaning towards 8 button setup.. but i may drop it back to 6; also a 4 player 4 button panel.

figure that should cover 90% of the game i like..

later i'll add specialize panels like maybe a double 8 way or track balls.

anyway i'll make a project page assuming everything goes well with this deal.. i'll have a lot of questions and asking for advice on hammering out the details so dont go anywhere

[RayB]

I used to dump a lot of cash into Tekken and Tekken 2. I preferred it over the other 3D fighters as it's got a good "left/right/left/right" attack system, and Im a fan of "pull back" to block.

[Paul Olson]

Check into the JPAC from Ultimarc. If you use that, it is almost plug and play, and you can keep everything in the cab, just unplug the jamma harness from the jpac and plug in a board if you want to play one. There is actually a little more to it than that, but not much. You can use Soft15Khz with a lot of video cards, and the jpac keeps it from screwing up the monitor before it syncs.

[Beretta]

ya i agree 3d fighter wise it was pretty good i use to play it if for no other reason then the arcade i use to go to had tekken (1) set for 25cent play.. most other games was 50

definitely better then virtua fighter for example, my dad and brother use to love tekken for it's lack of projectile moves (just straight fighting)

anyway for the panels im leaning towards a centronics 50 pin like used for scsi.

the j-pac is nice i like the freqz block on it, but it's 60 bucks and will leave me short input wise.. i figure im gonna need a ipac 4.. even 52 inputs will be cutting it short, but i think i can get it to work with the shift function.. thats one of the things i'll be asking about later.

it would be nice if someone made a board cheaply that could JUST filter high freqz...

but i dont know of any so ya i was looking at soft-15khz by all accounts it's great..

to control the monitor im thinking a relay wired to the printer port.. i had read that having a arcade monitor on without a signal can hurt them, other wise i'd just run a relay from the power supplies 12v and have it come on with the computer and use the 2nd video card trick that was mentioned in the soft-15 thread.

the idea would be to write a script (hoping i can get away with this with something like autoit), to check the fresh rate every 100-200ms, if correct it would set a bit on the lpt port high and trigger the relay to turn the monitor on.

like wise if by some mistake the refresh was to high it would set the a bit low and disengage the relay.. there by turning the monitor off.. if you run such a script to tight a loop it will eat cpu time like no one's business.. im thinking 100 or 200ms would be a good cycle rate and hopefully avoid any dmg a monitor might incur from a high refresh.

thats the plan anyway but like i said i'll be asking for more help and advice on hammering out details once i get the cab home and start a project thread.



EDIT: VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION!

for transportation.. is it ok to lay them on their back? or should they be transported upright?

gonna leave in about 2 hours.

[SithMaster]

If you lay it on its back make sure nothing inside is loose.

[Beretta]

ok it's mine
things ran late.. got back home around 1:30 - 2am, had to clear a spot in garage it's a mess and full of wood.

finally got a spot clear and put the cabinet back together around 2:30.. me and my brother played with it for about 20-30mins.. im actually fixing up my dad's house or i'd put it in the house, but right now it's missing roughly half it's floors, hence the garage full of wood.

anyway to tired to take pic's most of them would'nt be any better then what the seller took..

well the good news is it made the trip just fine, it works.

the bad news is it has some problems.

1. the screen did have some burn in.. it is very lite, i did not notice it till after we got it out in the daylight.. it's mostly the timer area.. although you can see a very faint outline of the health bars, i'll need to do some more testing to see if it's gonna be a big enough deal to swap it out.. im hoping not it's not very noticeable when it's off but it might be one of those things that naggs at you even though my mom nor my brother seemed to notice until i pointed it out to them.

2. it looks like it has some convergence problems.. it's off slightly i believe but it has this is adjustable is'nt it?

3. it has 2 dark lines on the left side of the screen, these are faint but clearly noticeable.. although again neither my brother or noticed.. that is something i will have to have fixed, this is my first buy and not to knowledgeable but i remember reading that if it has a picture just about anything other then burn in can be fixed or adjusted usually... i'll have to post some pictures to show you exactly what im talking about.

anyone who's owned a trinitron monitor will have an idea of what i mean, but these are vertical on the far left not horizontal.

4. i'll have to take a closer look at the mech's, they looks clean and they accepted quarters i put in them.. no jams, and they went in the coin bucket.. however i did'nt hear any sound.. the game was on free play but in mame it still makes a sound when a quarter is inserted.. this should'nt be a serious problem either way

5. another non serious problem.. the p2 start is stuck in the pressed position.. , the p1 joystick has a lot of slop in it.

not a big deal joystick and buttons are cheap and these wont be used on this cabinet anyway also all the terminals are soldiered instead of QD.

6. the t-molding has a few nails in it.. why they would put nails in it is beyond me.. but i'll be changing the color anyway.. im leaning towards red t-molding and sticking with black cabinet... but i like green so thats also a possibility.

7. i believe most back doors are locked with a barrel lock correct?
this one looked like it had one at one time.. but the wood was damaged at the where such a lock would be, they've covered up the dmged area with a metal plate.

instead as a replacement they've used the type of lock you'ed find on sheds and chests.
that had to be removed for transport since it was transported on it's back (which worked great btw, very sold ride), im hoping to repair it enough to put another barrel lock on the back door.

i'll get the particulars of the cabinet in a few days when i have time to go over it better, and really take my time checking the coin doors out specifically.

i also need to bone up on monitor adjustments and basic repair.. i tried to work on a computer monitor once and got zapped, nothing serious just enough to ruin your pants... it was my fault but they scare me now.

one piece of bad news not cabinet related is my brother told me the garage likes to flood if we get a lot of rain.. i put a tarp down on the floor but i hope i don thave to leave it in there to long.

on the bright side the cabinet it self looks to be in very good shape.. it has some scratches and a few chips here and there but no water dmg no mushrooming.. it all seems solid.. and heavy as hell i might add.

i'd like to look into adding some sort of whell or coasters to it.. it has legs but OMG it's hard to move with them on.

also i budgeted about 90 bucks for gas.. my uncle told me the truck got 8-10mpg, actually it does eat that in city but on the high way it ran very well.. if i had'nt got turned around and spent 20 mins driving around in the city i could have probably made the whole trip on a tank of gas.. long story short i only spent 46 bucks on gas.. so roughly only half.

grand total for the machine+gas+taco bell was about 205.. so i dont think it was to bad even if the monitor has some lit burn in.. although that assuming i can work out the other to problems with it mentioned.

i'll be making a project page tomorrow

[Paul Olson]

I think you will be ok with the monitor burn for a while. It will annoy you, but you will be able to live with it. I have had mine for 6 years now, and haven't managed to replace it yet. You will probably need to do a cap kit on the monitor to get it looking really nice. You can work up to that though if you are still nervous. It is not a big deal after you have done it once, but most people are nervous about doing it the first time.

You didn't spend a lot on the cab, so you did pretty well. enjoy it! Spend a lot of time reading the forums and the wiki, there is a ton of info here.

Paul

[smalltownguy]

Sounds like a fun trip! I'll be looking forward to more information in your project thread.

FYI: do a quick You Tube search for convergence adjustment on a monitor, and you'll see a few useful videos.

Or just click this

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYB1L8AIeq4[/youtube] 

[Beretta]

ok i was able to spend some time last night checking it out a little better.
it's mostly good news i'd say.. the 2nd player start i got fixed, dunno what was wrong with it, but i removed the switch, tapped the button a few times and it freed it self up, stuck switch back on and it seems to work ok now, not that a 2 dollar button really matters but it's nice to have it working now.

album: http://tinypic.com/a/x5c3/3

below is some pictures i took.. it's a lot i know this is only about a 3rd of what i took.

below is the CP, it's actually in pretty good shape.. has nice overlay and the plexi? or what ever is in great shape.. needs cleaned but not a lot of scratches still pretty clear and no cracks.. the buttons on the panel are at a angle and to far apart.. otherwise i'd be tempted to just use this as a base for my 2p fighter panel.. shame.

1p joy stick is messed up has a lot of play.. i have not removed it yet because it's soldiered, i may take it out and switch 2p controls over to 1p so i can still do tests.
using the switch test it seems U,L,R all work and return center, down however does'nt always return and sometimes gets stuck in the down position.. it's as if there is no spring power to center the joy stick once you hit down, again not a big deal i will not be using these for my CP's but it's always nice to get them working for later on in a pinch.

btw can anyone identify the joystick? im not sure what kind it is.. i know these are'nt a lot to go on, would be marked if i unscrewed it? im curious what brand/model it is.





here you can see the burn in, it's actually quite lite in person even on lightly colored back grounds it's not to bad, hardly even noticeable unless you're looking for it, it's pretty high up on the monitor & you're usually looking at center, i think i can probably live with it.. at least until i can 1. save up for a new one or 2. find a good deal on a nice used one..

also check out the freaky error in the picture.. im thinking it's the cameras flash? i dunno but it's freaky for sure.




Here we have the convergence test, i suspected it had convergence problems when we powered it up at the sellers location, but i had read that it could be adjusted it did'nt bother me.. i did not know how involved it actually was, anyway the convergence test verifies it has some serious problems here, the horizontal converge is'nt to bad, you can see some slight problems (about 1 pixel) on either side, however the vertical converge is truely in need of some help.. it's horribly off.

i noticed the convergence was not uniformly off.. it's worse in the center, the edges it's a little different

Center:
R
G
B

Top Left & Right Corners:
R
G,B

Bottom Left & Right Corners
R,G
B

Im still reading on wiki about monitors but i wont be making any changes until at the very end of the project because i plan to use soft-15khz, if i some how blow the monitor up i'd rather do it to it before i put money & time into getting it looking nice.





Here we see some various pictures, color looks good so RGB are still functional on the tube, also a snap of the ver, which is the highest mame supports.. so i suspect this is the last version released, there is a snap of the sound test screen which of all the picutres i took this one shows the dark lines i was talking about the best.. can also see some light/dark bars across the screen on dark pictures such as this one, not sure what the term is for them but it looks like it's lighter and darker.. not uniform, kinda wavy i guess.

can also see the page showing it's up time.. this can be cleared so who knows if thats the TRUE time of the board..

i have a feeling though that this was in the field at one point.. i can't see someone leaving it on 24/7 for almost a year inside their house, and the coin counter is crazy high.

free play is pretty low and this is what it was set to when i bought it.. in which case it was played very little after the seller received it (he said about a year ago off a buddy)





Interesting that it would havea  namco sticker on the back.. im 99.9% sure this is a konami 4player cab (either tmnt or punkshot), is it standard practice to put sticks on the back for conversions?


can see where the lock off.. it was ugly and i could'nt transport on it's back with it sticking out.


can see here where the barrel lock was damged.. my guess is they bought the machine without key's an did a rather poor job of break into the cab.. they should have tried to drill the lock out instead they used the brute force method the cab paid the price.

i hope to try and put a barrel lock back in it, can see the tape i used to hold the door shut during transit (i did'nt want teh door to flop around on us when moving it and also was afraid it would come loose and damage the tube, it is EXTREMLY close to the cabinet back door, i simply cut it to get inside after i got it home.. was afraid to peal it off without the use of a blow dryer to help heat it up.


Here's some shots of the monitor, it was on so i payed extra attention to not touch anything.

im still reading about monitors but i know enough that this is the rings for the convergence adjustment.. it looks like the expoxy is still on it..


so the tube is a zenith, it's thick with dust, i was afraid to touch it, it says jan 7th, 90 (1990), 4th shift.

which puts it right around punk shot and tmnt, i would guess this is the original tube, makes you wonder how many miles are on it huh?

how long do this things last anyway? it's nearly 20 years old!, that got me to thinking.. with the move to flat crt's and then to LCD/plasma, is there any danger of running out of spare monitors? 10 years from now will it even be possible to get a traditional standard res round crt?


here's a shot of the model number sticker, so it's a WG which i guess is good thing because they seem to have a reputation for making good monitors.


here's some shot of the chassis, it was mentioned it should probably have it's capacitors changed, are the solid state capacitors worth the extra money? they're suppose to last a lot longer.



heres a shot of the "yoke" if i have terminology correct

tube marking

on the right side of the monitors frame (look from back of cabinet) here's a little diagram of the controls


top of the cabinet, oddly the vents are not the same size, left one is 135mm, the right one is 132mm.. odd.. roughly 300mm from end to end.
i have plans to add at least 1 exhaust fan, i was thinking of 250mm but that still would'nt replace the vents completely.. now im thinking perhaps 120mm x2.. i have'nt decided yet, but im gonna be using a hefty cpu.. probably amd phenom ii x2 550.. OC'ed to about 3.6/3.7ghz.. or possibly a 5200e oc'ed to 3.2+ghz either way i wanna make sure i can get the heat out of the cab.


here we see the bottom of the cab, what i wanna do is  put a shelf on teh left side, and a slide out draw on teh right, under which will be the speakers sub woofer, on teh slide out i'll put the computers mother board, on the left side that will have a fixed shelf i'll put the ipac, power supply, and any terminal blocks.. this way you can swap the mother board out easily while leaving the rest of the cabinet intact, should make upgrading the computer fairly simply and easy, being the cheap skate that i am i'll probably hold of untill near the end to do because i'll just wait till i see a old computer desk someone has thrown out and take the rails off it rather then buying them.



shot of the pcb, i wont be leaving it in the cab, i plan on taking anything not essential out, since this wil be a straight "mame" cab.


shots of the coin mech, i had more time last night to play with them, it's mostly good news.

cosmetically inside and out the coin door and mech's are in good shape, i plunked some quarters in each of the 4, they all ran smoothly, there is however a problem with the coin switch on #1 and 3 slot..

#1 i think is just worn out.. electrically it is sound, however the return spring on it i think is weak.. the arm goes down but does not always return to the up position.

#3 works and returns, however it's arm has somehow been bent outward, so it's arm does not even sit below where the coin drops out of the mech.. i should be able to remove the switch and bend the arm back into place.

the right coin/cash door swings like butter.

the left cash door swings find as well.. however the left coin door is off some how.. it will shut but it does not do so smoothly.. it has a bit of friction when the door meets the frame.. i could'nt figure out why this was happening.. i will leave that for later since it's not essential and the door does close just not smoothly.. the frame and door did not look bent to me so it's a real melon scratcher.

these do not have any coin lock out, this is a pitty because i had plans to wire those up and although i dont know anyway to get them to function in mame like a real machine would i was gonna wire it to the power supply so at least it would'nt eat quarters when it's off.

but we can't have everything i suppose.