Leave'm on or pull the plug???

[gooze]

hey everyone,
  stupid question....  i just started collecting and restoring the old school arcade machines and i'm not sure if i should just leave them plugged in all the time or just plug them in when we play them.  Any advice???

[Mauzy]

Ah yes. The never ending debate. I see this is your first post, so welcome to the forum!

I would say that leaving them on during the day time and turning them off at night would be fine. Thats what I do. I have a dedicated wall switch hidden in a closet that is wired to the outletsmy games are plugged into. One switch controls them all. They would run fine going 24/7, but that may be a little hard on monitors.

[Kevin Mullins]

Hmmmm ... let's try to keep this simple ... they have power switches for a reason. 

Think of them no different from a television set.
Would you leave that on 24/7 in your house?
There is an electric bill to keep in mind as well.

My $.02 

[ChadTower]

I think you both missed his actual question.

You should be able to leave them plugged in all the time.  Unless you have serious power surge problems in your house it won't hurt them at all.  No reason to unplug them when you're not using them.

[Kevin Mullins]

That's actually how I interpreted it when I first read it through .... but I just assumed he meant "powered up" as that seems to be the more common version of the question.

Even still , the same principal applies .... do you unplug your television after each use? 

I do understand your power surge statement though, we have alot of them out here where I live.

[ChadTower]

Even still , the same principal applies .... do you unplug your television after each use? 

I think more people would if their television cost thousands of dollars like an arcade game did.  That said, these things are heavy duty commercial equipment, and are pretty damn tough.

[Malenko]

I think more people would if their television cost thousands of dollars like an arcade game did.  That said, these things are heavy duty commercial equipment, and are pretty damn tough.

My TV did cost thousands of dollars, I dont unplug it after every use

[Kevin Mullins]

Even still , the same principal applies .... do you unplug your television after each use? 

I think more people would if their television cost thousands of dollars like an arcade game did.  That said, these things are heavy duty commercial equipment, and are pretty damn tough.

Yeah, that's kinda what I'm getting at. Not trying to be an ass-hat or anything.
"They'll be OK left plugged in."
There's definitely more sensitive electronics that need better protection such as PC's and equipment with more sensitive power supplies like a printer we just had that got taken out by a surge.

And if I had a TV that cost me thousands..... damn straight guaranteed it would be plugged into one helluva surge protector.

[Ummon]

Note he said 'leave 'm on', which in all my experience means powered on. I think it was clear he was asking should he do like they do/did in the arcade?  I would echo Kevin and say, not unless you're playing them all day.

[CrazyKongFan]

I turn my DK off, although if I get a really high score or something, I might leave it on a day or two

[Malenko]

FYI my TV is plugged into a surge protector that costs more then my first TV did (first TV was $25 at a yard sale, surge protector was like 89 bux lol)

[Level42]

Ah, we're so lucky with our clean and reliable power here.....I have no surge protectors for anything.

Anyway, I always turn my games off after playing. Occasionaly I leave one on (the one that is in my living room at the monent) when I have visitors so they can play whenever they feel like. Sometimes I just like to look at it

But normaly, off when not using, no need to waste energy and money these days. If you believe that leaving them on 24h is a good idea, look at the burn-in, bad caps etc. etc that these machines have after a number of years in service.

[ChadTower]

My TV did cost thousands of dollars, I dont unplug it after every use

And what's it worth now?  

Maybe you should unplug it.  TVs in recent years have a ridiculously high power supply failure rate.  They are nothing like commercial grade.

BTW, surges are only half the danger.  Power dips are actually more dangerous and your surge protector doesn't have any protection for that.

[Ummon]

BTW, surges are only half the danger.  Power dips are actually more dangerous and your surge protector doesn't have any protection for that.

No, but there are units, at least in pro audio, that do.

[richms]

Mums place frequently gets major power dips - one lasted for several hours when something somewhere lost a connection.

Anyway, the usual problems with that are motors that are directly driven, like fridges and similar. The PC, the TV, the DVD, all kept working, the stereo had issues on 2/3rds voltage, but it has a selector switch and a transformer in it. CFL lights are also fine on low voltage, incandesents get dim.

Really, switching power supplies are very resiliant. You have more of a chance of failure if you are connecting things together of getting a surge in via a coax or phone connection from something else on a different installation.

[RayB]

Turn em off when not in use! Why is this even a debate? You're not running an arcade here. You don't leave your tv and radios running when you're in bed do you? Think of your electrical bill. Think of fire hazards (20+ year old equipment that may have been poorly maintained, hacked up, etc).
 

[Jack Burton]

The way I think of it, is all my equipment has a limited lifespan, no matter how well I take care of it.  The capacitors in my monitor will eventually need replacing, my power supplies and mother boards will fail, and even the fans will wear out. 

Every hour that is spent being on brings my equipment that much closer to failure.

For some things this is not so much an issue, as they are cheap or easy to replace, or they will last almost indefinitely.  But for those things that I mentioned, and I regard PC power supplies with an especially critical eye, this is a very real concern.

I bought several Dell Dimensions years ago.  I distributed them among my friends and family.  All of them have failed except the one that I own.  I believe this was because I turned my computer off at night and during times when I knew I wouldn't use it, like when I left the house.  I think that this conserved the lifespan of the computer.   The rest of my family left them on basically 24/7.  Maybe I'm being overly careful, but I really do love my monitor in my cab, and it would be very tough to replace in the event of failure, so I turn it off when it's not in use.  That includes tripping the switch on the surge protector to off, so I suppose I also unplug my whole setup as well.

[ChadTower]

Actually, on a lot of computer hardware, power cycling is more dangerous than extended runtime.  Turning on and off all the time will wear the parts out faster.  That's why corporations leave all the employee PCs on all night... costs money for power but it's cheaper than dealing with the failure rates that result in turning them all off every night.

[ChadTower]

People have been arguing over this for decades and there's no concrete proof either way.

When I did desktop support we had clear numbers on it.  They were only for our company but we had tried it both ways and failures went up quite a bit on desktops when they were turned off every night.  It wasn't always hardware failures - those numbers included OS failures too.

[Ummon]

I dunno. I've been running mine at least 12 hours a day, then turning it off at night for about four years (it's six years old - the first two years I didn't have it on all the time) and haven't had any hardware of OS issues.

[RayB]

OS failures are due to the "stupid factor" which your average employee roster will be full of. It's people turning off their power bars instead of doing clean shut-downs like you're supposed to.

[bewareofwolfe]

Ah what a question, Arcades especially older ones with non switching power supplies tend to take a lot of juice when left on, Also there is the issue of loosing  your high scores, There are
several kits that offer high score save, free play etc. however these violate twin Galaxy's rules,
So with arcades that do not currently have one of these kits I would add another switch that cuts power to only the marque and monitor to conserve power while still providing power to the board to keep the high scores intact.

[Ginsu Victim]

I always turn mine off when not in use. I might leave it running in the evening, since my wife likes to be able to play without having to wait for it to start up, but it's never on when we're in bed or gone.

[ChadTower]

OS failures are due to the "stupid factor" which your average employee roster will be full of. It's people turning off their power bars instead of doing clean shut-downs like you're supposed to.

We're talking Windows here.  It fails on its own all the time. 

[RayB]

OS failures are due to the "stupid factor" which your average employee roster will be full of. It's people turning off their power bars instead of doing clean shut-downs like you're supposed to.

We're talking Windows here.  It fails on its own all the time. 

Now you're just being a troll.

[Karetaker]

If you leave them on you will burn an image or worsen an already burned imaging on your monitor. Apparently there's arguments for turning them off or leaving them on. If it's my game, I'm turning it off. It's not a business and chances are you won't be playing them everyday. My thinking is in that case even if it takes a greater toll on start up, you will have longer component life in your situation by powering them down.

[Ummon]

High scores aren't that big a deal to me to risk the hardware. Plus, they generally don't take very long to self-test and all. Some later games may take up to a minute - I don't know why - and of course there's the deco system games......but otherwise it isn't long.

[Kevin Mullins]

and of course there's the deco system games......

How many people do you think actually know what those are ?