Gremlin's Amateur Arcade Repair Technician Thread

Gremlin

Hi, I'm Gmegbln
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So, about two years ago I found a small, decrepit arcade tucked away in a billiards place. Basically every machine was out of order besides the Neo-Geo, running Puzzle Bobble obviously. One specific out-of-order cab was a game I absolutely would love to have the PCB for even as-is, so I message the place on facebook asking if any of the games were for sale. The owner responds that none are for sale currently and that he wants to repair them himself. Understandable. Fast forward to last week: I took a week off of work and used the opportunity to go through my backlog of arcade PCBs I've been meaning to fix, and this reminds me of the billiards place and its rotting machines. I check in again asking if any progress was made on the machines, and as I'm high off of successfully fixing some shit recently I boldly offer to come by and help him look over and diagnose what's wrong with his machines and try to get them working again, and that I would even do this work in exchange for any loose PCBs he might have in the back or that one game I wanted or whatever.

He tells me to come by around noon and talk about it. I immediately regret it and feel way over my head, but I show up to the place and start talking to the owner. He's an incredibly nice guy and explains that the original tech that used to come out and maintain the games retired, that he has personal attachment to the games and would like to get them going again. We come to an understanding that:
  1. I am not a professional technician; This is just a hobby and a learning experience for me, and I make no guarantees that I can fix EVERY machine
  2. As I am not a professional, I don't feel comfortable accepting money for the work I'm doing.
  3. If I get the other games working, or if they feel that I've made a genuine effort to get them going and repair as much as I'm able to, in exchange of my time I could take home the one game I originally wanted in lieu of money (the "prize"). I offered to just take the board and swap it with some other game to have on the floor as I don't exactly have space for a third arcade cabinet, but he has no interest in swapping and would want the entire cab gone.
  4. I will adjust/calibrate monitors as best as I can, but I will not be doing any actual monitor repair or recaps (I'm not confident enough to do the former on just any ol' monitor and I don't have the spare time for the latter)
  5. I'm not touching the pinball machine (no knowledge + high voltage) and the lightguns/racing game I have no experience with, so don't get your hopes up with those
  6. I'll give him an accurate valuation of anything he does want to sell. This is true - I'm not looking to scam him at all and I'll tell him exactly what something is worth, even if it's something I would be interested in. I won't be referencing ebay prices mind you, but my genuine assessment/feeling on its value based on forum sales or whatever. It's one thing to scoop up something that shows up at an unbelievable price, but only a scumbag would mislead and undervalue something for their own benefit
Thought I'd make a thread to both document my progress towards getting that dangling carrot, and establish now that I miiiiiiight be asking some of you ACTUAL experts some questions soon, if you're willing to help a homie out. I'm mostly excited to play pretend repairman for a couple weekends and get these machines working again, even if I don't meet the owner's threshold or I get conned :)

Here's the target: 9 cabs to repair

20220305_102911.jpg20220305_102923.jpg


Here's the "prize" that I'm hoping to get out of it, stuffed into a terrible condition Jaleco Low-Pro
Blurred out for suspense lol

Couple hints:
  • It's a shmup
  • I valued the PCB at around $450-$600
  • Kinda obscure and hard to price as it doesn't really come up often
20220305_103729 copy.jpg
 

Gremlin

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Day 1: Was only there for a couple hours, would have spent longer but had prior arrangements.

Cab 1: A classic late-stage arcade machine: An MK2, converted to X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, converted again in its twilight years to a 60 in 1 vertical cab:
20220305_103719.jpg

Game ran but the picture was awful and controls were shitty/barely working. Most of buttons had soldered on wires instead of quick connects, ugh. Had a crappy Hantarex Polo monitor in it. The neckboard only had red and blue adjustments but no green pot (?). Adjusted Screen/focus and color bias and improved the image significantly. Owner passed by, saw it and said "Wow!" and said he thought it was fine before but seeing it now it looks like a completely different game. Was a good feeling!

Adjusted monitor, replaced P1 joystick microswitches, replaced P2 start microswitch, cleaned off oxidation of remaining switch connectors (that weren't soldered)

To-do: P1 coin slot accepts coins fine but P2 coin mech rejects the quarter into the chute like 80% of the time when installed. Tried three different mechs and they're all doing it, mechs are plastic and don't seem to have any adjustment and pass coins through fine when not installed so I think the coin door might be bent in a certain way? Strange issue
 
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Gremlin

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Cab 2: Area 51! Owner said that this was by far his favourite game and he played it the most back then. Clearly meant a lot to him.

20220305_103729.jpg

Game didn't run at all. When plugged in, I could hear the high voltage whine from the monitor and there was neck glow, but no picture or audio. Open it up, check PCB JAMMA edge for power - nothing. Check Peter Chou PSU, light is off and fuse next to it is fine so seems like a bad PSU to me. Luckily I brought a spare PSU with me just in case, replaced the with my spare and plugged it in again, still no image but this time some lights on the PCB turn on, so we got power! Blow the dust off the board and look at the LEDs, one is lit and conveniently labelled "TOO LOW" lmbo, if only every game was that helpful. Turn up the 5v until it's about 5.1v, turn it on and the hard drive starts whirring (only just then realized it hadn't been, shit was loud) and the game springs to life. Owner was behind me at this time and it was like a touchdown, we both cheered when we saw it. Screen looked great actually, sounded fine too!

To-do: Replace start buttons (gummy as hell), calibrate guns. Told him that the hard-drive is a ticking time bomb and will be looking into replacing it with a compact flash card or something

Had to pack up and head out right after so didn't get to 100% cross it off the list but I feel good about it!
 
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egg_sanwich

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Sweet thread. I always get goosebumps finding old arcades like that, always some gems hidden in there. My guess on the shmup pcb is Sorcerer Striker, but that lowboy cab is sick as hell too.
 

NERDtendo

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Nice work! I recently was doing the same kind of work. A guy saw that I had an arcade and asked me to come get his games running. He had a Rampage that worked before he moved to his new property and now the sound was bad. Connector came loose on the speaker and on the volume pot PCB. Took about 7 minutes to bring the audio back. He was stoked…and felt dumb at the same time. His other machine had a messed up joystick so we replaced it. I enjoy bringing games back to life even if I don’t get to take them home with me.

I look forward to reading your updates!
 

Gremlin

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Day 2/3 (Combined since day 2 was a short day):

- Owner begged me to turn the volume down on the 60 in 1. Normal game volume was ok for most games but some of the attract screens on others was so loud and obnoxious. Still haven't figured out the coin issue but I'm like 80% sure I have to take a hammer to the coin door to make it level
- Went back to the Area 51, calibrated guns, replaced microswitches and it's "Done", minus some strange monitor "interference" that I can't figure out. The image is perfectly stable, it's just kind of a moire pattern across the entire screen, like a grounding issue. Confirmed metal parts of cab and monitor frame are all grounded correctly. Ground pin is connected to FG on PSU, but I noticed FG and Logic ground are tied together on the monitor chassis itself. Noisy PSU maybe? I did replace the old one with one of those cheap $20 PSUs

QUESTION: Is field ground supposed to be tied to video ground? I noticed that the chassis itself is bridging the video ground signal to the frame and thus the entire ground loop. Figure this might be causing the interference but the video ground pin on the chassis is connected to frame ground, so is this intentional?
 
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Gremlin

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20220305_103759.jpg

THE BELOVED TALL BOY: A grimy as hell Neo Geo cab. Despite being a 4 slot cab, its only got a 1 slot board inside with Bust a Move Again in it. Despite its appearance it just needs some TLC really, half the buttons didn't work and the monitor's green is failing hard. I tried as best as I could to calibrate the colors but it didn't improve much at all. Needs a recap, badly. Was really trying not to get into monitor work but I think I'll end up doing it out of pity by the end of the journey, it annoys the hell out of me everytime I see how shitty the image quality is

Fixed on Day 2: Adjusted image as much as humanly possible, cleaned jammed P2 coin slot, cleaned mud(?) out of remaining buttons, replaced microswitches. "Done"(???)

Come in on Day 3, noticed there were two credits on the Neo-Geo. Felt really good that people are actually playing these, but then realized that if there were two credits in the machine, then someone put in money and they didn't actually play the game. Sure enough, the P1 start button wasn't working. Sad! Last asshole soldered the P1 wires directly to microswitch, and worked when I left but it was so intermittent that I said fuck it and clipped them and crimped real disconnects like it should of been. NOW it's done(???)
 
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Gremlin

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20220305_103804.jpg

Another late-arcade special: SEGA Spiderman converted to a Golden Tee. Image was extremely dim and out of focus, but otherwise game worked. Some cocksuck smashed the coin mechanisms. Adjusted the picture as best I could and confirmed everything else was functional. Fixed the coin door situation as best I could, need to get a couple replacement shoots but it's much better now. Done!
 

Gremlin

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20220305_103733.jpg

STRIKERS 1945 II in a Dynamo: Hell yeah! Owner wanted at least one "flying game" on the floor, and since I'm keeping the other one then it's important this one comes back to life. The Taito monitor surround is really cool - don't know where it's from but my money would be that it used to be a Taito "Cybercore" cab (aka Taito F3). On powering up the game boots and I hear plane whirring, but unfortunately the monitor goes immediately into high voltage shutdown, so it needs monitor work.

Even though the original stipulation was that I wouldn't be doing any monitor stuff, I've come to really take a liking to the owner, neither of us are in a rush and it's a k7000 so it's as repairable as monitors get these days. So, alas, I ripped out the screen and took it home, and I'll be poking at it over the weekend. Strikers deserves better than a shitty LCD conversion.

BONUS: When I opened the cabinet up to check voltages, sitting at the bottom of the cab I noticed something with a familiar 90s-ass pattern on it surrounded by an massive carpet of stray quarters (Strikers is a fuckin hit!!!). Dug in and found this guy hiding out for decades:

20220313_164438.jpg

Unused SF2 sideart. Owner said I could keep it. Cleaned up extremely nicely, plan on framing it :)
 

Gremlin

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Rest of Day 3: Fumbling unsuccessfully trying to open up the San Fran Rush's monitor surround (had a manual downloaded on my PC but couldn't for the life of me find it on my phone while there). One side works but image reeks and the wheel isn't responding, other side doesn't boot at all. Also checked the rats nest of wires on the three 31" cabinets and made a list of molex connectors I need to pick up. The easy stuff is definitely out of the way but I'm over halfway to my goal so there's that at least

Been talking to the owner a lot about the place's history - apparently it used to be massive and almost 50% arcades, but as the years went on the arcade part shrank down while the billiards area expanded to what it is now. Because its existed so long there are arcade boards and parts kicking around literally all over the place, so he plans to start pulling out all of the boxes with PCBs and let me sift through and scoop what I'm interested in and price out the remainder, as he's now realizing that these games are literally just rotting away and should be sent to greener pastures

A perfect example of these games rotting: this guy was sitting on top of the beer kegs in the back, I knew instantly that it'd be a crime scene inside and is junk, he said I could have it anyway if I wanted. Saw a couple more of these blue shells poking out of the corner and I assume they're all going to be this bad, but hey, the A board is in perfect working condition and after a good cleaning and a lil' phoenixing I actually got the B board to boot with graphical issues, so it might be salvagable after all. Someday, when I'm really, really bored :)
 

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egg_sanwich

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Solid updates, congrats on the progress so far. Dude is lucky to have found you.

Now for the love of god tell us what's in the lowboy cab.
 

Gremlin

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Solid updates, congrats on the progress so far. Dude is lucky to have found you.

Now for the love of god tell us what's in the lowboy cab.

Last hint: I intentionally blurred the control panel, even though there's no artwork and it's using standard joysticks and buttons :cool:

Spoiler:
You can still see the panel in one of my pics, and if you're aware of the game then it should make it pretty obvious :lolz:
 

egg_sanwich

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Last hint: I intentionally blurred the control panel, even though there's no artwork and it's using standard joysticks and buttons :cool:

Spoiler:
You can still see the panel in one of my pics, and if you're aware of the game then it should make it pretty obvious :lolz:
Looks like a Neo Geo layout, my guess is Pulstar?

I demand this thread be updated!
I concur!
 

Gremlin

Hi, I'm Gmegbln
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Haha, personal life's been mega busy the last couple months but I've still been going back on and off periodically. A bunch of days combined, I forget how many:

Strikers 1945 II:
1655771684385.png

It lives! As previously mentioned the 2500k needed lots of work, and like a stupid dumb bitch I volunteered myself to do it even though the line I didn't want to cross was monitor work. Tons of burnt traces patched up, HOT replaced and entire board recapped. Unfortunately the tube seems like its on its last legs - colors bloom together like mad and blinking lights affect the entire screen, and I can't calibrate it out at all for the life of me. I wish I had a CRT rejuvenator cause it needs to be "cleaned" so bad, but alas I do not so it's as good as I can make it unfortunately.

Also had to replace the sticky-ass buttons and stick, and I also rewired the coin switch cause of something only I, a true connoisseur of the arts, would notice - the game would always just stay on the "Insert coin" screen and never play the dope-ass attract mode. So while trying to figure out why I realized the coin slots were wired together in a way that made one side ON by default and a coin passing through would toggle it off instead of on for a moment. This didn't affect coining up and playing the game at all, it seemed to account for this and would only add a credit on the actual toggle and not just it being on, but interestingly enough it seemed to disable the attract mode completely. Happy I fixed it 'cause now I get to hear the sweet sweet sounds of shmuppin' as I work on the rest of the machines. It's done!
 

Gremlin

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1655772971484.png

RUSH!
This machine has been a real ballache.
Left side turns on but steering barely works, the motor doesn't work at all and image is incredibly dim and poor
Right side didn't turn on.

Concentrated on the left side first, figured out how to open it and check out its guts.
Turns out, the image isn't actually that dim at all, there's just a quarter inch of dust fuckin' caked on the inside of the machine.
When the owner saw the monitor surround propped up like a car hood and me scrubbing the inside he said he never once saw the previous tech he had for decades ever open it up that way and clean the monitor, and he didn't even know it could do that. With the amount of dust there was it's incredibly easy to believe it's never been cleaned once in 20 years.
After cleaning it's much "brighter" but it's missing the color green completely. Monitor is a 27" "Neotec" with no online resources or service manual I can find. Might take a stab at fixing it at the very end.
Never played much rush in arcades but with the way the steering was working I concluded that it was "unresponsive" when the motor was supposed to be affecting the wheel, so I hoped the steering motor board held all the problems. Sure enough, 2/3 fuses on it were burnt out. There were extra fuses in the manual bag so I popped those in and they instantly popped. Cool.
Brought the board home with me to look for obvious issues and it turns out it's a not uncommon issue with a certain transistor on there that costs like $40 by itself, and it might need two of them. Yowza! But I then had a brain blast that I saw a board that looked almost exactly like it in the owner's office and sure enough, the next time I was there we found a NOS one. Popped that in and steering was all gravy. Left side is now good minus missing green.
Right side, the PSU wasn't lighting up initially but after cleaning off crud and reseating connectors I got it booting up. Monitor worked! But now it's missing the color red completely! What the fuck's up with these two lol.
Besides the monitor the right side's working completely, but the fan on the PSU wasn't spinning at all. Pulled out the PSUs of both sides and are going to service them so that they last another 10 years hopefully.
So at the moment the game's mostly "done", just future-proofing the PSUs and maybe poking the chassis at the very end
 
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Gremlin

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What I "finished" today:

1655774177118.png

The trifecta of weird Italian bullshit: three pedestal-style cabs that I can't identify with 32? inch tubes. Games are Police trainer, Extreme Hunting and Tekken Tag Tournament. I wasn't going to do these at the beginning but I really like the owner so I thought I'd take a look.
Extreme Hunting was missing the monitor completely (owner said the previous tech took the chassis to repair it and he never saw him again lol).
So discussing options with the owner we decided that we'd move the CRT from Tekken to Hunting as lightguns need tubes and they were always more popular sadly. The "controls" and the monitor can be separated with Molex connectors on both sides. The monitor ISO, PSU and game PCB are all in the "control" section with the monitor side just holding the screen.

Anyway, I start opening these things up and my first discovery with police trainer is that it's a 220v ONLY monitor. We're in Canuckastan, we use 120v. Extremely confused, I open the control side and find a MASSIVE ISO from Italy that's wired to spit out 220v instead of 120v (I didn't even know you could use an ISO as a step-up transformer in that way) and the inside of the cab was fuckin hacked to shit and scary as hell - there were spliced-in diodes in random spots, in-line fuse holders, the works. Extreme Hunting sans monitor was exactly the same - the ISO and PSU was 220v and super sketchy. Tekken was the complete opposite - the wiring inside was super clean, sensible and wired for 120v with a conventional ISO. I told the owner I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the 240v games - I don't understand what the previous tech did to the machine, I'm completely out of my element and I do not want to be responsible for anything bursting into flames. What I DID do, however, is convert the Tekken cab with US monitor to Extreme Hunting - out of the three, it was the one the owner wanted to have working again the most. Control sections were swapped, I removed all of the scary Italian bullshit and traced/rewired the internals completely and replacing and re-crimping 6-pin Molex interconnects on each side. Ended up being a ton of work to do but I now feel confident that we have one game that is wired correctly and is safe, with every metal part of the cabinet grounded. The other two cabs will prolly be harvested of the PCBs/buttons/guns and the rest scrapped.
Unfortunately don't have a picture of the end results yet but Extreme Hunting is working, just need to degauss the monitor and clean/calibrate the guns. Next time this should be done!
 

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Gremlin

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Worked on a pinball machine for the first time ever!

1655776024585.png

Cue-Ball Wizard

Interesting game - he sold the rest of his pinball machines but kept this one cause it's a billiards place, obviously.
Took me way too long to find the power switch but eventually got to poking at it (while off obviously - shit's high voltage!)
Unfortunately it looks like it has a lot of quirks - right flipper is a different model coil than the left and incredibly weak, multiball isn't launching all the balls, the ramp doesn't register at all (it's like the only important shot in the game lol), half the lamps don't light up, various targets don't register hits, rotted rubbers and a bajillion plastics on the game's are loose, missing screws etc. One of the posts on the left kicker was missing its original screw completely and it looks like the last guy just tried to slap in whatever hardware store shit he could find in his toolbox so it doesn't even sit properly and it broke the plastic at one point.

I will probably be throwing in the towel on this machine, not because I can't or don't want to fix it, but I just don't have the time to be able to restore it completely unfortunately, I'll be moving soon and my time's incredibly limited :(
 

Gremlin

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And that's basically where I'm at to date.
If anyone's keeping tabs, what's left is finishing Rush's PSU recap + take a stab at the monitors, degauss + calibrate monitor and guns on Extreme Hunting, and (not previously mentioned? ) a stand-up Megatouch that needs a new PSU (was wired for ATX already by the last guy, just need to find one that fits lol)
Maybe the pinball machine but that's above my paygrade probably lol.

And then that's it, I've held up my end of the bargain.
I've put in way too much time and sweat at this point that my "payoff" shouldn't be worth it at all at this point, but honestly I have no regrets.
The owner and staff have become genuine friends and I've gotten exposure to machines I'd have never touched otherwise. Learned a ton and have absorbed a lot.

And cause I've tickled the balls for too long, this is what I've been working for:

1655777553833.png

It's the only 6-button shmup ever made, I thought it'd be easy after my hint :keke:

1655777846457.png
 

Neodogg

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So what would you say you gained from this experience? What do you want to do more of and lesser of?
 

Gremlin

Hi, I'm Gmegbln
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So what would you say you gained from this experience? What do you want to do more of and lesser of?

This a summer school assignment? :keke:

Besides copping Daioh (which I don't think I'd have ever been able to swing otherwise) I got to get my mitts on the amusement stuff I've never touched before like light guns and driving games. They were machines I sort of had a loose idea of tackling, but having to actually fix a specific machine is a good excuse to dig up manuals and do the research, learn failure points, general safety etc. Most of the learning came just from the questions I had when looking at the insides and wanting to understand why things were the way they were.

As a whole, I wouldn't say it was a fun experience. I found it really interesting to understand how these things tick but a lot of it was just simple grunt work, basic troubleshooting, inhaling dust and shortening my life expectancy. My "payout" 100% wasn't worth the free labor (although I still get to dig through the loose PCBs in the back...) but it was super rewarding when a machine was running again and honestly, I just like seeing the machines up and running and being enjoyed in a public space. I like knowing there's a Strikers II machine in my city anyone can play right now if they wanted to lol

As for what I like doing, I mostly just like troubleshooting and problem solving a fault.
The worst part is easily monitor work. I don't want to touch CRTs for anyone but myself ever again lol. Recapping isn't the end of the world but it always takes a good chunk of time, and calibrating them is the worst thing ever, I end up spending hours trying to get the brightness and colors looking good but with the age of these tubes I'm rarely happy with how they turn out in the end. I really need to pick up a CRT rejuvenator going forward, though I don't know what a good one would be. New frontiers!
 

Neodogg

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I’ve heard good things about the B&K 467s. This one has gauges for each gun.
 
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