Arcade

Two of our friends came over to visit this weekend, and as I was showing my friend Tim the arcade systems in my garage, Soul Calibur III shut itself off in the middle of starting up with a crackle of static from the speakers followed by the sound of the high speed cooling fan spinning down.  The marquee stayed lit, and it sounded as though the monitor still had power.  This was not a particularly happy thing, but I knew going into this acquisition that I was going to run into problems with these arcade machines because they are a bit old and consequently they will tend to have failures for various reasons.

I also I obtained these arcade machines because I wanted to learn how to repair them.  One of my life goals is to some day own my own video game arcade.  I figure the best way to accomplish this goal is to a) steadily acquire arcade games and b) learn how to repair them, until I can c) open an arcade with a bunch of games to start off and keep acquiring more as finances permit.  Brighid wants to run her own movie theater some day where she could show classic and cult films, so the way I figure both the arcade and theater would do well to compliment each other.  It would be like a museum of entertainment as it was back in the '70s and '80s.

So I got into the internals of Soul Calibur III Saturday night, and found that the system contains a modified Playstation 2 complete with a dongle in the form of a memory card, another 8MB memory card presumably for settings and scores, and a DVD drive holding the game itself.  I had wondered why it took a while for the game to load after the system was turned on, and now I know.  I cracked open the metal shell for this PS2 unit and dusted it out, inspected it for damage and found nothing, reassembled it and then attached it back to the JAMMA board.  Someone had thoughtfully included the manual for a Soul Calibur II arcade system beneath this case, which was also released for the PS2, so I assume the hookups are pretty much identical.  While putting the case back into the cabinet I noticed what appeared to be a connector cable for a stereo speaker (based on the end) and reattached it to a corresponding connector on the JAMMA board after straightening a bent pin.  I was preparing to disassemble the power supply next when I decided I would stop for the night, as it was already after midnight and I was getting tired.

When I got a chance to look again the following day I found a burnt 5A 250V fuse cartridge inside the power supply.  I took a trip to the hardware store and bought a 2-pack of 5A 250V fuse cartridges of matching size, and also got some groceries, so it was getting a bit late by the time I returned.  I recorded the above video while I replaced the fuse, but this time when I switched on the cabinet, I no longer had power to the monitor or marquee, indicating the transformer was no longer delivering power.  Sure enough, I pulled out a scorched 2.5A 250V fuse from the transformer, and also noted that the slot I pulled the fuse from was marked 3A 250V.  Nice.  Someone was lazy.  Hopefully they weren't just intentionally sabotaging the system.

By this time the hardware stores in town were all closed, it being after 10pm on a Sunday, so I waited until after work to pick up a two-pack of 3A 250V fuses and also a two-pack of 1A 250V fuses in order to proactively replace the other fuse in the transformer, and swapped them both out last night.  I flipped on the power switch and the marquee lit up, but nothing else.  I then noticed I had detached the harness cables from the monitor and power supply and reattached them.  I flipped on the power switch and nothing turned on.  Crap.

Turned out the 3A fuse I had just put in was scorched already.  I thought for a while, then remembered the bent pin on the JAMMA board and wondered if it had been bent intentionally.  This arcade cabinet was originally used for a Mortal Kombat II system, and consequently there are a number of other detached and loose cables hanging around everywhere, making a bit of a mess on the inside of this cabinet.  I love the smell on the inside of these machines - there's that certain blended odor of compressed wood mixed with electronics that you can't find anywhere else.  I detached the cable from the JAMMA board that had been previously left unplugged, replaced the 3A fuse with the spare one from the two-pack, and double checked the connections everywhere else inside the cabinet.  I even opened up the Playstation 2 one more time to make sure there were no loose cables touching down somewhere, and verified that all other connectors I had previously detached had been reattached correctly.  I plugged the arcade cabinet back in, flipped the on switch one more time, and heard the monitor click on and saw the marquee light up, but the fan did not start spinning on the PS2 unit.

I flipped the switch back to off, unplugged the arcade machine from the power strip one more time, looked at the power supply again and noticed the 5A fuse looked scorched.  Crap again.

So this is where I'm now at - I do not currently possess a multi-meter but I'd like to acquire a good analog one that will let me test various things including capacitors without losing an arm and a leg in the purchase.   My neighbor Steve has some experience in electrical work and possesses a multimeter, and he's agreed to take a look with me to see if there's something I missed that's obvious.  He's also keen to see the Moon Patrol arcade cabinet in working condition; the last time he stopped by it was still in the scrambled state, and he was the one who recommended disassembling it and cleaning it out.

I need to do some more research on the wiring for this system (I found and downloaded a digital copy of the manual and archived a copy of it here) and on how to find shorts, bad capacitors, etc. on electronics.   Hopefully YouTube has some helpful videos in this department as well.

I'm also reaching a point where I think I will need to further disassemble the system, remove any unecessary leftovers from the old Mortal Kombat II setup (I have no desire to own a Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet from any era, but Brighid would like one, so I'll probably have to cross that bridge at some point down the road), and then trace each of the harness wires and verify they are all in good condition and properly attached.  That's probably going to be a huge project that will have to occur over several days.  I'm hoping that we can just get it running again so I can put that project off for now, but my OCD is already kicking in there, so I know it's gonna bug me at some point to where I'll just HAVE to deal with it ASAP or go crazy.

If anyone cares to contribute advice in the comments section below, please feel free.  You have my thanks in advance.

I was exhausted when I got home last night, and sitting with my youngest watching cartoons on Netflix I almost fell asleep.  One of the neighborhood kids was over playing with our daughters and when it was time for her to go home, we took a walk outside, so that combined with the mug of coffee I had just finished invigorated me enough to motivate me into taking a direct look at the internals of my Moon Patrol arcade cabinet for the first time since it stopped booting correctly.

Part of my reluctance was caused by the knowledge that I did not possess the tools or resources to conduct a proper repair, combined with my lack of knowledge regarding electronics at a more basic level than modular assembled computer components from the late 90s era to the present.  This is a computer type system dating back to 1982, and self-doubt as to my ability to even figure out what was causing the problem was a bit of a deterrent.  This, combined with there being a significant other number of things that always seem to need doing around the house and my ability to distract myself with video games or other time wasters resulted in my putting this repair off for about four months or so.

Last night I put all of that aside; I was determined to figure out what could be causing the problem.  I opened the back access panels and removed the four circuit boards which were all stacked together and connected by vinyl separators.  I pinched the top of each separator to remove each board, and also detached the flat cable connectors from each so they could be individually dusted and inspected for damage.  I was looking for scorch marks, broken contacts and swollen or leaking capacitors.  Strangely, I found none of the above, but I carefully cleaned each board with anti-static compressed air and set it aside.

I also found a power regulator of some kind attached to the bottom of the cabinet, cracked it open to inspect it for damage and also dusted it out.  I also blew off the dust covering what appeared to be the main power supply at the bottom, and found some leftover remnants of what must have been an earlier repair job, cut wires and scorched plastic connectors.

When I put everything back together and turned the game on, not only did it start up correctly, but the picture was brighter, there were more colors and the sound was clearer and louder than I remembered from when I had played it before it stopped working.  It appears that disassembling, cleaning and reassembling was all this system needed.  I still need to replace the bulb in the marquee space because it's on its way out and making a bit of a humming noise.  Eventually I would like to replace the joystick with one that's a bit less jiggly and I also would like to make repairs to the cabinet and repaint it, but that's a project for another day far in the future, when I don't have more pressing things to attend to.