My Williams Moon Patrol arcade cabinet has been repaired and is working better than before

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.