arcade games, pcb, hardware, restore/repair,

[alexvw]

just a big fan of arcade games mainly fighting games I do like other titles

[alexvw]

I build 2 of then took a little bit of while to gather all parts and research can be done I’ll say for around $400 you build one with desent components

[system11]

I have a couple, one is used for sometimes playing stuff on the TV, the other lives upstairs on my repair bench. I do have all the parts in the garage to build one I designed myself specifically as a full test rig. After getting a custom IO PCB made to fit inside the project stalled because .... you won't believe how expensive simple laser cutting of holes in sheet metal is.

I'd recommend one of the better ones made in Japan or places like Jasens Customs, the cheap stuff is exactly what it looks like. It's that or build your own, they're conceptually very simple - my first was a power supply and bundles of wire in a plastic cake box.

[Gravey]

Anyone here have a supergun? That is something I really wanted to build at one time and never got around to actually doing it.

Something like a supergun is just about all I can see keeping arcade hardware working at all in the long run. Tons of people are now gutting good arcade cabs to build MAME machines at an alarming rate, so it isn't hard to imagine how that supply will dwindle with time. The fact that many were made of EDF, or something like it, and fall apart with water damage has done a lot to kill most machines I find in the wild. Leaky barns are the enemy of golden age fans the world over. Getting a working monitor or finding someone that knows how to repair one might just be the final nail in original machine extinction.

[TenaciousJ728]

A low start I suppose, but a start nonetheless. I will probably persue the legit RayForce PCB soon enough now that I've a cozy arcade setup. Let it be known I'm looking to buy.

[system11]

Not really a fan of them. It's ethically no different to all the Chinese multigame bootleggers.

[TenaciousJ728]

Are you aware that the Rayforce is a bootleg (conversion)? I hope it didn't cost too much. Rayforce was never released in cartridge form for that type of F3 motherboard.

Nice catch! Yes, this is one of those conversion carts. And yes, it really did cost a more than I was willing to spend but it was the most readily available. I just wanted to play the game on the F3 as I'm also looking into getting Darksoft's F3 Multi, though I'm sure there's a whole backlog of buyers for it at the moment.

[system11]

It's in the photo behind the monitor.

[Yoshi]

Are you aware that the Rayforce is a bootleg (conversion)? I hope it didn't cost too much. Rayforce was never released in cartridge form for that type of F3 motherboard.

I'm hoping that he just used "motherboard" instead of "PCB" and that he really has the dedicated version.

[system11]

Are you aware that the Rayforce is a bootleg (conversion)? I hope it didn't cost too much. Rayforce was never released in cartridge form for that type of F3 motherboard.

[TenaciousJ728]

I've only a light interest but arcades have always been novel and offer an awesome gaming experience. Unfortunately, a full arcade cab is a no-go as I live in an apartment with very little room to myself. Though if I had to choose a cab to keep, it'd be the Taito Egret 2. It seems a little odd to work with on the cabling side but I love that the CRT in the cab can rotate with seemingly little effort! Incredibly convenient as I've heard such task can be a two-person job!

Anyway, if I wanted to buy arcade hardware, I'd have to settle with a consolized arcade rigs or a Control Box/Supergun. And so I did!

Prices were outrageous for it but I absolutely wanted to have RayForce. Along with a handful of other things including the RayForce's Taito F3 motherboard, the Boardmaster supergun, the OSSC, a line-in converter, and a proprietary SCART cable, which it jacked the budget way up at the fault of personal preference. If you look at the attached images though, I think it paid off: I play the game regularly (fully engrosed but I fail at the game most of the time), feels like an authentic experience all around though the rig clearly isn't, good times are had!

...though when I entered the scene, I knew nothing at all going in, just the game I wanted. I initially didn't know superguns/control boxes existed so I didn't think the idea would be viable at all. So please, please, PLEASE do your extensive research before sinking any money in on an arcade project! Figure out what you want, how you want it, what you need to make it happen. The scene has evolved plentifully along with the console gaming scene. Maybe you want to get SNES, Genesis, Neo Geo controller input, or even Dualshock 3, or Xbox 360. Maybe you want component/HDMI video output to TV akin to modern game consoles. Maybe you wanna take a cab and play modern arcade-style games or any game on it. There's a whole rainbow of variability out there!

[system11]

Ok here's the thing. With any electronic component not only is there an invisible factor in terms of how long it has been powered on in the past, but also heat/cool cycles which affect components and the PCB itself. You can play a game, turn it off and put it on the shelf, and 3 months later it's dead. It just happens. Either something failed on the power up, something failed during the previous use which only affects boot time (more common than you'd think - power on reset circuits), or something failed as it cooled down. Environmental factors can also play a massive part - for example general corrosion attacking tracks, solder joins and in severe cases working it's way up inside the case of components due to poor plating. Most owners in my experience do not have the technical knowledge or eye for detail to spot when something is wrong until it affects function, a huge number are reluctant to do the simple basics like owning a multimeter to check the voltage is correct and some will make attempted repairs without any logic applied to what or why they're doing it. Hey we've all been there, learn on something valueless like broken bootlegs. People store them incorrectly, and handle them incorrectly too. All of the things I've just mentioned are common in the 'legit' arcade community.

There's no such thing as a safe PCB - and counter intuitively, it's not necessarily age related. I have a Space Invaders PCB, it's about the oldest thing I own and it needed extensive repairs when I picked it up due to a shorted component among other things. However it was very fixable because it's fairly simple in design and uses components which are mostly still easy to find. 2 years ago I was sent a Deathsmiles Megal Black Label PCB to take a look at. Very new compared to everything else, the graphics custom was toast. You can't just get one of those and even if you could, it requires very specialist equipment to fit due to being a BGA part. There are numerous impossible to replace parts on the majority of games which people find collectable now - that's why I have a Battle Bakraid which exhibits text corruption unless the voltage is 4.5v or less, the only way to get one is to find a broken board which isn't selling for over $300 and happens to have a working instance of the custom part.

And yeah - monitors are a PITA. That's why I bought a small number of them a few years ago when a friend bought out the remaining Wells Gardner stock. Mechanical parts I find less of a worry - put it this way, if you have ONE part which can be measured, then if you're willing to pay it can be recreated. I had new rollers fabricated for a crazy Sidam trackball in their Missile Command clone some years ago - it wasn't cheap but it was fairly straight forward to have made. Nobody is going to make a new set of the custom IO chip on Taito F2 boards which likes to blow up - the diagrams aren't available even if you could afford to get a chip fabrication plant to make a minimum run of 1000 or so.

It's fair to say many of these issues affect vintage consoles - but those were made in such high numbers that it's not really a huge concern, an average large PCB run is in the low thousands, but many have far fewer examples - there's less than 50 Super Locomotive boards which exist.

[GutsGodhand]

Good to see people interested in this, although I advise new people to go nowhere near original arcade hardware these days on a reliability/price basis.

I think it really depends on where you go. If you're part of a legit "arcade restoration" community, you can be pretty safe. Just stick to buying stuff through a reputable seller with high ratings thats been in the community for a while. Do research, learn what you're buying before you commit.

CPS2 boards for example. There's a lot of guys online now that repair the self-destruct batteries and make them safe and last even longer. I'd say really...monitors and games that had a lot of mechanical parts are probably the most difficult to upkeep. Unless you're an electrical god and a machine fabricator....you're gonna have a hard time. I know when my 2 monitors go, that's gonna be it. So I've gotta figure out a way to keep these monitors living as long as possible, while trying to find an alternative. LCD's just don't look right to me. But 100% working monitors are just hard to find, and SUPER expensive. I wish there was still a company out there that made them.

[Verac]

I bought the street fighter II cabinet and i must say it's pretty solid. I don't know about switching out the guts, but I've seen some youtubers get it done.

[system11]

Good to see people interested in this, although I advise new people to go nowhere near original arcade hardware these days on a reliability/price basis.

I have about 750 PCBs not counting the boxes of dead ones used for parts salvage, I repair PCBs and machines (including pinball restore until a few years ago - out of that for space reasons atm). I stream PCBs on Twitch from time to time - the intent was to create an archive of real footage but I keep being too lazy to upload them to Youtube before Twitch erases them.

I actually got a temp upload ban and 2x strikes on Youtube for uploading footage of an 'adult' DVD mahjong system. They weren't even searchable, someone went to my blog, saw the NSFW warnings everywhere, watched them and mean spiritedly reported one per day leading to multiple strikes...

And yes, I do dump the ROMs too - member of The Dumping Union.