Arcade Machine Repair

[Womble]

Hi All

A couple of members on another forum I frequent suggested I see if there is any interest from the RG community in an article on my hobby, repairing arcade machine PCBs. Not so much the cabinets themselves as woodwork never was my thing, but the repair of faulty, dead or scrapped arcade machine PCBs. I have been doing it for a few years now and have brought back dozens and dozens of arcade classics from the brink of landfill, from numerous major names, Sega, Data East, Capcom, Taito, Midway etc etc . Mostly I pick them up for buttons on eBay, but I used to do repairs for a local importer who used to bring in crate loads from the states to on sell and others I do as favours for folk on the forums. Its fairly indepth stuff sometimes, have only met a few boards where the fault can be seen by eye, most repairs involve at least the use of an oscilloscope and desolder station but my work seems to get a lot of interest from retro gaming fans even if they dont really follow quite how its done.

Nowadays every board I repair gets a write up with lots of photos and a fair selection of the repairs are now online here...

http://retrocomputermuseum.co.uk/forum/index.php?board=4.0

... feel free to have a browse. Here is a taster of the latest repair...



...that of a very very battered old Sega System 16 PCB running Golden Axe, I though this one would end up in my parts drawer for disassembling, when I got it the board was stone dead, but is now in perfect working order again, and soon on its way to a good home.

It might make an interesting article, its a bit different from most of the content but still on topic I think, its also a bit of an under exposed side of gaming, the last time I can find any print reference to where arcade games go to die is in about 1983 and I could never track down a copy of that.

All the best

Womble!

[resident paul]

Welcome to the forum mate.
Your repairing at arcade boards are legendary.

[woody.cool]

For those who don't know how legendary his skills are, take a look over on the Retro Computer Museum (RCM) forum at the 'Arcade' section.
This chap is a genius with an arcade board and some tools

[roberthazelby]

I've never seen this guy's posts before.

A legend among retro collectors. This guy needs more coverage.

I think his repair logs would make nice short articles in RG. They're well written, and really interesting.

[Antiriad2097]

All good stuff, but sadly RG always shies away from anything too technical, so I'm not holding out my hopes. We haven't even got a regular cab feature, so I can't imagine a board repair one being green lit.

Still, thanks for the links, interesting online reading, I guess it just means the laptop has to come to the loo instead of hard copy.

[roberthazelby]

All good stuff, but sadly RG always shies away from anything too technical, so I'm not holding out my hopes. We haven't even got a regular cab feature, so I can't imagine a board repair one being green lit.

So true

[Womble]

Yeh it always struck me as odd, its like having a motoring magazine that only talks about places to drive or how the cars feel, while refusing to lift the bonnet on any of them.

[FatTrucker]

Its probably more to do with it being an even more niche area of interest. Those of us that own or have used cabs would really enjoy it as a feature but overall considering the mag is aimed at home gamers and gaming its not likely to be that big a winner commercially.

The number of RG readers who have an interest or experience with the back end of arcade machines is probably tiny, so the car mag analogy probably isn't that close, as any car enthusiast will be familiar with and interested in what's under the hood and working with it, the vast majority of gamers don't get any further than pushing a disc or cartridge into a slot though.

It may be though that there's some kind of platform for it online. Have you approached Darran or anyone about perhaps featuring an 'Arcade workshop' area on the main RG website?.

[Antiriad2097]

The number of RG readers who have an interest or experience with the back end of arcade machines is probably tiny, so the car mag analogy probably isn't that close, as any car enthusiast will be familiar with and interested in what's under the hood and working with it, the vast majority of gamers don't get any further than pushing a disc or cartridge into a slot though.

Is that not largely because they're incorrectly perceived as being expensive and hard to maintain, precisly because of the lack of info out there? Its only in recent years I discovered you can pick up a JAMMA cab for a hundred quid or so, otherwise I'd have had one much sooner.

[FatTrucker]

The number of RG readers who have an interest or experience with the back end of arcade machines is probably tiny, so the car mag analogy probably isn't that close, as any car enthusiast will be familiar with and interested in what's under the hood and working with it, the vast majority of gamers don't get any further than pushing a disc or cartridge into a slot though.

Is that not largely because they're incorrectly perceived as being expensive and hard to maintain, precisly because of the lack of info out there? Its only in recent years I discovered you can pick up a JAMMA cab for a hundred quid or so, otherwise I'd have had one much sooner.

No its mostly because they are enormous, and the vast majority of gamers with partners/wives aren't allowed them in the house.

[Alvinedyvane]

Hi Womble, can you help me with a Supersprint???? PLEASE lol!! The machine is struggling to show the race circuit but is all good aaprt from this! Im in the UK and really would appreciate it.
Thanks
Alvin

[psj3809]

Hi Womble, can you help me with a Supersprint???? PLEASE lol!! The machine is struggling to show the race circuit but is all good aaprt from this! Im in the UK and really would appreciate it.
Thanks
Alvin

I think you're better off going to the guys website (mentions it in his first post) and contact him there, this thread is months old so i doubt you'll get a reply that soon