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Looking at the Taito line, I think they just have the best looking candy cabs.
I'm not a fan of the Egret II/3, they're a bit too round for my liking. I'm not a fan of the Astro City for the same reason.
I get why other people like them but they're not for me.

The Egret-29 is "out there" looks wise and the Vewlix has to be the best looking LCD cab on the market I do appreciate that you can see some of the Egret-29's design heritage in the Egret II, and a little bit of the Egret II's design heritage in the Vewlix.

The Egret II also got it's best feature from the 29, which is the monitor rotation mechanism.
 
what plans do you have for repainting/color?
there's no rust at all so I see no reason to strip/repaint it. I'm just going to clean it up and leave the minor chipping/surface scratches as-is. the yellowing bezel will be whitened with retr0brite and I may black paint the taito logos on the speaker backs.

I may have to re-paint the control panel as it's pretty badly faded but we'll see how that looks once the rest of the cab is done.
 
Not a huge update but I finally sourced the plastic tray for the monitor chassis!
MS8_plastic_tray.jpg


You know, a lot of the KLOV guys hate on thearcadeboneyard.com because they strip machines and sell the parts, but I've sourced quite a few "simple" yet somehow impossible to find parts from them.

This particular part I saw attached to a different model Nanao chassis they had for sale and they were more than happy to sell me just the tray.
 
So have you tested the monitor yet? Anytime the chassis is removed from the tube and they're sold separated is a red flag to me.
 
Found a dude locally who has more cabs than he should have (imo :P ). Trying to grab one of his 4 E29s, 6 Grand-Ams, and 4 Cutes.
 
Spent some more time on this today...

I crimped a new Yoke connector (bought this from Arcade Buffett on KLOV)
yoke_connector.jpg


I had to buy some M3x6mm Philips screws to mount the chassis in the cab. The chassis clips into the plastic tray then screws into it with 6 plastic screws, then the M3 screws go through the plastic tray and into threaded holes on the brackets inside the cab. Installing this is really tricky since it's kind of just hanging in place which means you have to hold the chassis in place and at the correct angle with one hand while you put the screws in with the other hand... a magnetic tipped screw driver is a must!

I also discovered, the hard way, that the yoke connector and the input connector really need to be installed BEFORE mounting the chassis in the cab the yoke connector is literally impossible to reach before installation, and the input connector is so difficult to reach I spent a good 15 minutes trying to plug it in because I didn't want to have to pull the chassis back out again (tough I probably should have).

Also a Pro-tip, install the anode cup from the front of the cab. the rotation mechanism makes it nearly impossible to reach from the back, but with the monitor bezel up you can easily reach behind the tube to install it that way. This cab even looks cool with that up.

14701313_1333139036720847_3801761413827919872_n.jpg



Chassis all installed:

ms8_installed.jpg


As tricky as it is to install the chassis it's pretty clever placement. there's no remote board but it's mounted in such a way that all the adjustments can be accessed from the front:
chassis_controls.jpg




While I had the bezel up I noticed the right hand side of the monitor box was dented in ... not sure how I missed this before , a block of wood and a dead blow hammer straightened it right out though.
dent_1.jpg



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So after all that I decided to power up the cab for the first time. For reference there are two power switches, one behind and UNDER the cab and another behind the service door in the front. When I first powered it on I heard a slight sound coming from the power supply and that's it. I assumed that somehow the monitor wasn't getting power since I didn't hear anything or see anything. I decided to check the voltages on the PSU and while I was doing that I heard what sounded like the monitor powering up and looked up just in time to see a white horizontal line (vertical collapse) before it disappeared. I went around back to see if there was any neck glow and discovered the high voltage fuse on the chassis had blown :(

to make matters worse the PSU was outputting 4.9V on the 5V output, 6V on the 12V output and -1.8V on the -5V output.

So my next step will be sourcing a few fuses for that HV line, fixing the PSU and trying again, and if it popps another fuse I'll be sending the chassis out for repair.
 

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here is a Egret for sale, might be interesting for someone

shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=58694
I get "You are not authorised to read this forum."
Try this, the Shmups topic link to this ebay offer;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Taito-Egret...721476?hash=item2cb5446d04:g:2DQAAOSwImRYHj7i

Hi, I am selling my Taito Egret 29 with original monitor on eBay. I don't need to sell on eBay, and to be honest, would prefer to not sell there and should have posted it here first. In any event, if anybody here is interested, I will gladly take the auction down. Cab is in Houston, but can ship anywhere if buyer makes arrangements and payment.


 
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Yeah I saw that eBay listing come up over the weekend. way overpriced for a cab that's been painted black IMO it doesn't even look like the paint is in that great condition. Also missing the marquee and has a plain metal control panel.
 
Yeah, it is a shame and should be repainted in white...
problem is paint is thick, especially when you're covering black over white or white over black and with two heavy coats it's probably ruined the embossed Taito logo on the back of the speakers, not to mention the paint chipping off around the door (which is happening to the black paint right, leaving ugly white chips around the edges).

you could probably strip the paint off the body but paint stripper can eat away the plastic parts the same way it eats away the paint... not a good situation.
 
yeah, that sucks.... :(

How is your resto going? Have you found some parts for the PSU and chassis?
 
PSU is working again, it had some cold solder joints.

I shipped the Chassis to PNL in California last week. I haven't heard from them yet.

Normally I try to fix chassis myself but I found next to no information on the MS8, no schematics, no manuals, no part numbers... I'm not sure why it seemed like a fairly widely used chassis even in US market machines.

PNL's quote was reasonable and they seemed to think they could fix it so we'll see how that goes...

The speakers seem to work great but I haven't checked to see if there is any rot, none of the cab lights work, I'm guessing just dead bulbs. I haven't done anymore cosmetic work yet as I've been per-occupied with other projects and responsibilities.
 
An update... On November 29th I got the Chassis back from PNL. That day we had some pretty serious rain, and UPS in their infinite wisdom left the box not on the covered part of my porch but in my driveway right next to where the water runs off the roof and splashed up onto the box. :(


soggy_chassis.jpg


Thankfully it was double boxed and the inside was still dry. PNL did a great job packing this thing. But a semi-suprise was that they replaced my Flyback with a used flyback. They included my original flyback with a note on it that said "dead" (you can see it sitting to the left in the pic above.

I say this is a semi-surprise because I'd read that the flybacks for the MS8 chassis are no longer available and based on my initial diagnosis of the chassis the flyback was the part that was dead (no high voltage: no high pitched CRT whine, no neck glow).

I've been busy the last couple of weeks but Sunday night a friend helped me get the Egret into the game room before the first big snow storm of the season hit, which is good because it's nearly impossible to clear a path to my back door once the snow starts falling.

So tonight I got the chassis installed. and ITS ALIVE!

monitor_working.jpg



Thats before I started tweaking it, the horizontal and vertical size, pincushion and brightness were all way off (likely because it was tested on a different tube). the colors look vibrant and the picture is crystal clear...

...but there's still a problem.
I'm getting this really bad glitchy wobble in the picture which you can see in the video below.

Any ideas what causes this? I really hope I don't have to send this thing back out.
 
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