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popinadam

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Feb 16, 2017
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Hey Everyone,

This will probably be a fairly large post with photos to show a few of the upgrades and mods I've done to my Lindbergh Universal since I picked it up a few months ago. I will start with the earliest photos I took once I got it home and hooked up.

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The LCD definitely needed to be replaced but everything was functional at least. I searched everywhere for replacement LCD but could not find one at a reasonable price or one that wasn't already on its last leg. The only option at this point was to try and retrofit a new LCD/monitor. My first attempt was a fail. I bought a used 32inch LG Monitor from my local Facebook marketplace for about $70 but destroyed that the first time I tried removing the bezel by cracking the panel. I was definitely upset and felt fairly dumb for breaking it. I ended up finding another used 32inch monitor locally made by ACER. I decided not to remove the bezel this time and do my best to make it fit without major modification.

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Surprisingly the monitor fit and didn't need a ton of work. I gutted the original monitor but kept the top and bottom frame pieces. I marked up and drilled some holes on the back to match up with the vesa mounts on the back and tightened it down with some screws and washers. The hardest part was removing the dust frame on the original monitor back plate since they were riveted on. Other than that just trying to get the monitor perfectly aligned was the second most difficult part. Especially since the monitor has a white bezel I wasn't sure if it would be visible on the front.

The one major issue I ran into was the controls for the monitor. EG: Power button, input select, etc... They were blocked by the monitor frame bezels. The ACER monitor does not have remote controls so I had to decide what to do, either drill an access hole so I can power it on from the outside or find out if it's possible to wire directly to it. Luckily I was able to partially open the frame of the monitor to access the control board and reroute it out the backside of the venting grill. There was an existing hole on the original back panel to route it through as well.

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That covers the biggest hurdles, mounting the lcd and routing the lcd controls. Thankfully the white bezel really wasn't visible at all unless you get up close and look in the edges. I did find out I needed to extend the control board ribbon cable and found some extender board on amazon with some longer cable. For now I taped it to the front of the monitor just for quick access.

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I actually sold my Lindbergh board that came with the cabinet but I did have a Taito X2 to test to make sure everything was working properly. Success!

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On to the next mod. I wanted to try to have everything powered internally if possible. So basically I can just hit the power switch on the outside and everything gets powered on and it only needs one power cable on the outside. I found a power selector switch on Amazon that I thought might work and was pretty inexpensive. The hurdles here would be how to mount it from the inside and wire it directly to the cabinet.

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I'm not an electrician so I did ask for outside help to confirm where to wire it multiple times just to make sure I didn't blow anything or anyone up. I pretty much just chopped the wire plug off the selector and wired it directly to the contractor on the pre existing power supply.

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The mounting wasn't too bad, it did require some dremeling to remove a steel divider plate and drilling a couple mounting holes but nothing crazy. I don't have any photos of what it looked like before but here are the after photos. Luckily there's 4 outlets so there's room for more in the future. Right now it's just the ACER monitor and the X2 that are plugged in.

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That covers all of the custom modifications. The most recent change I did was swap the 1L3B control panel for a 2L12B that I found on YAJ. At the moment I'm pretty happy with the current state of it. There's just a few random bits and pieces I want to pick up in the future to tidy it up but not super important. I do want to get one of those Sega AIME panels to install into it which I started a Wanted thread for. So, if anyone has any questions about anything feel free to ask. If the photos are too small/large I can change that, just let me know.

I am in NO way an expert at this stuff. It was all trial and error.

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nice work, I am planning to upgrade my old monitor, so I am very happy to see others have managed it.
 
nice work, I am planning to upgrade my old monitor, so I am very happy to see others have managed it.
Thanks, I was legitimately worried I would not find something to replace it with. I would have liked to just slap an original LCD back in there and be done with it but it's nearly impossible to find them. Thankfully I happened to find a monitor for cheap that was pretty much thin enough to squeeze into the frame. It was really a tight fit though.
 
Thanks for sharing your experience so far. There was another thread somewhere showing an LG monitor install that was a perfect fit. He had the same issue and had to reroute the settings buttons. Good job on the power switch too. It’s time consuming and a bit of work to commit to getting these things done. I’ll be posting my Lindbergh cabinet restore as soon as I get all the bits I need. I’m going down the PS3 path to use it with all the PS3/4 fighting games. I’ve made a (modified a noir) custom panel to have all the PS3/4 buttons mapped to the controller through a Brook UF board. My monitor is okay but I might change that down the track. Attached is a preview of what I’m going for. Buttons are just resting there. I’m awaiting artwork for it.
 

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Thanks for sharing your experience so far. There was another thread somewhere showing an LG monitor install that was a perfect fit. He had the same issue and had to reroute the settings buttons. Good job on the power switch too. It’s time consuming and a bit of work to commit to getting these things done. I’ll be posting my Lindbergh cabinet restore as soon as I get all the bits I need. I’m going down the PS3 path to use it with all the PS3/4 fighting games. I’ve made a (modified a noir) custom panel to have all the PS3/4 buttons mapped to the controller through a Brook UF board. My monitor is okay but I might change that down the track. Attached is a preview of what I’m going for. Buttons are just resting there. I’m awaiting artwork for it.
For sure, it was a bit daunting for me because I knew there was no return once I removed the original monitor and started drilling holes and cutting things. I probably should have read the forums a bit before doing all this but it worked out well enough so far. Good thing is now I know another model monitor that will fit in case the Acer ever dies. Funny thing is the first monitor I picked up and cracked/threw away was actually a LG, which looked similar to the one ArcadeMachinist used in their build. Guess I didn't need to mess with the bezel after all lol.

Can't wait to see your restore when you get it all sorted and posted. The panel is looking sweet. The Lindbergh cab is definitely by far one of my favorites. Super glad to see it getting some love!


Eventually some day I hope a ringedge multi gets released which will pretty much help me replicate the Lindbergh cabinet I played on when I visited an arcade (A-cho) in Japan earlier this year. It's what started all of this in the first place. At the moment though the taito x2 has been very fun to play with and I'm grateful for the multi that was made for it because it works very well and was super easy to hook up to it.
 
@popinadam what’s the purpose of getting an AIME panel? Is just for arcade authenticity or spake functional thing?

Edit. Just read your other thread so disregard. Let us know how you got the old middle panel out. I’ve got so far and can’t pull it all apart.
 
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@popinadam what’s the purpose of getting an AIME panel? Is just for arcade authenticity or spake functional thing?

Edit. Just read your other thread so disregard. Let us know how you got the old middle panel out. I’ve got so far and can’t pull it all apart.
Here's photos of what I did to remove the middle panel. Essentially you just unmount the whole thing from the cabinet (4 screws @ top) and take off the back screws of the black metal bracket (6 screws) to release the panels.

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I took close up photos of the part numbers in case anyone is looking for these pieces in the future.

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Another question @popinadam can you give us more information on the ribbon cable extending board? I had a look on Amazon without any luck. Cheers.
 
Another question @popinadam can you give us more information on the ribbon cable extending board? I had a look on Amazon without any luck. Cheers.
Definitely. I just searched Amazon for "8 pin flexible flat cable" and picked the longest one I could find which was 200mm. The extending board was called "extension connector for ffc". Here's the exact ones I bought:

Cable

uxcell 0.5mm Pitch 8 Pin AWM 80C 60V Flexible Flat Cable FFC FPC 200mm 20Pcs

Extender

uxcell 0.5mm Pitch 8 Pin to 8 Pin Extension Connector Aapter for FFC FPC Cable Extend Zip HDD
 
Another question @popinadam can you give us more information on the ribbon cable extending board? I had a look on Amazon without any luck. Cheers.
Definitely. I just searched Amazon for "8 pin flexible flat cable" and picked the longest one I could find which was 200mm. The extending board was called "extension connector for ffc". Here's the exact ones I bought:
Cable

uxcell 0.5mm Pitch 8 Pin AWM 80C 60V Flexible Flat Cable FFC FPC 200mm 20Pcs

Extender

uxcell 0.5mm Pitch 8 Pin to 8 Pin Extension Connector Aapter for FFC FPC Cable Extend Zip HDD
@ArcadeMachinist do you think those cables and extender would work with the LG you installed?
 
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