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alfa75

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Hi all


I'm looking for someone who can repair PCB boards with me on a regular basis, I have a large amount of boards that are constantly growing and I don't have the time to do it myself right now.


Thanks for any help or contacts.
 
I can also split the boards, here is a list of all boards I currently have for repair (thanks jonhughes for the hint).

Original
Violence Fight
1942
3 Wonders
3 Wonders
Aero Fighters
Amidar
Asterix
Asterix
Asterix
Athena
Black Beauty
Blood Bros.
Carrier Air Wing
Carrier Air Wing
Chinese Hero
Circus Charlie
Crack Down
Crazy Kong
Cue Brick
Donkey Kong Junior
Exiting Soccer
Eyes
Fantasy
Fantasy Zone
Fantasy Zone
FC Bingo (4-card)
Final Fight
Flak Attack
Football Champ
Football Champ
Galaxian
Galaxian
Ghosts'n Goblins
Golden Poker?
Golden Tee Golf
Green Beret
Head On 2
Hot Shots Tennis
Hyper Olympic
Hyper Olympic
Hyper Sport
Interpit
Konami '88
Kung Fu
Last Mission
Le Bagnard
Le Bagnard
Mad Donna
Magical Cat Adventure
Mega Zone
Mikie, High School Graffiti
Moon Cresta
Multi 5
Naugthy Boy
Nibbler
Nibbler
Pang
Pengo
Perfect Billiard
Perfect Billiard
Phoenix
Phoenix
Pinball Action
Pleiades
Pleiades
Point Blank
Pooyan
Racin' Force
Racin' Force
Racing Force
Racing Force
Raiden
Raiden Fighters Jet
Red Hawk
Rim Rockin' Basketball
Secret Agent?
Shinobi
Space Invaders PT2
Speed Spin
Splash
Squash
Star Jacker
Star Jacker
Street Fighter 4
Street Fighter II
Sunset Riders
Super Pang
Super Pang
Super Pang
Super Visual Football European Sega Cup
Tecmo World Cup '90
Tekken 2
Tekken III
Tekken Tag Tournament
Tetris
Thunder Hoop
Thunder Hoop
Ultimate Tennis
Vs Tennis?
War Gods
World Cup '90
XX Mission
Zero Point
Zero Wing

bootleg
Double Dragon
1942
99 The Last War
99 The Last War
Amigo
Amigo
Arkanoid
Arkanoid
Arkanoid
Arkanoid
Arkanoid
Arkanoid
Arkanoid?
Baluba-louk no Densetsu
Bank Panic
Big Pro Wrestling!
Billard
Billard
Block
Block
Block
Bomb Jack
Bomb Jack
Bomb Jack
Bomb Jack II
Bosconian
Burnin Rubber
Cadillac & Dinosaurius
Cannon Ball
Car Action
Car Action
Choplifter
Choplifter
Choplifter
Choplifter
Cobra-Command
Combat School/Pac-Land
Commando
Cook Race
Crazy Kong II
Crazy Kong Part II
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Junior
Donkey Kong Junior
Donkey Kong Junior III
Double Dragon
Double Dragon
Double Dragon
Drive Out
Exciting Soccer
Exerion
Exerizer
F1 Dream
F-1 Dream
Final Fight
Fist
Fly-Boy
Frogger
Funny Mouse
Galaga
Galaxian
Galaxian
Galaxian
Galaxian
Gigas
Gigas
Gryzor
Gun Smoke
Hamburger
Hook
Hyper Olympic
Hyper Olympic
Hyper Sport
Kangaroo
Kangaroo
Kangaroo
Knights of the Round
Knock Out
Kung-Fu Master
Legend Of Hero Tonma
Match it
Miss Pacman
Moon Cresta
Mutant Night
Passing Shot
Pengo
Perestroika Girl
Perfect Billard
Perfect Billard
Phoenix
Phoenix
Phoenix
Pinball Action
Pocket Gal
Pocket Gal 2
Pooyan
Popeye
Port Man
Power Spikes
Pucman
Puzzle World
Q*bert
Q*bert
Qix
Rally X
Scramble
Scramble
Scramble
Scramble
Shadow Dancer
Side Pocket
Skywolf
Soccer '92
Space Ball?
Space Ball?
Spectar
Street Fighter
Super Cobra
Super Qix
Super Qix
Super Quix
Super Quix
Tag Team Wrestling
Terra Cresta
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
The Last Day
Thunder Blade
Toki
Tokio
Tokyo
Troyan
Tutankhan
Twin Cobra
Venus
Venus
Wonderboy
Wonderboy
Wonderboy
Wonderboy
Wonderboy Monsterland
World Cup '90
World Cup '90
Xain'd Sleena
Zig Zag
Zig Zag
ZigZag
Zippi Racer
 
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That’s a good three years of full time work right there.
 
I'd be happy to have a look at some of them but the postage to and from Aussie land will be expensive and long.

Maybe pick a couple to start with, post some pictures and info and see if people can help if you're interested in learning how to repair these yourself.

I can say from a quick look through your list there are a few I can identify likely faults on:

CPS1 are most likely bad A or C custom and are unlikely to be repairable unfortunately.

War Gods will be a bad HDD or CPU will need a reflow, or both. There is an effort at the moment to clone the drives.

Tekken 2 and 3 will have bad or missing caps on the top board.

Asterix is a Konami board, most common faults on these are bad mask ROMs, loose customs, bad customs or Fujitsu logic faults.

Shinobi and Crackdown have suicide batteries that may now be dead. Crackdown can be converted into S24 multi but as far as I'm aware there's no way to restore the original functionality. Shinobi is a simple install of a decrypted ROM if suicided.
 
Crackdown can be converted into S24 multi but as far as I'm aware there's no way to restore the original functionality.
Yes there is now: you can restore the keys in the FD1094 module.

The main issue here is for most games, once you've paid for shipping back and forth plus parts plus labour it costs you more than a new fully working board.
And I'm not even talking about bootlegs.
 
ok, in that case I will in the next months overwhelm you guys with questions, if it is too much for you guys just let me know. I am willing to learn it myself. But I only have 4 hours a week to fix it. Thank you all for your time.
 
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Here's some tips when starting to learn how to repair boards (I'm still learning myself).

1. Firstly, read these articles on AO, they give you the jist of what's involved: https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Game_Board_Repair

2. Get the necessary tools and get familiar and competent with how to use those tools -- for the board repairs you've listed above, at the very least, you be needing a soldering iron, desoldering gun, multimeter, EPROM burner, logic probe, wick, solder, tweezers, cutters, etc. Here are some threads on this forum with some good recommendations and discussion:

Best, low cost, programmer for most arcade hobbyists to have???
I need a new soldering iron
Beginner Recommendations: Hot Air Gun / SMD Rework
Preferred / Recommended Solder Wire?
Thoughts on this beginner's soldering kit?
Oscilloscope for beginner question

3. Before asking how to repair, it's worth searching the forum, google and other places for repair logs related to the board you're working on. Here's a few places to start you off reading:

https://arcadefixer.blogspot.com/
https://www.jammarcade.net/pcb-repair-logs/
https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Category:Repair_Logs
https://www.mikesarcade.com/arcade/repairs/
http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?action=forum#5
https://www.aussiearcade.com/forum/...repair-questions/pcb-and-monitor-repair-logs/

4. Compare your ROM chips against MAME by dumping your chips and using this tool: http://romident.coinopflorida.com/ -- If they don't match, they're either dead or you have an undumped version. If they don't compare, try burning the MAME set onto some blank chips and see if that fixes things. This is usually the first step I would advise if there isn't anything visibly wrong with the board.

Good luck, there's a lot of great people on here who can always help out and I hope this helps you out somehow.
 
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My process is generally:
1. boot up the board and verify voltages. identify what it's doing wrong so you have a base line, try flexing the board slightly, wiggling the edge connector, putting pressure on SMD and socketed chips and see if any of these cause a change in behavior. if there is no sound play around with the volume knob, and see if there is at least an amplifier "buzz", touch the pins of the amp chip and see if it amplifies the interference from your finger. If there are no signs of life at all see if it will boot in to test mode by holding the test button down during boot, or if there is a reset button if it will do a warm reset.

2. inspect the board, look for any faults: scratches that could have damaged traces, cold solder joints, missing stickers over EPROM windows, dirty edge connector, battery or capacitor damage, rust or other oxidation, cold solder joints. A lot of these things may be super minor so if anything is even slightly suspect or has a hint of not being perfect... investigate it.

3a. if no overtly obvious faults are there then I just cover the basics, use compressed air to blow off any lose dust, reseat any socketed chip and inspect the pins for dirt or oxidation, and I'll clean the edge connector whether it needs it or not (I use liquid deoxit and a nylon scratch pen to clean edge connectors). I'll always do this no matter what.

3b. If you did find some suspect items then investigate those further, I'll reflow any suspect solder joints, verify continuity across any potentially damaged traces, replace any obviously damaged caps and clean up any corrosion damage and further access those areas. If eproms are missing window stickers then put a new sticker on then dump the eprom and verify it against MAME.

4. repeat step 1 and re-access if there is any improvement. If not then try to determine where the fault is: bad graphics? no video output? bad audio? no audio output? unresponsive controls? no boot at all? game runs but with bugs? Search to see if others have had similar issues and see if you can find repair logs for that game that mention similar faults, see if there are schematics available, then start using testing equipment to test the chips in that area.

Generally speaking I'd say 75% of the time I've been able to fix PCBs just in steps 1-3. I can't even tell you how may PCBs I bought non-working that the only thing wrong with it was a dirty edge connector that didn't even look dirty.
 
3. Before asking how to repair, it's worth searching the forum, google and other places for repair logs related to the board you're working on. Here's a few places to start you off reading:

https://www.jammarcade.net/pcb-repair-logs/
https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Category:Repair_Logs
https://www.mikesarcade.com/arcade/repairs/
http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?action=forum#5
https://www.aussiearcade.com/forum/...repair-questions/pcb-and-monitor-repair-logs/
So gutted not to have made it to your list… ;(
:D
 
I'd like to say that the amount of information in this thread so far is excellent! I'm familiar with the low hanging fruit (reflowing, patching traces etc.) and it's done me well so far over the years, but I've been looking at a stubborn Taito F3 that just cycles a single color screen and have no idea where to start in regards to probing and expected voltages at various parts of the board, since I've been lucky enough to never have to haha.

Repair logs are excellent if you're having a problem someone else has had but it can only take you so far, and lately I've been looking for good sources of knowledge on the general hows and whys on board repair, so I sincerely appreciate when people take the time to explain their processes and link to helpful threads!
 
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