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If I wouldn't know the chassis was fixed, I would say a bad cap.
Have they all been replaced?
Does the issue get less when the chassis is warmed up?
 
Does the issue get less when the chassis is warmed up?
I don't know for sure. I've only run it a few minutes at a time, but it's there as soon as you turn it on.

It is sporadic. it will go a minute or two without any problems then do what you see in the video, then be normal for a few seconds then just a blip... etc.

My gut says it's a flyback issue but I'm going to test out a few things... maybe there's a leak in the degaus circuit so I can try running without that, or maybe this is a fluctuation in the power supply that is causing the game board to glitch out like that, so I'll try running a NAOMI since I can easily hook that up with a known stable PSU.
 
E29 is one of my dream cabs! Working through all the little problems to restore is the fun part (sort of)!
 
I say leave it running for 30-60 minutes to warm up, then recheck. Look like some type of interference/noise. Like Pascal suggests, check the caps.
 
I looked over the board before I had installed it and the caps looked new, nothing exploded (then again they all looked pretty new before I sent it for repair. I think someone did a cap kit on this and it didn't fix it since the flyback was toast).

In any case, I turned it on and left it running for a few hours last night. there was one little wobble that appeared a couple minutes after booting but after that nothing. I spent 20 minutes working on cleaning some of the cab and didn't see any other flickers during that time, then went to work on something else and when I came back a few hours later it was still fine with no wobbles or flickers.

I sent the video to PNL and they seemed to think it was possibly due to a bad connector or fluxuations from the PSU effecting the board.

For now it seems to be working but I'll be double checking my connectors anyway.

The monitor is gorgeous too. I know why people say the dual-syncs run 15K better than the Tri-Syncs, The Nanao Tri-Sync in my Net-City doesn't hold a candle to this. The color is vibrant the clarity is awesome and the scanlines are perfect. I think it even looks better than the K7000 in my MK3, which was my previous favorite monitor.

The wobble had me gutted because the last thing I wanted to do was swap the chassis with another model.
 
I've been chipping away at cleaning up the cab. it's covered with tape residue that's years old and baked on...

between rounds of scrubbing I was trying to figure out how the sound was wired. there are 4 speakers in this cab with independent left and right volume controls and no amplifier, and it's wired only for JAMMA (which is mono)... to make it easier to read I started color coding the wiring diagram for the cab. and then went further color coding all the wiring except the gameplay buttons and the video wires (because they're all super obvious and labeled on both ends).

If anyone else is interested here is the result:

taito_egret_29_colored_wiring.jpg


The colors don't directly correspond the actual wire colors, I chose the colors based on what would make it easily readable.

Some interesting discoveries here. the Sound wiring is really clever it uses the Audio negative from the JAMMA for the positive on the right speakers, and then the audio positive from the JAMMA as the negative on the left speakers. with the reamaining terminal on each speaker wired to DC ground. At first I thought they were being wired out of phase but because they're using the audio negative as a separate channel they need to wire those speakers in reverse to bring it back into phase.

I'd love to get a small amp so I can run true stereo out on the boards that support it, I'm still not sure the best way to implement that (I guess the Egret II had an official Stereo kit from what I've read). If anyone knows how others have done this I'm interested.

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I also found something interesting on the button wiring, the diagram only shows 2 buttons per player (labeled "fire" and "warp") but the JAMMA harness appears to be wired for at least 4 and there's an additional connector down there that I believe supports one or two additional buttons and is completely absent from the diagram. i think the button wiring is the same as the Egret II

How are other Egret owners out there handling kick-harness connections?
 
I think I solved my kick harness issue... I built a 3 part harness:

3_part_kick_harness.jpg


the left two are adapters that connect to the CPS2 kick harness connector or the STV kick harness connector, the one in the center runs inside the cabinet, and the one on the right is for the control panel itself. The center harness terminates using a 10-pin TE AMP UP connector pinned similar to that of the kick connector in an Net City.

So I have an easy disconnection point in the control panel box if I need to remove the control panel, and in the PCB area I can easily swap to different style kick connectors when I swap boards.
cps2_kick_harness.jpg
 
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.
Heh, say no more, that's Horacio, didn't even need to read your later post confirming SoCal. Not many collections like that.

E29s are really unique cabs, glad to see someone putting the effort into restoration. Good luck!
 
I'll be posting an update soon on this but in the mean time I wanted to post up some interesting information regarding the original control panels and parts. There's not much info on these cabs so hopefully This will be useful to other future E29 owners.

I've since bought a second Egret 29 (lets call my first E29 E29A and this new one E29B) with some subtle differences in the control panel design.

Stick Mounting:
E29A had a 2L8B panel. and E29B had a 2L12B panel. AFAIK all E29s have 2 player panels because the sticks are not mounted to the panel at all, rather they're mounted to a large metal frame that sits below the panel and reinforces the blue plastic upper panel housing, to support a 1P panel design this frame would have to be replaced.

Due to the sticks being mounted to the frame and not the panel itself, the holes for the sticks are actually very large; large enough to clear the ball top which means that the panel can be removed without removing the ball tops, similarly the stick can be removed without removing the ball top either.

This would also make it easier to swap between sticks and spinners since you wouldn't have to remove the spinner knob to install it.

Sticks:
Both cabs came with Seimitsu LS-32 sticks with black ball tops, however the sticks on E29A had a circular gate with with the triple restrictor plate, while E29B had the standard square gate and restrictor plate. I'm wondering if they changed which sticks they used at some point.

Also interesting is that they used over-sized dust-washers. They're a similar design to the normal Seimitsu dust washers but have an overall diameter of 52mm. They sit below the panel and the metal frame has a cutout that is large enough for the dust washer to move around freely. A normal sized dust washer would be smaller than the stick hole in the panel and likely get caught up on the lip of hole. I've yet to find any place that carries these oversized dust washers but I've drawn up a 3D Model of one so a replacement could be 3D printed if ever necessary. There's no shaft cover used on these either, just the bare metal stick


Button Layout:
E29B an original 2L12B panel. The artwork on this is identical but the button placement is not. the 3 and 4 button layouts can't be converted to a 6 or 7 button because none of the buttons line up, and if you were to cut holes for more buttons you'd end up with them being too high or too low. Not to mention there is a fairly small rectangular window in which all the buttons must fit to clear the metal frame below the panel, and adding buttons to a 3/4 button panel would run them straight into the frame.

Interestingly I also have an un-official 2L14B panel. This is a really shitty panel though as the far right button on the P2 side doesn't clear the frame so to run a button there you'd have to cut out a portion of the metal frame. When I was running this panel I put a plug in this spot and trimmed out the bottom of the plug to clear the frame. Comparing this un-official panel to the official 2L12B none of the buttons are in the same location either.

Start buttons are not located on the main panel, instead there is a smaller metal panel in the control panel box with the start buttons and coin slot (one really nice thing about the E29 is that the coin slot is in the center, so P1 doesn't have to reach over P2's controls to drop a coin.

Buttons:

The original start buttons are Seimitsu 24mm snap ins with a black housing and white plunger. the colors can be confirmed on the official flyers. My E29B came with these exact buttons installed. I can tell you that Sanwa 24mm snap-ins don't like to fit in the start button panel. they're just a hair too wide and need some plastic shaved off to fit in.

I'd suspect the gameplay buttons are Seimitsu as well, the panel is designed for 30mm snap ins. Sanwa buttons fit here but I've found Seimitsu buttons fit better. As for colors the official flyers only ever show 3-buttons panels with buttons 1 and 2 in yellow and button 3 in orange. I don't know what the button color scheme from that factory was for the official 4 and 7 button panels.

I personally think the more squared off edges of the Seimitsu buttons look more appropriate on this cab than the more rounded Sanwa buttons. Personally I went with all white buttons and white ball tops as the blue panel surround makes the whole control panel area very dark and I wanted to brighten it up a bit.

Screw in style buttons can work but the location of the frame makes them a really tight fit.

Panel Mounting:

The official Panels use carriage bolts similar to the more modern Sega panels, unlike the Sega panels however the E29 panels have the carriage bolts permanently pressed in place. A circular hole is drilled in to the panel then the carriage bolt is pressed in, forming the hole around the square portion of the bolt head.

One of the panels had a bolt that had never been pressed in, I found that you can press in your own using a bench vice with soft jaws and a deep 6mm socket. The panels are made from aluminum so the metal is very soft as it is. This is nice because it means they'll never rust, but that's also likely why they needed the additional metal frame as mounting sticks to a thin aluminum plate would likely cause it to bend and deform under normal use.

Strangely the start button panels in both cabs and the 2L8B panel use M3.5 sized carriage bolts It's close enough to an M4 that the nuts will thread down but they wont actually hold. the 2L12B panel however used M4 carriage bolts for some reason.

Wiring:

The wiring diagram for these cabs (posted previously in this thread) only shows wiring for up to 3 buttons per player. This is certainly how my E29A was wired (despite having a 4 button panel). My E29B however had wires for a 4th button in the original harness (again odd because it included a 6-button panel). For this reason I ended up swapping panels, installing the original 2L12B on my E29A since I had already built a full kick harness for it, and putting the original 2L8B on my E29B since it was already wired for 4 buttons.

I haven't traced out the wires yet but I'd suspect they're simply being run to the JAMMA connector as I haven't noticed any additional connectors in the PCB area. I did notices that there are additional pins wire in on the cab side of the control panel connectors that aren't mentioned in the wiring diagram; I have yet to trace these out to see where they go.

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I've got pictures of some of this that I'll add later as well as more updates on my progress with the cab but I wanted to get my brain dump out there from all the details I learned while rebuilding these panels.
 
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OK so I got this cab "done" (as done as it's going to be for the time being) a couple of months ago, but I was pushing to get everything completed that I never posted any progress pics... So here's a summary of what went down:

I took apart the power supply just to check it over. This thing is tiny and a brute. 0 problems and the output is solid and handled everything I've throw at it without issue. Even does -5V for those PCBs that use it.

psu_1.jpg


I disassembled and cleaned the header... these things were filthy
header_1.jpg


header_3.jpg


I was surprised to learn the speaker grills are actually light grey... they were so caked with filth they looked black! Also who would have guessed the little taito logo is on a much larger piece of acrylic. I basically bathed all this stuff in simple green, and then gave the acrylic a polish with some novus.

Speakers looked in great shape which is good because the mounting depth is tiny and I've yet to source appropriate replacements. they're 3x5 8ohm shielded with only about 1.5in of depth available. I can't use spacers either because there is 0 room behind the grills. This was a problem on my other Egret 29, but thankfully the speakers on this one was are in great shape.
 

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In cleaning up the header I used some Blue Magic Polish on the metal uprights and the carriage bolts used in the header:

Before:
header_5.jpg


After:
header_7.jpg


Before and after:
header_8.jpg

A trick with bolts like this is to clamp down the threaded side into a drill and then use that to spin it against a rag with the polish :thumbup:

I even used a small wire brush pen to remove the rust from the "hidden" bolts that hold the header together:
Before:
bolts_1.jpg
After:
bolts_2.jpg
 

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I of course replaced the bulb and the starter (they were BOTH dead). These machines use a non-standard Japanese sized bulb that I had to special order; so I bought 2.

one piece of the header I didn't remove was the illuminated "EGRET 29" banner. this is held in with little plastic tabs. I gently pushed one back and heard the brittle plastic crack so I opted to just leave it in and clean in place.

logo_1.jpg


One thing I've noticed on other cabs is that light leaks through these tabs leaving bright spots on the resultant logo when lit up... so after cleaning I decided to cover them with some electrical tape to block the light over the tabs:

logo_2.jpg


The result is much more even light output along the parameter, the photo doesn't do it justice:

logo_3.jpg
 
After fixing up the header I disassembled the monitor bezel section to remove the rest of the white plastic parts. er... I mean BADLY YELLOWED parts

wp_1.jpg



This was meant to be my before photo for retrobrite treatment, but it ended up being a big fail. I used the official instructions on the official website. the Xanthum gum flat out didn't want to mix in and ended up a clumpy mess even after 15-20 minutes of trying to get it to mix. I spread it on as best I could and reapplied throughout the day to try to keep it from drying out but it was no use. after a whole day in the sun I got a few blotchy light spots but no noticable change... cleaning that crap off was a pain too. So I opted to use White Vinyl Dye.


After a few coats of vinyl dye you can see there was a MAJOR noticeable improvement. Here's a comparison against my other Egret. You can see it still needs a few more coats here as it looks almost pink from the yellow trying to break through.
wp_2.jpg

After a few more coats here's another comparison this time of the header, here you can see the "shine" of the vinyl dye is a really good match for the original plastic luster. Gloss paint would be too glossy.

wp_3.jpg

And compared to the white paint on the cab:
wp_4.jpg

you can see it's a bit brighter than the original paint, but on the cab these are also separated by the blue stripe so you'll never see a white plastic part right up against a white metal part.

Even still I'm tempted to take one of the panels to the hardware store to see if I can find a spray paint that's a more exact match... maybe when I get to painting the other Egret.

One thing I forgot to document was that the monitor bezel pieces had all of the screw posts cracked. One had a chunk fall off (thankfully still hanging on by a thread so not lost) and I repaired them all with Black JB Weld Epoxy... not too pretty but it's in a location you'll never see and i'd rather they're nice and well reinforced to last the life of the cab...

these little plastic screws not only hold the plastics to the cab frame but they hold the weight of the front glass... so they get stressed A LOT there's a reason they were all cracked.

I was also an idiot and did this AFTER painting and got some epoxy finger prints on the freshly painted surface... so I had to lightly sand that spot and then re-spray it.
 
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While getting rid of the Yellow is a big step towards improving the cab's cosmetics and even bigger step fixing the horribly faded blue control panel... here's how bad the thing was:

cb_1.jpg


The Blue had faded so bad it turned Dark Green! you can see the contrast in the plastic that was covered up by the metal panels. Then you have horribly marred surface from cigarettes being put out on it. and then the cracks that go all the way through all over the place. The thing was actually held together by the metal panels that were bolted here.

I started off by taking a mini-air grinder that I normally use to grind rust off of cars and grid out the cigarette pock marks and then use some epoxy (JB weld brand) to bond the cracked areas back together.

cb_3.jpg


The stench of grinding out the cigarette marks was terrible, like the ash was embedded in the plastic and I released it when grinding <X

After that I used a small amount of bondo to fill them back in:
cb_5.jpg

And then I went hunting for Blue Paint... managed to find a pretty much perfect match with A light blue Rustoleum:
cb_7.jpg

Sanded down the bondo as well as the epoxy and then gave the whole piece a light sanding before painting
cb_6.jpg


Fixing this single part probably improved the looks of this cab more than anything else.
 

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One thing that is NOT done yet on this cab is fixing the chipped paint on the back of the glass.
The front glass is painted black around the parameter and has white painted EGRET29 and Taito logos in the corners.
The glass rubbing up against the plastic bits behind it basically wore the paint off all along the edge which even cut right through parts of the logos. Here's a pic of what I'm talking about:

bo_1.jpg


I tried some touch up paint and did more harm than good. I have a plan to fix it properly but I was in a time crunch so I took some alternative measures.

First I didn't want it to get any worse, second I didn't want black paint rubbing into the freshly painted plastics, and third I didn't want the white plastic shining through the bare spots on the glass. So I used flat black vinyl wrap to cover the areas of the plastic that the glass rested against:

bo_2.jpg

this seems to be the only picture I took, obviously I trimmed it out and then did the bottom as well but you get the idea.

Here is what it looks like now. you can see it's not really fixed but in dim lighting you don't really notice it as the worn through areas look dark gray:
bo_5.jpg

the Speakers also had a black paper material stuck too the inside to black out the area under the grill (you can see this a few posts above). I removed this when painting they came off in one piece but I decided to use them as a template to make fresh black out stickers from the vinyl wrap:

bo_3.jpg

it's not perfect but the imperfections aren't visible once the grill is installed. If I ever get around to buying a vinyl cutter I'll draw up a template and cut a few perfect ones.

bo_4.jpg
 
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I still have a couple of additional updates to post to "catch up" to where I am now but I ran out of time last night.
 
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