Bagheera's Operator repair thread

[bagheera369]

Figured I could start in on some of the interesting repairs I wind up involved in at my shop, and hopefully they help someone out!!

2/7/19 - Nba Jam Cabinet - "New Cabinet" from some cheap raspi arcade emulator dealers....cant route the Raspi, so we put in an original Jam board,with a gonbes cga>VGA, and new power supply. Game kept freezing at UJ7. Three different Jam boards, all the same problem. Boards all work on test rig. Found three issues.

One, board was not getting enough voltage. Folks working on it didn't realize how power hungry Midway boards are, so now running steady at 5.35 volts at connector.

Two, couldn't run the Gonbes at 5.35v, so a second, small power supply was added to power just the Gonbes.

Three, even though the board was booting properly, the screen was still freezing at the UJ7 rom....turns out this was a setting in the Gonbes. Midway games require the VERT POSITION setting to be at 28 or higher. Any lower than that, and the screen freezes continuously. Something to do with the slower Hz refresh rate, and the Gonbes. Found answers online for this one.

Now game and screen running stable, and its off to its new home in Chicago.

 

[bagheera369]

Will throw in a few older ones as I remember them, even though they won't be dated.

 

[skate323k137]

Figured I could start in on some of the interesting repairs I wind up involved in at my shop, and hopefully they help someone out!!

2/7/19 - Nba Jam Cabinet - "New Cabinet" from some cheap raspi arcade emulator dealers....cant route the Raspi, so we put in an original Jam board,with a gonbes cga>VGA, and new power supply. Game kept freezing at UJ7. Three different Jam boards, all the same problem. Boards all work on test rig. Found three issues.

One, board was not getting enough voltage. Folks working on it didn't realize how power hungry Midway boards are, so now running steady at 5.35 volts at connector.

Two, couldn't run the Gonbes at 5.35v, so a second, small power supply was added to power just the Gonbes.

Three, even though the board was booting properly, the screen was still freezing at the UJ7 rom....turns out this was a setting in the Gonbes. Midway games require the VERT POSITION setting to be at 28 or higher. Any lower than that, and the screen freezes continuously. Something to do with the slower Hz refresh rate, and the Gonbes. Found answers online for this one.

Now game and screen running stable, and its off to its new home in Chicago.

Gonbes are rough with midway and some konami boards. I always add a sync separator when I install one of those (and yeah, you still need the high VERT POS setting regardless)

 

[bagheera369]

So...haven't tossed anything in the log for a while....figure this one should make up for it.

DDR Supernova - EXT I/O error P1 and P2 - Only have a couple Supernova's at the shop, so this one threw our other techs for a loop. Dug up some info/looked at schematics, and found that the separate I/O requires two way comm's to both of the pad boards. If it doesn't get this, it will error out. This is the ONLY thing that will cause that error...so a shorted pad sensor, or light wire will not be the cause. That error can be bypassed by turning Dip#2 to ON, so it will error, but continue into game.

Some people see no lights on either one pad or both, indicating the signal out lines are down, some people get no input from the steps, indicating signal in lines are down. Regardless, they are the white and brown (on american cabs) wires that are coming into the pad boards, from the main cab. Found P2 brown wire broken at the pad interconnects for p1/p2 pads. Repaired the wire, and voila....problem solved.

Coworkers had tested continuity at the main connections from pads to cab, but didn't take it all the way back to the pad boards, hence missing the broken wire. The info let me narrow it down from a short/open on any of 30 wires, to only 4 wires, which made the issue a quick solve.

Hope this one helps.

 

[Mitsurugi-w]

Nice one, dude. Nice to hear about fixes on relatively newer stuff.

 

[bagheera369]

Two new ones for today.

SuperShot (by Skee-Ball) - Basket not moving properly, or at all - Swap motor board (H-board) to another working game...motor board working fine, and relays on motor board are definitely firing and trying to drive motor.
-Basket would move and motor gear would spin with assistance, but rails that the basket sits on were clean, and not gunked.
-Checked brushes on motor, which were fine, and realized issue was with coupler between motor, and drive gear. Waiting on parts to replace and repair complete.

Skee-Ball Classic - Game scoring from the moment balls were dropped. Scored 9 balls at random scores, immediately ending game.
Lifted back, resat every scoring opto, ant the main molex plug at the back of the game. Reboot the game, and phantom scoring fixed, but two optos not working. Checked voltage to board/optos, which was low at 4.6...raised to 5.05. Voltage increase did not fix opto issues, replaced those two bad optos, game working.