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twistedsymphony

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Just got this machine in today... will hopefully be doing a full resto of this amazing piece of arcade history, not much is needed really, some scuffs and scratches but mostly it needs the control panels repoed,

Here's what it looked like when it arrived:
44878595_2417231248303293_8652524016533241856_n.jpg


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First thing I did was clean off all that dust and power it up.. it works flawlessly!
Here's a video I shot of it running: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpXUIfFB_FS/?taken-by=twistedchu

All of the damage to the cabinet is cosmetic. going over the whole cab with cleaner is great for identifying all of the little defects.
Biggest problem is that both the control panels are damaged.


The P2 Panel has chunks missing on both sides:
fb_p2_panel_1.jpg



P1 isn't as bad with only damage to the right corner:

fb_p1_panel_1.jpg

Previous owner covered these in black ducktape , but there's also a lot of cracking that was epoxied back together. This is good enough to keep the machine playing but this whole piece of plastic will need to be repoed. Obviously a huge piece of plastic like this would be difficult to replace, repairing it would be difficult as well since it's made from a clear purple acrylic. However it's a very simple shape which makes me think a new one could be made using a vacu-forming process... so step 1 is to learn how to vacuform :D


The bottom corner of the P2 side is also damaged:
fb_p2_bottom.jpg

The end panels on both sides of this machine are identical and they look like they were made with a vacuforming process as well, this is a lot more complex than the control panels though and these are solid colored plastic, so this panel could potentially be repaired with fiberglas and then painted rather than doing a full repo. Definitly a lower priority than the control panels though.

The Aluminum side rails have some minor denting and scuffing:
fb_side_1.jpg



fixing this would be a matter of removing these pieces then hammering them smooth from the inside and maybe "re-brushing" them with some steel-wool.
 

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Last bit of cosmetic damage is the "select" and "start" stickers on the P1 control panel:
fb_sticker_1.jpg


They're not bad at all, just pealing up, but likely all of the stickers will need to be repoed if I'm going to be replacing the whole panel.


I also noticed that someone attempted to pry open the coin box, there's some paint chipping and scratching but mostly the corner of the door is bent a bit. This should be trivial to straighten out once I get the lock open.
fb_coin_door.jpg


This brings me to the locks... the previous owner had no keys for it and didn't know how to open it. Upon receiving it I saw the lock on the service door and noticed it looked like the dimple lock from a Net City. so I grabbed a 5575 key and sure enough the service door opened right up. This key was also used on the P2 control panel. the P1 control panel however had what looked like an 5380 lock as does the coin door.

I don't have a 5380 key but the lock on the P1 control panel was lose and hanging out slightly I was able to just turn the whole lock body to open the panel and remove it from the inside. the area where the key mounts is made of wood and there's a metal lock plate with some teeth to clamp it into the wood, whoever replaced this lock didn't tighten it down enough (it's difficult to do based on it's position in the cab, which is why it was lose. In any case I cleaned up the wood, and replaced it with a 5575 lock to match the P2 side and service door, and I was sure to bolt it down tight to keep it from further damaging the wood.

This just leaves the coin door, if anyone has a spare 5380 key they'll sell me, let me know.

But Now the exciting part... I got to see what these machine look like on the inside :D

Here's the P1 control panel open:
fb_p1_panel_2.jpg

I really love that pinched hand warning label, also interesting that it looks like there's provisions for a second coin mech, even though there's only 1 slot.


The service panel is along the bottom at the rear of the machine:
fb_service_1.jpg

I was able to pull the enormous MDF board mount out a bit to get a better look
I ran out of slack in the harness and I'm not in a good spot to go unplugging everything just yet so I only got a few inches out of it.

fb_service_2.jpg

you can see there are at least 3 massive transformers here,

fb_service_3.jpg

further back there are a few amps and a few power supplies. This thing needs them to drive the the 8 speakers and 2 massive subwoofers not to mention all the neon lamps and what is likely a few thousand LEDs for the displays.
 

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But if you're like me what you REALLY care about is the PCB that drives this thing :D

fb_pcb_1.jpg



fb_pcb_2.jpg
fb_pcb_4.jpg


These were the best photos I could get given how cramped the area is. Hopefully there is enough detail on the chips that folks can start piecing together how this PCB is designed.

This definitely looks like Model 3 era PCB design.. way fewer chips though, afterall the only graphical assets are for a single color dot-matrix display.

Interestingly searching the EPR numbers on the ROMs:
EPR-21609
EPR-21610
EPR-21611

The first two come up here as NAOMI BIOS ROMs: https://git.redump.net/mame/commit/?id=aa5f2c5ac7c1be5f54ce752f817b87260e0fd4ca I'm thinking that's incorrect.

I'll dump these once I have time to more thoroughly through the electronics.

@MetalliC @rtw Is this hardware documented? I can't find any reference to this in MAME or elsewhere.
 

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Sega has a long standing pedigree of amazing 90s DnB, and Techno music.
I'd love to get an export of the audio from this thing.
Beyond, beyond, beyond cool!!!
 
Interestingly searching the EPR numbers on the ROMs:
EPR-21609
EPR-21610
EPR-21611

The first two come up here as NAOMI BIOS ROMs: git.redump.net/mame/commit/?id…f54ce752f817b87260e0fd4ca I'm thinking that's incorrect.

I'll dump these once I have time to more thoroughly through the electronics.

@MetalliC @rtw Is this hardware documented? I can't find any reference to this in MAME or elsewhere.
well, then we have wrong supposed EPR ROM numbers for Korean or Australian Naomi2 BIOS :)

no, I don't think this hardware is documented, at least I cant find mentions of upper board part number.
can you look please for Sega part number of lower board ? usually 833-xxxx or 837-xxxxx, or PCB model 171-xxxx, usually printed or silkscreened at PCB edge.
 
Huh I've never seen one of those before... Kinda looks like a tanning bed for children. :)
 
Previous owner covered these in black ducktape , but there's also a lot of cracking that was epoxied back together. This is good enough to keep the machine playing but this whole piece of plastic will need to be repoed. Obviously a huge piece of plastic like this would be difficult to replace, repairing it would be difficult as well since it's made from a clear purple acrylic. However it's a very simple shape which makes me think a new one could be made using a vacu-forming process... so step 1 is to learn how to vacuform :D



The end panels on both sides of this machine are identical and they look like they were made with a vacuforming process as well, this is a lot more complex than the control panels though and these are solid colored plastic, so this panel could potentially be repaired with fiberglas and then painted rather than doing a full repo. Definitly a lower priority than the control panels though.
+1 with vacuform. vacuum forming is one of skill that i've been looking to do.
 
can you look please for Sega part number of lower board ? usually 833-xxxx or 837-xxxxx, or PCB model 171-xxxx, usually printed or silkscreened at PCB edge.
I did look for one but couldn't see one from the angles I had to work with. The pictures I did get were just me sticking my phone in the machine and snapping them blind.

After taking the photos I noticed that there is a sticker with a PCB number behind the heat sync on the lower PCB, it might be covering up the silk-screened PCB number. you can see "834-13..." I'll have to look through my other photos to see if any of them caught the last few digits.

Unfortunately I'm super crunched for time right now but hopefully In the next week or two I might be able to pull the whole board out and get some better pictures of those PCBs.
 
Can you vacuum form me an E29 CP housing, if so Ill chip in
unfortunately those appear to be an injection molded design :-/

you could probably make a vacuum formed replacement but would need to be custom designed from scratch, and you'd need to build some kind of interior structure separately to give it rigidity and provide somewhere for all the metal bits to screw into. it'd be a lot more work and even if you got the shape perfect it would probably would look "off" compared to an original.
 
Can you vacuum form me an E29 CP housing, if so Ill chip in
unfortunately those appear to be an injection molded design :-/
you could probably make a vacuum formed replacement but would need to be custom designed from scratch, and you'd need to build some kind of interior structure separately to give it rigidity and provide somewhere for all the metal bits to screw into. it'd be a lot more work and even if you got the shape perfect it would probably would look "off" compared to an original.
I know I was jk about that. I didnt think it would be so hard to source a CP housing for them E29s ||

But you can probably make your own VF setup, I have seen them easily done on a smaller scale.
 
I did look for one but couldn't see one from the angles I had to work with. The pictures I did get were just me sticking my phone in the machine and snapping them blind.

After taking the photos I noticed that there is a sticker with a PCB number behind the heat sync on the lower PCB, it might be covering up the silk-screened PCB number. you can see "834-13..." I'll have to look through my other photos to see if any of them caught the last few digits.
thanks, but 834-... smells more like 'Game ID', while I was a bit curious to identify motherboard type.
anyway, its not any priority and may wait until you'll have some more time for it in future.
 
Huh I've never seen one of those before... Kinda looks like a tanning bed for children. :)
That's hilarious and exactly what my neighbors thought when it was unloaded off the truck.

Congrats on the find TwistedSymphony.
 
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