A bit more progress this weekend on the power box area and step down transformer. I wanted to tidy up the way everything was connected. My first attempt was okay but I wasn’t happy with the way I connected the power cable to the internal wiring. I had to join various cables together after putting in nice new braided power cord. But the resulting heat shrink over it all was too chunky - and even after I wrapped it in cloth tape it wasn’t great looking. I was happy with how the powder coated box and exterior looked though.
I ended up removing the box, cutting the wires again and rejoining them with a three way connector matching the others in the cab. Much nicer. I added new spade connector covers all-round. I also de-pinned a connector to remove the mud.
I also cut and rejoined the in/out cables of the transformer much more neatly and covered them in braid. I was going to use the new white braided cable I got but everything was already there for me so I just tidied it up. Lots of cutting, stripping, crimping, heat shrinking going on. I gave the transformer a good scrub, and removed the stickers and reapplied them with double sided adhesive. I also wrapped the windings of the transformer in some fabric tape because the fabric tape already there was starting to unwrap.
Maybe I posted before shots way earlier in this thread, but these are the cables before.
In goes the speaker grilles and marquee. There were two little posts on the inside that I thought were guides to hold the speakers grilles in place. But then I had a couple of nuts left over and realised these were M3 threads covered in powder coat. It wasn’t necessary to strip them though. The speaker brackets themselves push
up against the grilles and secure them nicely.
I’d also previous cleaned up the light fixture and painted the top cover in some left over pot belly back paint I had. I know that’s a little unorthodox - but it was fairly corroded so I sanded it back a little and sprayed it with what I had that could handle heat. It will never be seen so I can deal with it. The mounting bracket is freshly powder coated as well.
I can see now the light bracket must be in backwards because I can’t access the ballast. I’ll have to sort it later.
This is the whole lot mounted. I’ll get some better pics in good light. I’m also deciding whether to change the billboard bracket screws to Torx like the back panel.
Oh, and I’ve been advised the marquee bracket is and outie when in should be an innie . I was wondering why the metal was bent upwards where the screws were. I’ll fix that tomorrow.
Okay so all the fasteners (10 of them) are in place and holding the top marquee enclosure on after I removed it to turn the light fixture around - only to realise it was the right way before. I had a spare ballast for this somewhere but couldn’t find it - so I’ve left the one that came with it along with the fluoro tube. Hopefully it works.
Next up I cleaned the wiring for the light and speakers and installed them. They were in such a rats nest I had to de-pin them to pull them through the mess. I put some cable ties along the speaker wires and some clear heat shrink along the light power cable to hold them together a bit more nearly. I’ll work out the exact cable routing and cable tie placement in the base as I go and add more wiring.
Onto the wiring this weekend. It was quite tedious and took me about eight hours - but it’s obviously important work. I cleaned all the wiring in the machine. Basically separating all the key sections and scrubbing the mud and dirt out of them with Nifty, an old toothbrush and scrubbing brush. I had to de-pin quite a few to get to the mud.
I had to undertake a bunch of repairs using my favourite cable joining crimps - particularly between the JAMMA connector and the fingerboard. There were quiet and few cut wires. The GND (Sync) pin/connector in the JAMMA connector was missing so I pinched an unused one and slid it in the right spot. On some little cable nicks I put few dobs of a cable repair goo I found at Jaycar.
I also added a heap more cable ties as most of the harness was pretty loose.
I added P1 & P2 fourth button wiring as well. This has to be in three sections each - JAMMA connector > two-way connector adjacent to fingerboard > control panel nine-way connector > button terminals. Having an unused pin in the nine-way connector is very handy. Thanks to @NFGx for your pinout diagram. https://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=arcade:sega_aero_city_pinouts
All the wiring is in. It’s enough to give anyone a hernia I tell ya. The nature of the beast is that not all of the wiring can look beautifully clean and well routed but I’m pretty happy with the outcome. I ended up adding a few more adhesive cable retainers for neatness - instead of wires just snaking around the base of the cabinet. I also didn’t use all the bendy metal cable retainers as they’re a bit fiddly. Those ones I just laid flat. I’ve since made a plan to put in a small stereo amp and volume control so may change this setup a little bit going forward.
I salvaged these clips and terminal covers as well from the original cabinet. I tumbled the terminal covers in simple green with some nails and ball bearings first - to clean them. Then I soaked them and the cable retainers in bleach for a day. I rinsed them all and then soaked the cable retainers in kerosene for a day to remove all the stickies. They’re still a bit off on the colour but clean as and ready to use again with some good double sided tape. I’ve re-used a lot of the terminal covers already
I’ve been thinking about how to do this for a while and put it all together today. I want to put Raiden Fighters in this machine with the @everten stereo out module. The Aero doesn’t have a volume control in it either - so putting in a little stereo amp with volume control that I can access in the front of the CP is the goal. A while ago I parted out a Rolling Xtreme cabinet for my Exceleena resto and had quite a lot of wiring and connectors left over. I used a whole bunch of this wiring and connectors. It was very satisfying to re-use this stuff. All mate n lock stuff that matches what’s in the machine already. It took a while to de-pin the connectors and wires I needed but I also saved time and money not sitting online ordering $10 worth of pins and connectors that cost me $20 to post.
I got two of these amps from Amazon for about $15. It’s quite possible they’re awful and grossly underpowered but they are rated 1.8v-12v. This suits because the Aero has a spare connector with 2 x 5v outputs - so I can use that. I love putting the little ferrules on the end of the wires for the screw terminals.
For the second 5v output I’m going to backlight the CP buttons. I make up my own little replica cold cathode tube for this using a 5v LED strip.
Here’s the finished harness. I just need to tidy it up with some cable ties. The speaker cables just plug into the speaker connector in the bottom of the cabinet - after unplugging the dual mono one from the Sega “JAMMA” socket.
Here’s the line in that will come from the stereo board. If I go back to a mono JAMMA board none of this will work but I’m thinking of incorporating an L-Pad variable attenuator at some stage as well - along with my idea to make a replica of the original transformer board for the headphone output.
. I was wondering why the metal was bent upwards where the screws were. I’ll fix that tomorrow. 
