stringbean
Enthusiast
It's surprising how fast time flies. It's been 1.5 years since my last post and I've finally managed to set other projects aside and try completing this one. It's good to be back. In that time, I moved and had to pack up an entire arcade machine in boxes and pray nothing would be lost or damaged. A few pieces did get damaged, but thankfully, the monitor and most of the crucial components were fine.
The re-plating turned out very nice. When doing this, the shop had given me the option of using a silver finish or this iridescent look. The owner said he was a huge fan of the warm glow that the iridescent plating gives the metal which is what convinced me to go this route. He did return all of the screws plated with nickel since they couldn't be zinc plated. I wasn't aware that any screws were nickel plated, but looking now they are the very shiny screws used to hold the shell together and some others used inside the cabinet.
Using the same process I had previously when restoring an Astro City I swapped out the stock wheels with these red skateboard wheels. They required having bearing cartridges, two speed rings, and some washers to be able to spin freely. The wheels I got were 52mm (height) and rated 98a (hardness). While researching what hardness I should use I came across a thread where someone mentioned using a wheel too soft for any appliance that is heavy could cause the wheel to develop a flat spot. So, for others preparing to do a similar swap in the future this is something to think about although I have no idea how soft the wheel would need to be for that to actually be an issue. Also, these blast city cabs are heavy, but not that heavy.
Moving the arcade across the country in pieces resulted in several scuffs to the shell as pictured here. Also, the light bulb fixture for the marquee has some damage which I have yet to determine if it will need to be replaced. Finding certain parts for blast cities online is quite difficult so I'm hoping it is only aesthetic.
As of right now I don't have any JAMMA PCBs lying around that have attract modes with sound and so I bought a test pattern generator with sound to test speakers and monitor before reassembling into the arcade. The speakers were working well,but the board -5V LED wasn't lit and I'm uncertain why this might be (EDIT/UPDATE: It wasn't lit because apparently the Blast City doesn't use -5V on the JAMMA connector and thus the pins were completely disconnected) or what issues it could cause. When I connected various GND cables to test everything I ended up connecting them to the GND pin on the outside of the blast city PSU so I'm wondering if maybe it has something to do with that.
Another issue that I'm uncertain of, but starting to research right now is the colors on the monitor. Monitors are not something I'm very confident with so I need to do some looking over the nanoa manual if I can find it. I need to figure out if this is merely a configuration I need to change or if something is wrong with the monitor. Above I've shown a picture of the test pattern that shows 4 colored bars on the screen (please ignore the dark shadowey diagonal line since that only shows in the picture). It is supposed to have a black background, but on my monitor the background is completely blue and the 4th bar (the blue one) doesn't show at all. the other bars seem to be somewhat close to the intended color, but not amazing. I've also placed a picture of what the test pattern should look like according to the video posted by the creator of the JAMMA tester and what I'm seeing is pretty far off from that.
Thankfully, my speakers which I swapped in the very commonly used replacements (Aurasound NS2x3-184-4A 2" x 3" Extended Range Driver 4 Ohm) from Parts Express worked very well. I'll be opening the boxes back up and adding some hot glue along the small air gaps before finalizing these and reinstalling them. More updates hopefully soon to come.!
The re-plating turned out very nice. When doing this, the shop had given me the option of using a silver finish or this iridescent look. The owner said he was a huge fan of the warm glow that the iridescent plating gives the metal which is what convinced me to go this route. He did return all of the screws plated with nickel since they couldn't be zinc plated. I wasn't aware that any screws were nickel plated, but looking now they are the very shiny screws used to hold the shell together and some others used inside the cabinet.
Using the same process I had previously when restoring an Astro City I swapped out the stock wheels with these red skateboard wheels. They required having bearing cartridges, two speed rings, and some washers to be able to spin freely. The wheels I got were 52mm (height) and rated 98a (hardness). While researching what hardness I should use I came across a thread where someone mentioned using a wheel too soft for any appliance that is heavy could cause the wheel to develop a flat spot. So, for others preparing to do a similar swap in the future this is something to think about although I have no idea how soft the wheel would need to be for that to actually be an issue. Also, these blast city cabs are heavy, but not that heavy.
Moving the arcade across the country in pieces resulted in several scuffs to the shell as pictured here. Also, the light bulb fixture for the marquee has some damage which I have yet to determine if it will need to be replaced. Finding certain parts for blast cities online is quite difficult so I'm hoping it is only aesthetic.
As of right now I don't have any JAMMA PCBs lying around that have attract modes with sound and so I bought a test pattern generator with sound to test speakers and monitor before reassembling into the arcade. The speakers were working well,
Another issue that I'm uncertain of, but starting to research right now is the colors on the monitor. Monitors are not something I'm very confident with so I need to do some looking over the nanoa manual if I can find it. I need to figure out if this is merely a configuration I need to change or if something is wrong with the monitor. Above I've shown a picture of the test pattern that shows 4 colored bars on the screen (please ignore the dark shadowey diagonal line since that only shows in the picture). It is supposed to have a black background, but on my monitor the background is completely blue and the 4th bar (the blue one) doesn't show at all. the other bars seem to be somewhat close to the intended color, but not amazing. I've also placed a picture of what the test pattern should look like according to the video posted by the creator of the JAMMA tester and what I'm seeing is pretty far off from that.
Thankfully, my speakers which I swapped in the very commonly used replacements (Aurasound NS2x3-184-4A 2" x 3" Extended Range Driver 4 Ohm) from Parts Express worked very well. I'll be opening the boxes back up and adding some hot glue along the small air gaps before finalizing these and reinstalling them. More updates hopefully soon to come.!
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