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Anselmo

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Been a while since I had a chance to work on this cabinet. It's such a cool candy to me, I really wanted to bring it back to it's old glory. Luckily it wasn't in terrible shape, it just needed some resin on some cracks due to the cabinet being all plastic. Had it painted as well, but since this artwork has not been reproduced I had the shop tape over the artwork and be very careful with it. Check out some pictures! Will post some more as I get it in tip top shape.

Delivery! JULY 2020.



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Nice to see someone else with an Impress; there don't seem to be many of us. Maybe I should do a thread here on mine as well, lol.

Incredible job with the paint, she looks brand new! Any plans for what you're gonna put in there?

**EDIT** Oh and not that you'll need it, but I coincidentally just finished an amateur English translation of the original manual for the Impress yesterday. Figured it'd be a good idea to mention it here in case other Impress owners need it. You can find it here on the Arcade Otaku Wiki page for the Impress.
 
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Wow, I shit you not, I used that manual yesterday to figure out how to remove the instruction panel plastic! Good work
That's awesome! I'm so glad at least one person has found a use for it. I had really made it for myself just for ease of reference (I am NOT fluent in Japanese at all) but Impress info is a bit hard to come by so I figured I'd try to make some additions to the Wiki page for it. It's certainly not a good translation, but it's a somewhat-usable one at least.

I think my next documentation project is going to be on the QSound amplifier in these; there's something weird about how these turn on (it must have something to do with using a shared ground with the JAMMA connector but I can't really figure it out) and information on these is fragmented at best. It's not really something that matters for people who are using these as CPS2 machines - which was their designed purpose - but for emulated systems or other stereo board architectures it'd be nice to be able to demystify the thing a bit.
 
I did a full restoration on my Impress last year. Full recap of the PSU and Qsound amp worked wonders for me. Even had to swap out the Hitachi chassis with a Nanao MS9, but I think it worked out great.

Before.... All yellow and nasty... more yellow than it looks in the picture...
Look at that CP... yummy.....

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After

Nice and clean

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Icing on the cake.. New panel from @alberto1225

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Love my Impress!
 
That looks really nice dude! Did you paint it?
 
Thanks! Painted it with automotive paint - Candy white LB9A and wet sanded it for a smooth and sturdy finish.
 
Good work! I swapped an MS9 chassis on the tube and the colors are much better, but it does have a weird geometry issue. I'm going to try to recap the hitachi chassis and see if it looks better after recapping. (Colors looked dull before)
 
My Hitachi chassis had a failing flyback, So was basically dead...
Did you recap the MS9? A good ol’ recap can do wonders with geometry issues. I have a MS9-29T in mine.
 
Yea, it's a fully serviced MS9. How did you determine it's a failing flyback?

It's that issue where the center has some smaller squares compared to the outer squares. This has been documented with others who have done the same thing. How did you secure the chassis onto the cab? What about the remote board? It doesnt fit where the original remote board goes :/
 
Did you recap the MS9? A good ol’ recap can do wonders with geometry issues. I have a MS9-29T in mine.
It's that issue where the center has some smaller squares compared to the outer squares. This has been documented with others who have done the same thing.
Yep, it's a known issue with MS9 chassis on the Toshiba tube in the Impress and it's capacitor-related, but not in the usual sense. The general understanding is that the Toshiba tube's screen is "curvier" than the Nanao (i.e., it has a smaller-radius screen shape) so the MS9 chassis doesn't project correctly on the surface. The technical term for the procedure used to correct for this type of distortion is "S-correction," and on the MS9 chassis two capacitor values provide for "adjustment" of a sort. CN507 is the capacitor for horizontal S-correction in "Normal" mode, and CN505 is the capacitor for "Wide" mode (selected via a jumper...I think it's Jumper "E"). The default "Normal" mode capacitor value for the MS9 is 0.68 µF 400V. It's believed that trying a lower-value capacitor in the CN507 position could adjust the MS9 chassis' "Normal" mode S-correction for the Toshiba tube, but 1. I haven't seen anything on anyone actually attempting this, 2. Unless your flyback is toast or you want 31khz (which requires yet more modding) there's really no need to swap, and 3. The distortion is usually "livable" if not perfect - even my 100% original GML chassis in perfect working order has a bit of this distortion to it.

Probably a bit too in the weeds there but I've been heavily researching this swap for several weeks myself - I'd like to be able to play Naomi games without all the flickering associated with running 31khz games on a 15khz chassis.
 
Yea, it's a fully serviced MS9. How did you determine it's a failing flyback?
well..... I Started the cab and “lightning“ shot out from the flyback 😁
Scary as hell.....
It's that issue where the center has some smaller squares compared to the outer squares. This has been documented with others who have done the same thing.
Yup, but seems that a MS9-29T plays nice with my Impress. Happy for it, but don’t know why. Has a Toshiba-tube.
How did you secure the chassis onto the cab? What about the remote board? It doesnt fit where the original remote board goes :/

Carfully placed the chassis with the MS9 flyback where the red arrow points.
Secured it with a scew and used one of the holes in the metal frame (red arrow)

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Remote board i placed on the left side of the controll panel With some nylon stand-offs and 3M tape Only picture I have available is pre-cleaning, but you get the idea.

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Lil progress report:

decided with this color scheme, not entire convinced, but it will do for now.

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Spent the morning requiring the kick harness. It had previously been cut off right around the top part of the front door. Was able to splice it with a spare CPS2 kick harness I had. Also had to re-crimp the control panel harness since they were using the wider american style connectors, which were too big for the seimitsu buttons.

Also got it moved inside the house and waiting on some artwork for the marquee holder. Not sure where it's final resting place will be, but for now the cab is next to it's big brother blue.
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Anselmo, that is cool as hell.

I've got an Impress in very similar condition I picked up a while ago but haven't worked on yet.
What buttons did you use and when you got it painted, did you acquire new decals/stickers or did you tape them to protect them?
 
Thanks @Matt - so I couldn't find any proper side decal reproduction or replacements so I had the painters tape them off to protect them. They did a good job and I'm happy I preserved the original art work, and the original serial stickers on the back of the cab. I used seimitsu buttons on this one, since my other cabs have sanwa's I wanted a little variety.
 
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