Namco Exceleena manual - translation into english

[hatmoose]

I've been inspired by the astonishing work that @Murray has done restoring Namco Exceleena cabs over on this thread
https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/namco-exceleena-1-2-cabinets.13302/

Murray has sourced, scaned and uploaded the Exceleena II manual here and it's an awesome resource
https://mega.nz/file/qdg2TTAY#bn4fxBJjYJXzfykPRds6YGibtwpf4ZxWulg2INtK3ds

The Exceleena I (the blue whale) was a JDM product only, very few made their way west, and it's quite old. As a result the manual is very hard to find. Eventually I managed to find a copy here locked behind a paywall. It's a very poor quality scan and in japanese only, and it was scanned before OCR was a thing so google translate wanted nothing to do with it
https://www.slideshare.net/endoe/exceleena-manual

Surely our industrial heritage deserves better! Over the next few weeks I'll be restoring and translating the manual into english

This turned out to be a lot harder than I first expected - google translate refuses to translate a scanned document.
So first thing to do was run it through Adobe pro to OCR all the japanese and convert it into text
Then I ran it through google translate a few times - the results were - awful

So now I'm doing it semi-manually

If you would like to help and can read japanese I would really appreciate translations of the characters in these diagrams

This guy is the front face of the power supply, need help with 3, 4 ,5 and whatever that weird thing at the bottom is


And this guy, the three bits at the bottom, no idea what those should be


If anyone has Adobe CS and wants to help I'd love to share the file with you! it was just too big to attach to this message

 

[GeeDee]

This guy is the front face of the power supply, need help with 3, 4 ,5 and whatever that weird thing at the bottom is

5: サービスコンセント　- sa-bisu consento - service outlet (from "concentric plug")

4: 消磁スイッチ - shyouji suichi - degaussing switch

3: テストスイッチ - tesuto suichi - test switch

"weird thing": ヒューズ - hyuuzu - Fuse

And this guy, the three bits at the bottom, no idea what those should be

From left to right:

1: アース端子 - aasu tanshi - ground terminal

2: キャスター - kyasutaa - casters

3: 本体 - hontai - Body, or Main Unit (in relation to machines)

 

[hatmoose]

5: サービスコンセント　- sa-bisu consento - service outlet (from "concentric plug")

4: 消磁スイッチ - shyouji suichi - degaussing switch

3: テストスイッチ - tesuto suichi - test switch

"weird thing": ヒューズ - hyuuzu - Fuse



From left to right:

1: アース端子 - aasu tanshi - ground terminal

2: キャスター - kyasutaa - casters

3: 本体 - hontai - Body, or Main Unit (in relation to machines)

Awesome - thank you so much - I'm learning a lot from this process - for example the Exceleena I did in fact ship with a Toei chassis as well as the more common Nanao one - so my toei chassis is not an aftermarket swap after all!

I think I've discovered an easter egg in the manual too


"You can use devices with output capacities up to lOOV-lA. Please use it for maintenance."
Makes sense

"Dont play the game of octopus, yaya, in the snake"
This sounds like some kind of naughty joke, Octopus, Snake, playing games.

Any thoughts on how I could translate this?

 

[GeeDee]

"Dont play the game of octopus, yaya, in the snake"

lmao yeah this is really funny actually. Assuming you're just asking/talking about the additional bullet point:

危険ですので、タコ足配線や他のゲーム機器を接続しないでください。

Roughly: "Please do not connect any additional gaming devices or octopus wiring- it would be dangerous."

it's a little weird to see "タコ" in kata here, since that should "literally" be read as like..."Taco", the food, whereas octopus would be "蛸（たこ)". I dunno if I would call it an "Easter egg", but that saying is basically the equivalent to what we would probably call a "rats nest" of wires. Google "たこ足配線" and itll make a lot more sense

This is a good time to mention: I'm nowhere close to "fluent" in Japanese. I'm just currently in school for it. Take any of my interpretations/readings with a grain of salt, and...cut me some slack, these screenshots are blurry as hell lmao not that it's OPs fault, just sayin

 

[davewellington]

...was a JDM product only, very few made their way west, and it's quite old.

Curious how you came to that conclusion - not saying you're wrong because I don't know but we certainly had a more than few of them over here in NZ and AU.
When I owned one, I saw more for sale in the NZ market than I did in the Japanese one where I was hoping to find parts.

 

[hatmoose]

Curious how you came to that conclusion - not saying you're wrong because I don't know but we certainly had a more than few of them over here in NZ and AU.
When I owned one, I saw more for sale in the NZ market than I did in the Japanese one where I was hoping to find parts.

Another kiwi, hi!

Yeah, NZ were super lucky in the 90s. Japan used to send all their old “junk” here. we got all sorts of cool stuff out of Japan. There used to be a dozen r32 skyline GTRs for sale just in greenlane.

A lot of stuff that is quite common in NZ was dumped here because no-one in Japan wanted it and it was hard to export to “the west”

Check out this awesome video of yifans 7:07 more exceleenas than anywhere else on earth!

So yeah, 100% agree, common in NZ/AUS. Rare and exotic everywhere else on earth

 

[hatmoose]

Another difficult one for me - your help is greatly appreciated

This diagram deals with the coin (B) board. There is a jumper on the board for "normal" and "mahjong" operation but I dont know which label relates to which setting


Is there a possible translation of the words in the red box please?

 

[hatmoose]

And this one which talks about how to accomplish various tasks (rotate the monitor, remove the control panel cover, etc)


It always comes out as "Always be conservative" for me - is there a better translation I can use?

 

[GeeDee]

Tell you what: I'll help you if you help you. You wanna do some translation, then let's learn some real translation:

Another difficult one for me - your help is greatly appreciated

There is a jumper on the board for "normal" and "mahjong" operation but I dont know which label relates to which setting


Is there a possible translation of the words in the red box please?

This one should be very easy. These are both written in katakana, which (typically) means that they're "loan" words. Words that are taken from other languages and written in this specific script since there isn't a Japanese equivalent (or perhaps the loan word counterpart is just more accepted). They can usually be read and understood phonetically if they use this script. Try to figure it out:

I won't get up on my soapbox since it is something I feel strongly about, but machine translation is not only terrible, but is spreading into media like the plague. Never trust it. Never expect it to do a good job. It can be fine for private, personal use, but if you're trying to use it to push a product or provide something for the masses, reconsider how much weight you give it. Languages are full of context and nuance and it's something only real people will ever be able to really communicate and teach with properly. "Accurate" translations are not always good translations.

Second:

And this one which talks about how to accomplish various tasks (rotate the monitor, remove the control panel cover, etc)


It always comes out as "Always be conservative" for me - is there a better translation I can use?

日常保守 - nichijyou hoshu- regular/routine maintenence

 

[hatmoose]

Tell you what: I'll help you if you help you. You wanna do some translation, then let's learn some real translation:

This was awesome - I learned something! Thank you

Was I right, I'n not sure, but I enjoyed the experence!

ma-tsu-ya-so = Majhong?
no-ma-ru = Normal?

 

[GeeDee]

You nailed the normal! And very close on the mahjong!

The few kata you misread are definitely the few tricky characters to memorize when learning this script.

シ = shi
ツ = tsu

Adding dakuten to シ -> ジ = ji

This can be paired with ヤ = ya to form ジャ = Ja.

The other is:

ソ = so
ン = n

Which I think speaks for itself

So all in all: マージャン = maajan

 

[hatmoose]

All done, Huge thanks to Murray, DeeGee and many others for getting involved!

I've uploaded it to the Arcadeotaku wiki here
https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/images/0/0f/Exceleena_1_manual_full_english_translation.pdf

Lots of cool and interesting stuff in here that was not common knowledge in the west
for example it shipped with a Toei chassis that auto-switches between 15 and 24khz as well as the more common MS8


Other cool stuff I did not know, how to elegantly convert for stereo


And the thing I am most pleased with (which also took the longest), the fully translated parts list and parts diagram


I took a few minor liberties such as including the model number for the flouro starter thanks to the awesome work that @Murray did. Massive thanks to @GeeDee for teaching me some Japanese! And many others.

If you post any last minute edits here before this time tomorrow I'll get them made before my trial licence runs out

 

[kazuo]

This is awesome! Thanks for producing it, and thanks to Murray & friends for the Exceleena 2 manual. Amusingly, I had mentioned in that thread (I think) that I managed to buy one from Japan and i intended to scan it upon receipt, but it got lost in the COVID mess and I only just had it delivered today. No joke. Glad it's now available to all!

 

[hatmoose]

This is awesome! Thanks for producing it, and thanks to Murray & friends for the Exceleena 2 manual. Amusingly, I had mentioned in that thread (I think) that I managed to buy one from Japan and i intended to scan it upon receipt, but it got lost in the COVID mess and I only just had it delivered today. No joke. Glad it's now available to all!

You imported one of these monsters?!?! Respect! As you can probably see, the wiring diagram in the version i used is readable, but only barely. If you did get the manual with yours then a re-scan, especially of that diagram, would be absolutely awesome.

Edit: actually a re-scan of ALL the diagrams would be brilliant, I did the best I could with what I had to work with, but scanners have come a long way since the 90’s… new artwork would be amazing

 

[kazuo]

Not the whole cab! Just a manual. Long story short, it was shipped via air mail right as COVID was ramping up and Japan locked themselves down, and the package got lost in the mail system until last month when it was finally returned to the proxy service, who expressed mail it to me this week. This is a manual for the Exceleena 2, not sure if that's what you were looking for in terms of a re-scan. If it is, let me know, I have access to at least a 600dpi scanner.

 

[hatmoose]

Nice! I have not yet got my hands on an exceleena II so I wouldn’t be able to do the manual justice. But @Murray had both I and II if I’m not mistaken? Murray, how was the E2 manual scan?

 

[kazuo]

I looked at the scan that was uploaded here and it seems fine? But not sure if Murray was referring to the Exceleena I scan, since that one does look a little rough compared to the more recent scan of the 2. I only have a manual for the 2.

 

[hatmoose]

I looked at the scan that was uploaded here and it seems fine? But not sure if Murray was referring to the Exceleena I scan, since that one does look a little rough compared to the more recent scan of the 2. I only have a manual for the 2.

Got it, I was hopeful that you might have the manual for the 1 as well.

OK, well what we have for the Exceleena I is completley legible, some of the diagrams are a bit rough, but I think they might be as good as they are going to get, so we could call this project "done"!

 

[300wins]

I actually have an Exceelena 1 manual. However, I don't have a scanner that's big enough to scan it properly. I would hate for it to get lost in the mail sending it overseas. I could see if anyone local can get a scan of it done. I can actually scan most of it, but the wiring diagram page is too big for the scanner I have (which only does 8x11). So I can get all the other parts done first and see about getting the wiring diagram scanned somehow.

I didn't realized that you guys needed the Exceelena Blue manual or else I would have offered a while back. I'll do the scan of what I have tomorrow and upload it.

 

[hatmoose]

Awesome, thank you! Yes please we do need a new scan of the Excellena I blue manual. The one we have is fully translated, but the diagrams, and especially the wiring diagram are in dire need.