Scramble Arcade Cabinet buy ? Yes or No

[Fr33MAn]

Hello!

I need your opinion.
I've been looking for a machine like this for at least 30 years.
Unfortunately, I'm not an expert in this area, so I wanted to ask here.
I can get this machine for just under €300.
Approximately how much is it worth?
It has the following defects:

1. The sound is scratchy.
2. The screen unfortunately has severe streaks.
3. The cardboard covering the screen is torn.
4. The key is missing.

Can the screen be repaired so that it works 100% again?
I can do a bit of soldering and so on.
I would need help, though.
What would you do? Buy it or not.

Thank you in advance for your help

 

[trashedcabs]

Firstly, those Zaccaria cabinets look so cool. There is a collector here in the northwest US who has a bunch of them he brings to a pinball show every year, they are very unique!

I would buy it! It sounds like this is a game you have been looking for, and I don't know the market in Europe but the price seems good to me. The cabinet looks like it is in great cosmetic condition, and the monitor is working; these are the two major things I look for when purchasing a cabinet, as they are the biggest hassle to deal with. The cardboard surround can be remade/repaired easily and the lock can be drilled out.

The game board is alive with some issues that can be fixed. I would dump the ROMs and check they are good first. There is also a test rom for Scramble available here which might help you pinpoint the issue: https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/test-roms-galaxian-moon-cresta-scramble.395098/

EDIT: oh yeah, also if you don't want to try and repair the board, you could replace it with something like a BitKit2 FPGA (https://craftymech.com/bitkit-arcade-fpga/) with an adapter like this one: https://pcbjunkie.net/index.php/cabinet-adapters/jamma-to-konami-cabinet-adapter/

 

[nem]

I would buy that in an instant for 300.

 

[twistedsymphony]

seriously, any dedicated classic game complete for 300 is a STEAL these days.

 

[Fr33MAn]

Thank you very much for your answers.

I couldn't resist and bought it today for €275.

The screen is a bit annoying, and I'm not exactly an electronics expert,

But I think I'll get the cartridge that "trashedcabs" recommended.
Are there any other alternatives? Or is this one of the best?
Can you load more ROMs onto it?
That way I can find out if the screen is intact or if the game cartridge is the problem.

It's going to be a long journey to restore it.

But this is a little childhood dream come true.
I played this game once as a kid on a camping trip in the 80s.
Since then, I haven't been able to get the image out of my head.

I hope I can manage it somehow.

Thx

 

[trashedcabs]

It's a game board problem. The monitor is working fine.

The simplest thing you can do to start diagnosing the board is removing and reading the data from the ROM chips on the PCB and checking them against the MAME ROM database. If one of yours doesn't match anything from the database, then it's likely bad and can be fixed by programming a new one. If you do not have a ROM programmer and don't want to buy one right now, I would recommend making friends with someone who has one.

Welcome to the world of arcade ownership.

 

[Fr33MAn]

That already sounds promising — at least the monitor seems to be working.
Reading out the ROM chip is not an option for now, as it all feels a bit too complicated at the moment.
However, there's an arcade club near me that has around 50 cabinets and pinball machines.
Maybe they can help me with reading the chip if I ask nicely.
Thanks a lot to all of you for the tips — they’ve been really helpful. I’ll go ahead and ask a few more questions in another section of the forum.