With a lack of a Winter or Spring projects I've been scouring the Texas Craigslists and Facebook Marketplaces for something. And sometimes you just happen to find exactly what you are looking for. Several weeks ago I posted about my Out Run cabaret (or mini cabinet) I used to own and then BOOM I spotted one in Dallas. So it was time to gas up the van and get the road trip going.
Yes, I am a huge dork. Hashtag no filter.
Driving it back 260 miles home in the strangely cold Texas winter (Usually it never gets very cold, but it was 25 degrees this weekend).
What do ya know, it actually works, just not well. The monitor was as wavy as the sea and the cabinet has at least 6 layers of thick cheap spray paint. Also it is very dirty inside and out, a great candidate for restoration. You can see the original red Sega striped art peeking through the black paint on the sides.
First step, lets take out that monitor and put some nice fresh capacitors in there. I tend to cap all my monitors whenever a new game arrives. It's just a good first step to have covered before you start digging deeper into the game.
This is not a repair you should do without some electronics knowledge. The flyback on an arcade monitor (that big thing with the red wire that connects to that suction cup thing on the top) can easily kill you without the right precautions. Safety first ya all.
Count meter located in the coin mech. That is a lot of quarters.
Inside the back of the game, it's just a mess in there. Dirt, dust, and lord only knows what you find in the back of an old arcade game sometimes. Well, I have a feeling that old power supply might also be the cause of some of our wavy monitor issues. Lucky I have a brand new switching power supply ready to go. Just need to get all this crap out to there to hook it up... might need some elbow grease with this one as well.
Old one out, new one getting ready to go in.
Wow! It actually looks like other colors than grey. This took awhile and I also went though and cleaned up some of the bad wiring "fixes" left behind by older repairs. Well that is it for this weekend. There will be a lot in store with this game in the future. Some wood repair to the front legs, stripping the old paint, new side art, we haven't even talked about that broken control panel yet. Oh well, everything in time.