Diary of a Mad Man Fixing Up an Arcade Cabinet by Purchasing Two

ARCADE REPAIR PERSONAL PROJECT

Larger Project, Check Back For Updates!

Day 1: First Arcade Cabinet

Since I’ve been fixing up computers, I wanted to take on a larger challenge. And so, I found one. I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and came across a man selling a $50 Arcade Cabinet. From the pictures, the exterior seemed… good. But it didn’t work. It actually is just the monitor, cabinet, and coin slots. I thought to myself “Alright, I’ll purchase it, plug it in to a PC and get it to play a bunch of MAME games!”

So I called him and found out that he didn’t just have one arcade cabinet… He had two. So I scheduled a trip to meet him and see the cabinets. I looked inside and found that both were in good shape. Here’s what happened.

Originally he had a bar and owned the Golden Tee Fore! Arcade. It worked perfectly for a long time but broke a few years back. He took the arcade cabinet home, sent the motherboard and hard drive to get fixed, and received a quote for a thousand to get it fixed. He then found a second Golden Tee Fore! Arcade cabinet that had working electronics but a bad monitor (he told me that it looks brown). He planned to swap the monitors of both then throw away the first cabinet… but just didn’t.

Then I realized; This was the perfect project.

So, initially I scheduled getting the cabinets next week. I don’t have the car to take both. So I’d take one and he would take one. However, he decided to drive the first one to me… a week early. So now I get to explore the cabinet and learn more about it! However, there’s no keys… So I’ll need to break it open and then get new locks for it.

Here's the goals:

1. Perform the monitor swap and get one arcade cabinet working
2. Sell or lease the first arcade cabinet for cash
3. Attempt to fix the “brown” monitor to see if that can be fixed. If not, recycle it
4. Set up the “broken” cabinet with a PC and run an emulator
5. Sell or lease the second arcade cabinet

I’ll keep you up to date on this task, likely adding a “Diary” section for a larger project like this rather than filling up the “Blog” section. Thanks for reading!

Day 2: Ripping It Open to Check the Monitor

I was able to drill out the back lock. I opened the backside of the cabinet to find a lot of extra chords. There was a spare telephone line, two golf balls, and a hot wheels car.

What I also discovered is that the previous owner had done a lot to try and remove the monitor. There’s a ground wire that has been cut from the monitor to the bottom of the cabinet, and the Molex connector was removed. I’ll have to get a replacement end for the Molex, however, as that was also cut. One of the wire connectors was also disconnected. That might explain why the monitor shows a brown image, but I will need to double check. The AC input was also disconnected.

There’s still one or two things I need to disconnect. The on-screen display board still seems to be connected. I’m also gonna wait to remove the monitor. I wanna confirm the monitor in the second arcade cabinet would be the same and have the same connectors. If not, I would likely need to splice different connectors.

This particular monitor is a Hitachi 468KRQ58X. I certainly did not realize just how much electronics were going to be in the back. I’m thankful I can quickly identify what these connectors are. I’ll need to do some more research in order to determine what might’ve caused the monitor to brown.

Day 3: Disconnecting all Monitor Connections

I’ve done a bit more research on the monitor. There are a lot of other things I would want to inspect on the monitor, as this one may be fixable without a lot of work.

For the time being, I’ve found the five connectors on this monitor and removed them:

1. Ground Wire: Connects monitor frame to earth.
2. Video & Sync: 6-port Molex that uses 5 wires (R,G,B,W,W/B). Picture feed, and a potential culprit for “brown monitor.” Has a missing connector.
3. Yoke/Deflection: 3-prong connector, carries deflection current for the tube.
4. OSD connector: Controls adjustors to the monitor, it’s connected by a series of pins on the monitor’s board.
5. AC Input: 3-Prong connector, powers the monitor.

Everything else seems to be intact. I’ll need to check the speaker lines to see if there’s any connection to the chassis. I will be removing this monitor and replacing it with the known good one. This monitor will be tested another time to check if service is needed.

Day 4: On The Verge of Greatness

Currently I have one cabinet in my workshop, the other will be transported soon. In the meanwhile, I had a thought: What if I just plugged everything back up and tried to see what the errors were? The seller said "brown monitor," so if everything's working correctly I should just see a brown monitor.

So I got to work. The Sync cable was busted, so I had purchased the connectors and crimper to get those working again. I had also found a missing grey connector cap, so I added that back on (I had assumed this was the cause of the 'brown monitor' issue). They had also cut the ground wire from the monitor to a ground (since they were going to replace the monitor), so I fanned out the current wire and placed it under the bolt that the previous ground wire was on. There was an additional wire that looked set up as a ground, so I connected that to the other ground wires.

With everything else plugged in and connected, I plugged in the arcade cabinet and heard the hum of the money dispenser. Then I flipped the switch on the cabinet and.... it turned on for a second and turned back off.

So there's currently two things that could cause this.

So fair enough. Here's the list of troubleshooting steps that I will take to determine the cause of the issue:

I will admit there's concerns about breaking this thing. However, I have to remember it was already broken to begin with. Thankfully I haven't invested more money than I can afford to lose, so if this whole thing is bad I can properly recycle it.

But I'm not giving up yet. Not when we're on the Verge of Greatness! Everything else seems to power on and function, I just need to know why it won't keep power going.

Day 5: Take a Step Back

Given the issues from day four, I wanted to get better acquainted to how everything is supposed to connect together. I have a copy of the arcade cabinet manual that contained a circuit diagram. However, all of the connections were barely legible because the circuit diagram had been squished down. I was unable to read it. I eventually found a better copy of the diagram, but that too was also barely legible. But not impossible.

So what I decided to do is create my own. I took the base of that circuit diagram and put it into an Inkscape project. Then, I used small squares to block out the previous wording and add my own. I believe this to be what the original writing said, the only hairy spot was on the JAMMA connector. But this has helped me make so much more sense of this arcade cabinet.

For instance, did you know that there isn't a deflection cable in this arcade cabinet? Neither did I. My mistake for believing everything Perplexity says. It's actually just the speaker lines.

At some point, I will need to create a blog post about the number of times that AI has actively lied to me while attempting to fix an issue. For now, here is the circuit diagram. I have put this in a 36 x 24 format, I hope this is helpful for any of you looking to fix up your own Golden Tee Fore! arcade cabinets. Also, this is for the green board, not the red board.

Day 6: Yeah, It's the PSU.

Shorter update, it's the PSU. I unplugged everything from the PSU and attempted to power it on. It immediately started and stopped. I suppose that the previous time it worked was just its final breath.

I've reached out the the seller of the two arcade cabinets (since he has the other cabinet) to see if the second one has a PSU inside of it. If not, I'll just need to order one.

In the meanwhile, I'll give the cabinet a bit of a bath. It could use some Isopropyl Alcohol around the contacts just to be safe.

Day 7: Clean & Prep

This is another short update: I've cleaned up the main board with some Isopropyl Alcohol and removed the PSU. I'm expecting the second arcade cabinet to be delivered tomorrow. I'm praying it has a spare PSU inside it that I hadn't noticed, but it's not likely. If it has one, I'll swap it into the main arcade and test it. Otherwise, I'll order it.

Day 8: Second Arcade Cabinet

Finally, after a couple of weeks of planning and rescheduling, I have received the second arcade cabinet!

The first thing I did was open it up to see if it had a spare PSU... Which it unfortunately did not. Thankfully, I found one online and was able to get it ordered for $50! That part should be in next week, and I look forward to being able to finally hook it up and see if it all works!

Upon closer inspection of the second cabinet, I found a few unique quirks. Firstly, some of the control panel buttons have their cords cut. However, the JAMMA connector is located inside of the arcade cabinet still, so I'll likely need to reseat a few of those to get it fully connected. The monitor seems to be in good condition, but there's still a lot of extra cables inside the machine that are not in use (like the phone line). The second device also came with a tournament play sign that lights up. I look forward to trying to hook that up as well.

I hope that I am able to fix the issues of the first monitor so that then I can keep the second monitor for another project. If not, I'll do the swap as previously planned and go from there! I'll send more updates once I receive the power supply unit or make changes to the second cabinet.