This episode of the podcast was recorded on Sunday, July 25. For more information on our podcast, please visit our iTunes page at http://itunes.arcaderepairtips.com. When visiting the iTunes page, we encourage you to check out our past episodes and give us a review on how we’re doing. On this episode, Tim and I answered your questions regarding…

• A Star Wars Trilogy with a blue screen
• A WWF Wrestlefest that won’t power on
• A NBA Jam with power supply issues
• A Police Trainer with monitor issues
• A Madden Arcade that resets randomly
• A Donkey Kong with some monitor issues
• A Neo Geo 1 Slot with incorrect colors
• A Galaga with power supply issues
• A Ms. Pac Man with speed chip issues
• A Chexx Hockey Game with board trouble
• A Daytona USA with incorrect colors
• A Defender with a blank screen
• A NFL Blitz 99 with monitor issues
• A Frogger Cocktail with jerky sprites
• An Arctic Thunder with jumpy lines on the screen
• A Lethal Weapon 3 Pinball with plasma display issues
• A San Francisco Rush with shifter trouble
• A Space Invaders with focus issues
• A Super Pac Man with a squished screen
• An Invasion The Abduction with gun issues
• A Lethal Enforcers with a missing pot
• And some tips for MAME conversions.

We also go over some listener progress updates as well as some problems our community manager Mark has been having with the 8liners chassis. Please feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions below. As always, you can contact us when we are off the air by email at questions@arcaderepairtips.com or by calling our voicemail line at (972) 8AR-TIPS or (972) 827-8477. Enjoy!

Show Links:

• Elektron Forge Video Game Repair – http://www.elektronforge.com/
• Moss Distributing – http://www.mossdist.com/
• Steve Young’s The Pinball Resource – http://www.pbresource.com/
• Crap Mame (Explicit) – http://www.wickedretarded.com/~crapmame/
• Mike’s Arcade – http://www.mikesarcade.com/
• Flippers.com – http://www.flippers.com/
• Marco Specialties – http://www.marcospecialties.com/
• Phoenix Arcade – http://www.phoenixarcade.com/
• TwoBits Sync Circuit –
  http://www.twobits.com/RGB/possep2negcomp.html
• JammaBoards Video Inversion and You –
  http://www.jammaboards.com/jcenter_nintendo_monitors.html

Special thanks goes to David Vaughan for composing all of the great chiptunes music that we use in our content. Please check out his website at http://monkeyv.newgrounds.com/audio/ for more information.

Just like most console video games, arcade games have different options that you can adjust in order to change the gameplay experience. Options such as difficulty, number of lives and number of plays per coin are just some of the options that can be changed on your arcade game. While newer arcade games usually use service menus for these adjustments, classic arcade games typically use a set of switches on the board known as DIP switches. In this post, we will discuss how to adjust these DIP switches so that you can customize the gameplay experience to your liking.

Adjusting Dip Switch Settings On A Board

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0evRVo8WM4

Before we can adjust our DIP (or Dual In-line Package) switches, we must first locate them on our board. Take a look at your board and see if you can find a set of switches all in a row. The DIP switches themselves should be one of two styles: slide or rocker. Slide style DIP switches have a small plastic square that “slides” to indicate the on or off position. Rocker style DIP switches “rock” down or up to indicate the on or off positions respectively. In our video for this post, we demonstrate how to adjust slide style DIP switches but the process is very similar for rocker style DIP switches as well.

Once we have located our DIP switches, we can begin adjusting them. Please note that DIP switch settings are typically only read when the game boots up. As such, make sure your game is turned off when adjusting the DIP switches then turn the game back on for the settings to take effect. Please do not blindly try and adjust these DIP switches as doing so could lead to undesired results. The manual for your game should contain all of the information you need to know about which DIP switches control what settings. If you do not have a manual, please check out the sites below for help locating one.

Arcade Manual Sites:

• The ARCade ARChive -- http://arcarc.xmission.com/
• Crazy Kong Manuals -- http://www.crazykong.com/manuals/
• Textfiles Arcade Manuals -- http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/ARCADE/
• MikesArcade.com -- http://www.mikesarcade.com/arcade/manuals.html

Depending on the setting you are trying to change, you might have to adjust multiple DIP switches. For example, the first four switches on your DIP switch might control the amount of coins per play. Your manual should indicate how to set each of these in order to achieve the desired setting. If you are trying to set your game on free play, the setting might be related to the coins per play switches or it could be on a separate switch altogether. Also, some of the games that you encounter might not have a setting for free play in which case it might just be easier to install a credit button which we will discuss in a future post.

Whether you are an arcade operator that needs adjust the coins per credit settings or a collector that likes all of their games on free play, adjusting DIP switches is a valuable skill. Just remember to always consult your manual before adjusting them to make sure you achieve the desired effects. Please leave any questions or suggestions in the comments section below.

This episode of the podcast was recorded on Tuesday, June 29. For more information on our podcast, please visit our iTunes page at http://itunes.arcaderepairtips.com. When visiting the iTunes page, we encourage you to check out our past episodes and give us a review on how we’re doing. On this episode, Tim and I answered your questions regarding…

• An Ikari Warriors with board issues
• An Ikari Warriors with a monitor issue
• A Satan’s Hollow with monitor problems
• A Star Wars Trilogy that turns off randomly
• A Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting with graphics issues
• A Neo Geo 4-Slot with a jittery screen
• A Lethal Enforcers with some board trouble
• A Neo Geo with a skewed screen
• A War: Final Assault that stopped working
• A Donkey Kong Jr. with a collapsed screen
• An iCade 60-In-1 with vertical lines on the screen
• A Virtual Fighter with a dark picture
• A Centipede with a bad monitor
• A Lethal Enforcers with a wavy, fuzzy screen
• A BloodStorm with bad monitor colors
• A Mortal Kombat II with a squished screen
• A Dance Dance Revolution with monitor issues
• A Defender that will not power on
• A Mortal Kombat 4 with a blank screen
• A San Francisco Rush: The Rock with restarting issues
• And several games with light gun issues.

We also go over some listener progress updates as well as some tips for installing fans in our arcade cabinets and some general monitor troubleshooting. Please feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions below. As always, you can contact us when we are off the air by email at questions@arcaderepairtips.com or by calling our voicemail line at (972) 8AR-TIPS or (972) 827-8477. Enjoy!

Show Links:

• Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum – http://www.marvin3m.com/
• Cointech Gameroom Supplies – eBay Store

Special thanks goes to [velvet] once again for allowing us to use their music in our content. Please check out their website at http://www.enjoyvelvet.com/ for more information.

While switching power supplies are the standard in newer arcade games, classics such as Ms. Pac Man and Galaga originally had non-switching, linear power supplies that can be quite intimidating at first glance. These classic (or old school) power supplies usually look like a brick located at the bottom of your cabinet and can be difficult to work with due to years of wear and tear. In this post, we will discuss how to check the voltage coming out of your classic power supply as well as how to check the voltage on your board at the harness connection.

Checking A Classic Power Supply

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ff7TpOMV7I

First off, we want to identify where our classic power supply is in our cabinet. These power supplies are typically located at the bottom of the cabinet and resemble a brick-like structure. They should have AC voltage coming into of the bottom of one side either directly from the wall or from an AC filter. The bottom of the other side should contain the DC voltages that go out to the board and other cabinet parts such as coin lights. Be careful not to mistake your isolation transformer with your power supply. Isolation transformers can look very similar to classic power supplies except for the fact that they only use AC voltage and typically just run the power to the monitor. They usually have two wires coming into the bottom for AC input from the wall or AC filter and two coming out of the top for AC output to the monitor.

If you just see one brick-like structure in the bottom of you cabinet it could be that you have a dual power supply/isolation transformer unit. If this is the case then the bottom of both sides should have AC input lines with the top of one side putting out DC voltage to the board and the top of the other side putting out AC voltage to the monitor. While these dual units are not as common, they are certainly something to be aware of in case you run across one.

Once we have located the power supply in our cabinet, we can begin the process of checking the voltages. Let’s start off by setting our multimeter to DC voltage just like we would if we were checking a standard switching power supply. Now we must identify which of our contact points are grounds and which ones hold voltages. Most of these power supplies were labeled at one time or another, however, age and normal wear and tear usually leave them in an unreadable state. Instead of just randomly touching our contact points without a clue, we recommend placing the black probe of your multimeter on the AC ground coming from the wall. The AC ground is usually easier to located than the DC ground and allows us to check the contact points safely with our red probe. Obviously if we touch a contact point on our power supply and the multimeter doesn’t indicate any voltage then we are probably touching a ground point.

Something to keep in mind when checking our classic power supply is that not all of them put out the same voltage. For example, a Ms. Pac Man usually puts out 7 VDC instead of the standard 5 VDC because of the other cabinet parts that use that particular line. If you find that your power supply is giving off higher voltage than what the manual for the game shows then you might try checking the voltage where the board connects to the harness. This can usually be accomplished by finding the ground and DC voltage pins on your harness (via your manual) and placing your multimeter probes on these points. Your board might have easily accessible contact points that you can place your probes on for testing. Whatever way you decide to check the voltage going to your board, performing this check allows you to make sure your board is not just getting power but the correct voltage.

You might also notice some fuses located in the bottom of your arcade cabinet around the power supply. While you can certainly check these in the traditional manner that we discuss in our post on Checking Fuses With A Multimeter, you can also check them with the game on by placing your black probe on a ground point and the red probe on the other side of the fuse. If voltage is flowing through the fuse then you know that it is good. Also, make sure that you are careful when working with an arcade game that’s plugged in. Always take the necessary measures to make sure you are safe when working in these situations.

Most of the arcade games that people consider classics such as Ms. Pac Man and Galaga did not have the benefit of switching power supplies when they were produced. As such, having the skills to check a classic power supply can be a very valuable as you work on these older arcade games. Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions by leaving them in the comments section below.

This episode of the podcast was recorded on Tuesday, May 25. For more information on our live podcasts, please visit our BlogTalkRadio site at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/arcaderepairtips. When we are live you can talk to us on the air at (347) 633-9045. On this episode, Tim, Stan and I answered your questions regarding…

• A Centipede with power issues
• A NBA Jam with a black screen
• A Dragon’s Lair with board issues
• A Star Wars (Vector) with problems focusing
• A Pac Man with some monitor issues
• A Street Fighter 2 with power supply problems
• A Off Road Challenge not getting power to the board
• A Double Dragon screen with a red tint
• A Commando with incorrect dip switch settings
• And some general Wells Gardner monitor issues.

We also go over some listener progress updates as well as some instructions on how to make your own degaussing coil. Please feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions below. As always, you can contact us when we are off the air by email at questions@arcaderepairtips.com or by calling our voicemail line at (972) 8AR-TIPS or (972) 827-8477. Enjoy!

Show Links:

• The ARCade ARChive – http://arcarc.xmission.com/
• Crazy Kong Manuals – http://www.crazykong.com/manuals/
• Textfiles Arcade Manuals – http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/ARCADE/
• Degaussing Coil Instructions – http://www.ehow.com/
• Lawnmowerman’s Pacman Page – http://lawnmowerman.rotheblog.com/

Stan “The Man” Bell has been an avid arcade collector for several years. He has worked on hundreds of arcade games and coin operated machines. He has also made significant contributions to several of our repair projects in the past.

Special thanks goes to [velvet] once again for allowing us to use their music in our content. Please check out their website at http://www.enjoyvelvet.com/ for more information.

This episode of the podcast was recorded on Saturday, May 1. For more information on our live podcasts, please visit our BlogTalkRadio site at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/arcaderepairtips. When we are live you can talk to us on the air at (347) 633-9045. On this episode, Tim, Stan and I answered your questions regarding…

• A Street Fighter 2 with horizontal collapse
• A Mortal Kombat with an hourglass shaped picture
• A Donkey Kong with bleeding colors
• A Neo Geo Candy Cab with a dead monitor
• A Raiden 2 with a warped screen
• A Cal .50 with power supply issues
• A Q*Bert with a broken knocker
• A Neo Geo 1 Slot with a resetting issue
• A Mortal Kombat 2 with sprite issues
• Using the 8liners chassis on a TV tube
• Replacing a Donkey Kong Control Panel Overlay
• Converting a Super Pac to a Ms Pac Man
• And some general broken monitor troubleshooting.

We also go over some listener progress updates as well as some details on how arcade cabinets are constructed. Please feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions below. As always, you can contact us when we are off the air by email at questions@arcaderepairtips.com or by calling our voicemail line at (972) 8AR-TIPS or (972) 827-8477. Enjoy!

Stan “The Man” Bell has been an avid arcade collector for several years. He has worked on hundreds of arcade games and coin operated machines. He has also made significant contributions to several of our repair projects in the past.

Special thanks goes to [velvet] once again for allowing us to use their music in our content. Please check out their website at http://www.enjoyvelvet.com/ for more information.

If you’ve worked on many arcade games, you might have come across a problem where your picture does not fill up the entirety of your screen even after you’ve tried multiple potentiometer adjustments. It could be that this problem is related to a part on your monitor chassis called the horizontal width coil. In this post, we will discuss how to adjust the horizontal width coil so that the picture fills your screen on your arcade monitor.

Adjusting The Horizontal Width Coil

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuTlChCko4k

Before you begin, we highly recommend purchasing a plastic or non-conductive alignment tool kit. These kits come with plastic tools that are specifically used to adjust these kinds of parts. You can use an Allen wrench to adjust the horizontal width coil, however, there are many down sides to doing this. For one, an Allen wrench generates a lot of torque that could cause your coil to crack or break. Also, you must have the game off while you are using the Allen wrench to adjust the coil. If the game is on when doing this the Allen wrench will heat up and can burn your hands not to mention that you will be navigating around some very high voltage areas with a piece of metal in your hand. Take our recommendation and purchase a plastic or non-conductive alignment tool kit.

Buy the Non-Conductive Alignment Tool Set, 5 Pc. from Amazon.com now!

Buy the Universal Color TV Alignment Tool Kit from HAPP Controls now!

Please make sure to be careful around your chassis if you are attempting to adjust the coil while the game is on. Should you make contact with any high voltage areas on your chassis you could receive a bad shock. Be very cautious at all times when attempting this process. Also, it’s a good idea to set up a mirror in a position where you can the results that are caused from your adjustment.

Now that you have the correct tools and setup, it is time to adjust the horizontal width coil. Take your alignment tool and carefully place it into the coil and attempt to turn it. You may need to turn it clockwise and counter-clockwise a couple of times to loosen it up. Try not to force it too hard as too much torque even with the alignment tool can break your coil. If you cannot get it to turn or do not see a change in your monitor you might try leaving the monitor on for about an hour and retrying this process. This should cause the coil to heat up making it more easy to adjust.

If you have tried the techniques we’ve mentioned and you still do not see the changes you want, you could have more of a capacitor problem than a horizontal width coil problem. Look around your coil and see if you can find any polypropylene capacitors. These capacitors typically look like rather large pieces of Chiclets chewing gum and also control the picture width. Try replacing these capacitors to see if it changes your picture. You could also try checking your B+ voltage adjustment on your chassis. If the value of it is incorrect (it should be 120 VDC on most monitors) then this could also cause some picture size issues.

A Polypropylene Capacitor

Buy a Monitor Width Cap Kit from Bob Roberts now!

If you deal with enough arcade games you will eventually come across this problem where the picture does not fill up the entirety of your screen. Knowing how to adjust the horizontal width coil as well as the other measures we described should help you greatly in solving these issues in the future. As always, please leave any questions or suggestions in the comments section below.

This episode of the podcast was recorded on Saturday, April 10. For more information on our live podcasts, please visit our BlogTalkRadio site at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/arcaderepairtips. When we are live you can talk to us on the air at (347) 633-9045. On this episode, Tim and I answered your questions regarding…

• A Golden Tee 2005 board that needs testing
• An Area 51 Site 4 with a blown monitor
• A Playchoice 10 with some board issues
• A Mortal Kombat with dim colors
• A Moon Cresta with shifting colors
• A Roadblasters with a flaky monitor
• A Neo Geo with a bad monitor
• A Ms. Pac Man with corner color issues
• A Super Sprint with monitor problems
• A Neo Geo with monitor width issues
• A Pac Man with monitor video collapse
• A Street Fighter II with a blue cast
• And identifying the right tube for your chassis

We will also go over some listener progress updates as well as some tips to encourage people who are new to arcade repair. Please feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions below. As always, you can contact us when we are off the air by email at questions@arcaderepairtips.com or by calling our voicemail line at (972) 8AR-TIPS or (972) 827-8477. Enjoy!

Special thanks goes to [velvet] once again for allowing us to use their music in our content. Please check out their website at http://www.enjoyvelvet.com/ for more information.

This episode of the podcast was recorded live using BlogTalkRadio on Sunday, March 28 at 4 PM EST. For more information on our live podcasts, please visit our BlogTalkRadio site at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/arcaderepairtips. When we are live you can talk to us on the air at (347) 633-9045. On this episode, Tim, Michael and I answered your questions regarding…

• A Kung-Fu Master board with no sound
• A Narc with an old power supply
• A Playchoice 10 with some board issues
• An arcade monitor with arcing issues
• A Marvel Vs Street Fighter with a scratched up tube
• A Street Fighter 2 Turbo with monitor issues
• An arcade monitor missing the color blue
• A Soundstage Pinball with resetting issues
• A Street Fighter 2 CE missing the color red
• And identifying the right flyback for your chassis

We also went over some listener progress updates as well as some tips on painting an arcade cabinet. Please feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions below. As always, you can contact us when we are off the air by email at questions@arcaderepairtips.com or by calling our voicemail line at (972) 8AR-TIPS or (972) 827-8477. Enjoy!

Special thanks goes to [velvet] once again for allowing us to use their music in our content. Please check out their website at http://www.enjoyvelvet.com/ for more information.

We would also like to thank artist Zath on 8bitcollective.com for his 8-bit rendition of Everybody Wants To Rule The World. You can check out more of Zath’s work on his page.

Back when arcade games first came out every game had a different wiring scheme which made trying to swap a board from one game to another a very difficult task. This problem compelled the arcade manufacturers to get together to create a standard and thus the JAMMA standard was born. In this post, we will help you get familiar the JAMMA standard.

Getting Familiar With The JAMMA Standard

www.youtube.com/watch?v=poL25IlGT_w

Before we get started, I would like to mention that I have posted a printable version of the JAMMA pinouts for your convenience. This will come in very handy if you are dealing with JAMMA at any point in the future. Please click the link below to access this document.

http://www.arcaderepairtips.com/jamma.html

JAMMA is a wiring standard that was developed to make switching arcade boards from one arcade cabinet to another easier. JAMMA stands for Japanese Arcade Machine Manufacturers Association and was developed in 1985. Any arcade game that predates this will not be JAMMA and even some games after this are not JAMMA. We recommend checking your manual or the internet before assuming that your arcade board is JAMMA.

A JAMMA harness is composed of a 56-pin connector (28-pins on each side) with wires coming from each of the pins. There are two sides of a JAMMA connector: the parts side and the solder side. The parts side of your board contains all of the surface mounted components while the solder side just contains traces and solder dots. It is important to identify which side is which so that you don’t plug your board in the wrong way. As luck would have it, many JAMMA connectors are labeled so that you can easily identify which side is which along with what each pin goes to.

If your JAMMA connector is not labeled with the pinouts, your first task will be to identify where pin 1 is located. The easiest way to located pin 1 is to use pin 7 which is known as the key and is usually blank. Once you have located pin 7, you’ll noticed that it divides the harness in two 2 halves. The shorter half (pins 1-6, A-F) should contain pin 1 along with all of the wires that go to your power supply. While these wires usually go straight from the power supply to the board, you might notice that someone has jumpered off of them to send power to another part of the cabinet. This is fine and a common practice.

As we look at the longer half of the connector, you will notice some wires going to the monitor. These wires (pins 12-14, N-P) are used to send the display signal to the monitor. There should be a wire for each of your colors (red, green and blue) along with a sync wire and a ground wire. If we look further down the connector, we will find the wires for our joysticks and buttons (pins 17-26, U-d). All JAMMA harnesses support 2 players, however, they might not have the all wires hooked up for each of them. Games that have more than 3-5 buttons per player or more than 2 players usually require a kick harness to work properly. A kick harness is an extra harness that attaches to the board along with the JAMMA harness to allow for the extra inputs.

You might also notice that there are not enough ground wires located on the connector to wire up all of your arcade controls. In this case, you will need to use a technique called daisy chaining. Daisy chaining is a wiring scheme that consists of jumpering a wire off of each connector so that the ground signal will carry over to the next connector. We’ll talk more about daisy chaining when we talk about control panel wiring.

JAMMA wired arcade cabinets take the work out of switching boards between cabinets. In face, the majority of the arcade games that you see today are wired using the JAMMA standard. Knowing the JAMMA standard will carry you far in your arcade repair endeavors. Please leave any questions or suggestion in our comments section below.