Monitor Replacement Part 2

Ugh that monitor has been the bane of the project from day 1.  All the other stuff has been borderline ignorable, but you just can't play the damn game unless you can see it, can you?

Finally found a replacement CRT arcade monitor on ebay for about $300.  Had to drive out to the middle of San Bernardino to an abandoned warehouse to get it...

Everything looked good and new.  Problem was the NeoGeo cabinet is a really tight space to fit a standard 25" monitor.  Some adjustments had to be made...

The frame was about an inch too tall, but could be brought down easy enough with some bending and drilling:

The cabinet itself needed a few minor modifications as well.  The grooves for the frame needed to be moved and the bottom part behind the bezel was literally 1 or 2 millimeters too big and had to be sanded down.

Had some help jaaaaammmmming it into the slot and it finally settled into place.  Set the jumpers on the back to 15Mhz (CGA mode), wired the jamma connectors to the inputs and amazingly the thing came up.  I still need to adjust the monitor settings (colors are a bit off, picture is a bit distorted, need to play around with things), but overall its a huge improvement.

Removing / Cleaning the Game System

While the monitor was out, I took this opportunity to clean up the system hardware.  Most of the extraction was pretty straightforward - the 20 year old screws getting stuck and stripped was probably the hardest part of the ordeal.  Here are some pics:

One of the first things you should do if you ever happen to come across one of these dinosaurs, is to rip out the old NiCd backup battery.  Really it doesn't have any important purpose besides saving game, hardware and coin counter settings in between power cycles, though the risk of your contacts becoming corroded makes at least taking it out worth the effort.  The battery for the 4 slot MVS is soldered to the bottom board, note the orange cylinder:

Pull off the glue around it to loosen the battery, then desolder the contacts on the bottom, it should pull straight out like so:

The battery seems fine on the top, but the bottom side tells a different story.

You don't actually need to replace the battery, but for the sake of completion (and hating to reselect my game / clock settings), I figured I may as well.  Any 3.6V NiCd or NiMh rechargeable battery will do.  You can use a standard PC clock battery as well, but will need to remove some motherboard components to prevent it from being charged up while the system is on.  I opted for a cheap phone battery I found at Frys:

Strip the ends and solder to the contacts on the motherboard and you're done.  Nothing fancy.

Cleaned between all the chips and components with some q-tips and paper towels, screwed it back into place and it was ready for action.

Monitor Replacement Part 1

Getting anybody on board to look at or repair the monitor seems to be more of a hassle than its worth, so in the interest of having something working that I know the history of, I've decided to replace the entire monitor outright.  Probably not such a bad idea given that the current components are 20+ years old at this point.

So here's the machine with the front bezel removed.  There are only about 6 phillips screws holding the monitor in place on the cabinet frame.  Pop these off, unplug the power in back and the console connector cable and you're ready to go.  Also, if you haven't already, don't forget to discharge the monitor by grounding a wire and sticking the other end under the suction cup near the top of the flyback.  Likely won't kill you if you don't but you may get a nasty shock.  I'd recommend unplugging the power supply, turning the power switch on and not using the monitor for a couple days prior to doing this just to be on the safe side.

There are some tiny wooden bars on either side of the monitor, probably to keep the bezel graphics in place.  Take these off before trying to pull the monitor out, you'll get an extra couple inches of wiggle room.

Now you can pop that bad boy out and swap in your working hardware.  Still waiting for the replacement to be delivered so this will give me some time to clean out the back parts of the cabinet, the game console and possibly do some quick and dirty paint job for the sides and top.

Marquee and Console Finished

Surprisingly, there weren't too many problems with getting everything set up and wired back into place.  All the switches seem to be working properly, the new power supply is running fine, even the marquee lit up the first time (pics on this later).  Now the only thing left is to address the elephant in the room - the busted old CRT which has decided to now start making some serious crackling noises.  I thought it was a good idea to turn it off till I could get it serviced.

LED coin counters for the console:

Wires are finally labeled, cleaned and organized.  All plugged in.

New power supply to replace the old lawnmower

Wired into the isolated transformer for the monitor, game system, and on/off switch

It must be played!  But I'd rather not blow up the monitor and burn the house down.

Shiny

Marquee Repair

The neogeo marquee is unique in that the cabinets are designed to have multiple games played on them.  The game that's currently being played was lit up using a piece of electroluminescent paper rather than an LED or phosphorous bulb.  The advantage of this is an evenly distributed backlighting for the highlighted game, the disadvantage is the relatively short shelf life of the EL paper, it being prone to malfunctioning (buzzing noises) and the high voltage inverter required to power the panels.  None of the panels on my marquee are lighting and I'm inclined to believe the problem is related to the panels themselves rather than the inverter.

Here is the marquee:

marquee removed revealing MVS EL board

closeup

circuit board removed

Behind this panel is the Electroluminescent Inverter - provides the panels with a high voltage but low current that they need to operate.

Panels off, you can see the speakers that come down from the top of the marquee.  Had to scrub this area out too...

Whats this?  More metal bits to hold the marquee in place?  Better sand and paint those while I'm at it...

Painted the screws visible on the cabinet exterior as well.

Back to the light panels...  I found some here for a reasonable price.  They are slightly larger than the ones already in the cabinet but should get the job done.  I think you're able to cut the panel to fit the exact size of the marquee if need be, but I'll wait to see if they even work properly before messing around with them much more than I already have.

New panel

A little bit bigger than the original...

Almost done...

Hooray

Repairing the Console

Since it was the most obviously messy portion of the cabinet, not to mention one of the few parts I was incentivized to even do anything about, I decided to work on the console first.  The buttons and joysticks detached easily enough from the bottom, some screws for the joysticks were hastily attached and or missing / corroded beyond recovery.  Had to stop by home depot to pick up replacement nuts and washers.

The neogeo cabinets have a controller card under the joystick port which allows you to use a memory card I assume worked with the home systems as well.  It has earphone ports too which I had tested before hand and still miraculously work.  I have no way of trying out the memory card slot, though I may as well clean off the contacts and leads on the interface card while I'm at it.

Each microswitch requires two wires running through it to complete the connection to the console.  Took me a few hours to label every one properly for easy access later.  Finally I was able to pull off the metal console and start sanding.

I used a fine grain sandpaper and pulled off as much of the rust and paint as I could.  Don't forget to wear a mask for this, the paint is lead and smells / tastes bad.  Also, lead poisoning.

sandin sandin sandin...

When I was mostly happy with the results, I set it aside and made some room for spray painting.  This step is simple enough.  Be sure to use a primer and paint that match and work on a metal surface.  I did one coat of primer and one coat of black glossy paint.  The real trick to doing it right is to keep moving the can back and forth, never paint for more than a split second in the same spot or it will clump and drip down the side.  If you miss a spot, go back and forth over it in a sweeping motion till the spot is covered even if this means wasting more paint.  Also, don't use ancient paint cans of mysterious origin.  The gas dissipates after a few years and won't work - its only about $4 a can anyway, so don't be cheap.

Finished product.

With new buttons and plastic console cover.