Shortly before Christmas, the 48-in-1 multicade arcade machine I had set up in the kitchen died. I didn’t even get the satisfaction of letting the smoke out of the thing. It just quit working.<\/p>\n

Whenever troubleshooting an arcade machine, start at the beginning — power. My machine plugs into a power strip that plugs into the wall. I knew the wall outlet was good, so I tested the power strip using my multimeter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

116 volts — perfect. The next place to check power is at the power supply itself. Most switching power supplies put out +5, -5, and +12 volts. The board runs off of the +5v, so I checked that first.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For you math nerds, +2.28 is less than +5. I checked the +12v lead and it was putting out just under +6v. This power supply was toast. Fortunately, out in the garage, I had a spare.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With the new power supply connected to the wall, I checked the +5v rail. +5.07 — perfect! The +12v also looked great. With the two power supplies side by side, I transferred each connection (one by one) from the old power supply to the new one. After all the wires were connected to the new power supply, I removed the old one and mounted the new one into the machine.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Success! While I was inside the cabinet I took the opportunity to clean out the bottom of it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Those are some of the tokens and coins I found lying around. I also found the cabinet’s original serial number.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Originally, this cabinet was a Williams Robotron, serial number 567487.<\/p>\n

While I was in the mood, I did one other cheap upgrade as well.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The bezel around the monitor doesn’t match up very well. The original monitor had died and I replaced it with a computer monitor. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Susan found these sheets of poster board that fade between colors. She picked up two sheets: yellow-to-pink, and blue-to-green. Either one would match the color scheme on this cabinet’s marquee and control panel, so I decided to go with the yellow-to-pink one. I spent five minutes cutting the square out of the middle using a ruler and a razor blade and trimming the edges down with a pair of scissors. If I upgrade to a larger monitor, I’ll make the hole bigger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly before Christmas, the 48-in-1 multicade arcade machine I had set up in the kitchen died. I didn’t even get the satisfaction of letting the smoke out of the thing. It just quit working. Whenever troubleshooting an arcade machine, start at the beginning — power. My machine plugs into a power strip that plugs into the wall. I knew the wall outlet was good, so I tested the power strip using my multimeter. 116 volts — perfect. The next place to check power is at the power supply itself. Most switching power supplies put out +5, -5, and +12 volts.… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}