The baby comes home

I was going to post this earlier but with finals going on I didn’t really have the time until now.

With the help of my sister and a friend, I was able get the cab home, but not with out incident.
Ever try an man handle a 300lbs+ arcade cabinate into a van, then into an apartment? Your bound to have a few crushed fingers, and a screaming back or two.

The first thing I did after getting it into the apartment was plug it in, and played a few bouts of Fatal Fury 2 and Alpha Mission II. Not because I wanted to (okay thats a lie, I did want to) but because I wanted to make sure everything survived the trek from the pawnshop to home. Also the built in hardware test was helpful too.

From there I did a survey of the machine and did a little cleaning. The cleaning was the hardest part, not because it was gross or horribly dirty, it just made me sad to kill a family of dust bunnies. However the bounty on their heads was just too great to pass up, $5 total in quarters that they where hoarding.

So here is a list of things that are wrong with the cab:

• The Speakers do not work.
  I’ve traced the cables and they all connect in to the Jamma harness. I’m going to try and replace them a bit later. Luckily for the time being, the Cab has head phone jacks so I’ve just plugged in a pair of external speakers.
• The coin mechs are fragged.
  One will not stay in place and both jam instantly on the insertion of a quarter. Also the switches seem to be broken as well they both seem to keep saying I’ve got a coin when they don’t. I’ll probably just out right replace them instead of trying to fix them.
• The Marquee light board doesn’t light up at all and makes this horrifing high pitched noise.
  This noise prompted my cats to stand on edge and hiss at the cab, and eventually attempt an attack on the noise source (that was fun to watch). Lightboard is unplugged for the time being but will eventually be replaced.
• The locks on the machine (all of them, coin box, back case, etc) are all busted up.
  They can’t be fixed and just need to be replaced.
• One of the floor stands is farked up.
  The wood mount point is hosed as well, I’m going to need to figure out how to fix that, but for now I just removed all the feet so it sits flat.
• The color Red bleeds a bit.
  I need to find out how to adjust the colors on the CRT.
• The Stickers are scratched up.
  Need to find replacement stickers.
• Two buttons where non responsive, along with a missing 2P joystick.
  They where easily replaced using the spare parts I got earlier. I plan on replacing the 1P stick as well as it is a tad slower to respond then the replacement 2P stick.

All in all, still not bad, I had done and initial survey of the cab when I first found it, and I thought it might have something horribly wrong with it, but I’m glad the worst things about it is that the floor stands and speakers are b0rked.

Heres a couple pics of the cab at home:

You can see all the pics of the Neo Geo so far in my image gallery.