Arcade games and bad caps...

[Maxxarcade]

I work in the amusement industry as a coin-op repair tech. I wanted to give some of my stories on bad caps. The situation got much worse than just one or two machines. I stumbled across Badcaps.net and now I know I'm not alone. I hope this never happens again. We all need to be able to depend on our computers and other equipment.

1. Merit Megatouch Radion and EVO games with the ECS P6IWP-Fe motherboards. Failed after 2 years or so. Also these boards get quite warm in the poorly ventilated cabinets.

2. Merit Megatouch Maxx games with the Unicorn Computer ENDAT-5701 motherboards. These are coming in left and right with bad caps after a couple years of operation. I've probably recapped about 40 of them now. Caps were marked "GL" and were green with a gold stripe.

3. Star Wars Episode 1, Pinball 2000 pinball game. Bad caps on the motherboard was making it unstable. Works like new after recap. AT-style power supply also had bad caps. I was amazed the board survived and is working so well now.

4. "Pump It Up" dance game. Poor stability was making this one troublesome for us. I finally took the boards out of the cage and found bad caps. Works like a charm now.

5. Enhance brand power supplies used in Merit Megatouch games. The small form factor ATX power supplies that are rated at 110 watts. Every single cap goes bad in these, including the small ones on the control card. Especially the earlier ones with the cheap fans that always froze up.

I probably could have filled a small garbage can with all the bad caps I've had around here. And this goes to show it's not limited to a couple boards or manufacturers.

[linuxguru]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Enhance is a good PSU brand, although they use Jamicon, Capxon and so on. The cap failures are probably a consequence of over-heating due to fan failure.

[willawake]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

can you get some pics of badcaps on arcade boards, i dont think we have seen them here before.

[kc8adu]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

i see a lot of the same.i have a huge boxfull of psu from igt slots to recap.
i recap a ton of mobo's for a gambling equipment dealer too.
remember most of these machines are run 24/7/365 in nasty places.smoke,spilled drinks,heat buildup,ect.
stupid to spec lowest bidder mobo's for these machines.
now i expect to totally recap a classic like my cocktail table pacman.i replaced every lytic in it and the very weak crt.
like a new one now.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Of course there are always the common cap failures in these games from the rough conditions, but all the ones I was referring to were games based on PC hardware that had the defective caps on the motherboards due to the bad electrolyte formula.

And you are correct, Enhance is normally a good power supply. We just had a really big batch of them that had defective caps. Later they started using different caps, and from that point all failures were heat related.

If you want to know what some long lifetime for a cap is, we have had quite a few of the original video monitors for the games that have run for over 20 years basically 24x7 on the original factory caps. Of course the performance was better with fresh caps, but they were still going. I've seen monitors with the Pac-Man maze burned black into the CRT that still otherwise had a good picture.

[kc8adu]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Of course there are always the common cap failures in these games from the rough conditions, but all the ones I was referring to were games based on PC hardware that had the defective caps on the motherboards due to the bad electrolyte formula.

And you are correct, Enhance is normally a good power supply. We just had a really big batch of them that had defective caps. Later they started using different caps, and from that point all failures were heat related.

If you want to know what some long lifetime for a cap is, we have had quite a few of the original video monitors for the games that have run for over 20 years basically 24x7 on the original factory caps. Of course the performance was better with fresh caps, but they were still going. I've seen monitors with the Pac-Man maze burned black into the CRT that still otherwise had a good picture.

have a wg from a pacman on the bench now.amazing thing is the zenith tube has real bad burn in but still tests and looks new.
most of these tubes went gassy or shorted in the first 2 years.
a few caps and good as new.i still buy teknika tv sets built by wg to mine for parts.
most still work fine unless they have the zenith tube.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

I agree, Zenith tubes are troublesome. Especially the 25-27" ones made in the early to mid 90's that were used in the Wells Gardner monitors. The guns are weaker than anything I've ever seen.

Probably the most reliable ones are the Wells 4900's and Electrohome G07's with the RCA tubes. We have a few games here that have the most horrible burn and are still running.

Also the Wells 4900 is one of the few monitors I have never changed a flyback on.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Here's a recapped Megatouch board:

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Here's the Star Wars pinball 2000 board with bad caps. Hard to see in the picture though.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Here's a pic of a really toasted tube that came out of a game with around 175,000 or so hours on it. The monitor had all the original caps on it and it finally started to die out after 20+ years of continuous operation in a bar.

The best part is, the tube still had a good picture aside from the burn. RCA made good tubes back then. I recapped the board and replaced the tube with one from a TV I picked out of the trash, and it looks like new now.

I can understand the non-moving parts of the display burning in, but this one even burned in paths from the moving objects.

[arneson]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

I can understand the non-moving parts of the display burning in, but this one even burned in paths from the moving objects.

Hey that old tube has ccfl backlight I see from your pic.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Ha! Even if it was, no ccfl could ever touch the lifetime of a good ol' crt

I also just noticed you can see the reflection of the recapped monitor with the new crt, running for testing behind me.

[japlytic]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Keep in mind about CRTs being a safety critical component in terms of radiation shielding. They should be carefully substituted with units of identical or better characteristics.

The power supplies in some arcade machines (as well as capacitors on logic boards) are not rated for continuous operation - all to bad designs, especially those which are poorly ventillated.

[Shroomie]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

Oh look...the Star Wars board has an L&C power supply. No wonder it died...

It's weird how much it looks like an AT PC. The other one, not so much, though.

[kc8adu]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

heres some good burnin.
a shame i didnt snap a pic of the one from an igt poker.
was so bad the phosphor was peeling like old paint!

[Tom41]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

I've frequently seen arcade games with the INSERT COIN message badly burnt into the CRT. The problem seems to occur most on the projection CRT monitors, but also on standard CRTs. I've even seen the INSERT COIN message burnt on the newer plasma displays used in games such as House of the Dead 4.

Incidentally, the plasma screen can't be 'read' by the gun in the same way as CRTs, so they have to put small IR-LEDs around the screen - but that's another story.

I've attached a picture of the monitor from an original Pong game that was on display in a museum. It was actually switched on while I took the picture, but because of the flash the camera's exposure was drastically shortened. Therefore, not much of the actual image was shown - but the burn is clear to see.
Being Pong, I'm sure this wasn't the original B/W CRT that came with the cabinet; it would have long since failed. But still, being on for all the time the museum is open has taken its toll on the replacement screen.

Speaking of bad caps, I haven't actually SEEN any in arcade games but I'm sure I've seen symptoms before! I saw one game that only booted up properly every 4th or 5th time, and often froze in mid-game. Another one was doing a ROM test error on startup, with a different ROM failing each time!

I wonder what would happen if the caps went bad inside a one-arm-bandit machine? Would it keep paying out indefinitely? Would you spin a win and it not register? Probably the worst thing that would happen is you'd put your money in, then the game would reboot and reset the credits to 0.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

It could be the original CRT; we have quite a few b/w games from the 70's (space invaders, asteroids, pong/hockey, atari football etc) that still have the original CRT's in them, and they are burned just like that. We have an Asteroids here that actually has spots where the phosphor fell off the glass in the burned spots, and it still has decent brightness on the good phosphor.

Projection displays do burn much faster though because of how bright the CRT's have to be. The on-time and the fact that the cooling fluid can only dissipate so much heat in the poorly ventilated cabinets doesn't help either.

As for plasma, I've heard they actually burn faster than most regular CRT's do...

[japlytic]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

I bought a Kortek video monitor (1987) from a local junk shop for parts, and the 680uF 200V Samyoung input capacitor had a bulged plastic cover. Upon removal of this cover, it revealed that the vent has not bulged, but removing this unit from the board revealed that it had leaked.

The Nippon Chemi-Con electrolytic capacitors I would recommend for arcade monitors are KZM (=<50V), KY (63-100V), KXJ (=>160V) and for snap-in units, LXM (160-450V).
Polymer units specified for certain supply rails should also be long life units.
Note these are long life units, because of the reason I mentioned earlier in this thread.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

IIRC, I saw the game Vapor TRX crash repeatedly before at a place!

The symptoms looked just like a bad overclock!

It would go to a black screen that looked like error information, (I think it also mentioned a register, "EIX", "EIP", etc.) just like a PC crash! O_O (Like when Duke Nukem 3D crashed on me in the past)

Or it freezes.

[pun84]

Re: Arcade games and bad caps...

About those ENHANCE psu's in the Megatouch EVO's

You've gotta be careful with them because, even when recapped and the fan replaced.. i've had the TL494 PWM chip fail on me, or parts associated with the circuit.. and the power supply starts putting out about 10+VDC on the +5 line.. and around 30V on the +12 output...

Fried a couple hard drives and touchscreens... not sure why the overcurrent protection circuit wouldn't kick in..