Old Cabinet = New Project

Yesterday I was given an X-Men vs. Street Fighter cabinet (purchased by an acquaintance from a local arcade finally closing its doors after 30+ years). Despite the struggle transporting it to my house, it now resides nestled between my Dragon's Lair and Marvel Super Heroes cabinets.

And while I am certainly grateful for the donation, this cabinet is definitely in need of some TLC. After connecting a couple wire harnesses and hunting down a computer power supply cord, I observed the following:

The good - the marquee looks good and lit up immediately, the fans work (albeit a bit loud), the game booted flawlessly, the coin slots illuminate and accept quarters, and the player 1 button works (along with the top row of punch buttons).

The bad - a lot of buttons seem to not function (due to some rough control panel removals by the previous owner), the monitor colors look bad, and there's some concerning cabinet structural issues.

I removed the rear access panel to get a better look at the guts and noticed this:

Yep, this cabinet was originally Michael Jackson's Moonwalker manufactured by Sega in 1990.

In order to truly assess the workings, I need to run the "test" function. Unfortunately I can't even do that until I replace 3 of the 4 switches on the player 1 joystick. It seems that one is stuck (causing characters to jump constantly) and the other two appear to be completely shot. As much as I cringe at the thought, I may have to cannibalize my Marvel Super Heroes control panel - at least to determine the operational status. I'm not looking forward to running down the broken/disconnected wires. I'm also considering replacing the entire control panel board. Since the cabinet had numerous conversions, the control panel now looks like Swiss cheese.

The good news is that once I get the joystick functioning properly, its simple to access the test function directly from the JAMMA board.

This is my first JAMMA cabinet and I'm relatively excited. Its fairly simple to swap out the board and change the game. In fact, the JAMMA cover isn't X-Men vs. Street Fighter.

Additionally, the control panel is standard for Capcom. That means I could build a new one entirely with little effort.

As for the monitor, there's definitely an issue.

Once I can access the test function, I'll fiddle with the RGB settings. Right now I don't even want to think about the prospect of replacing the monitor. It also needs a good cleaning, but I don't think I'm qualified to be messing with high voltage equipment.

And ... that's all for now. Once I get the control panel up and running, I'll know a lot more. Updates to follow. With me luck!