I got a new thing to add to the arcades I have now.
This is an OG Galaga arcade cabinet. Pretty well maintained. The artwork on the sides are not super scratched up or faded, OG control panel. Marquee seems original.
...there is a however, though.
First off, if you look at the pic, the screen is not original. It's an LCD screen. It's a nice NEC one, but it's obviously not the original CRT in it. I can let that slide, but it's way off center for my liking. That's one fix.
The next? It's not the original Galaga mainboard in it.
It's one of those iCade 60 in 1 JAMMA boards. It was set to only play Galaga, which is understandable, but everything in there, wiring wise, was a mess. Wires not properly terminated, just tied to a rail inside the cabinet itself, wiring to the controls were just stripped and stuck in to the Molex connectors, electrical tape covering any wire splices, just a mess.
There was no test button hooked up, but looking online for the board's manual, the DIP switches allowed me to go into test mode. When I was finally able to get into test mode, I had to figure out what loose wires did what. A little trial and error allowed me to open up the menu and change some settings, including opening up more games (that has left, right, and a single fire button) to play.
Sorry so blurry. This is the underside of the control panel. Original leaf switches. I tried taking the control panel out, but after releasing the clips, I found out that whoever owned this cabinet before selling it to the guy I got it from did a quick and dirty mod to make it work, including double sided taping the control panel to the main screen bezel. So I'm gonna have to cut through that tape, remove the residue, and figure out what is going on with the CP and why it had to be taped down like that.
I originally was gonna drill out the joystick hole and add 2 more button holes to this CP so I could play 4 way control games, but seeing how original it is, I'm going to get another CP that has everything and will fit perfectly in this cab. Since I'm going that route, I'm gonna have to get a new JAMMA harness to clean up the mess in there. The new CP that I was looking at also has a spot for a trackball, so I may add that as well so we can play Centipede and Millipede.
I'm also gonna have to change this out.
This is what's lighting up the marquee. The original florescent fixture is in there, so I may have to try and rewire that in.
This also bugs me.
That leads to the original power switch for the cabinet. Because this cabinet has an aftermarket, I'm gonna have to figure out how to wire this switch inline with that power supply.
If you're curious about the Nintendo Vs. cab, it's still a thing, although I've been tempted to just give up on it. I''ll probably revisit it again...maybe.
