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Afterburner Deluxe - Repair and Restore Log
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13-01-2022 4:24pm#1
So after years of contemplating whether to get my dream/ grail of all grail cabinets or not, finally it felt like it was the right time to purchase one after selling a few other cabinets. These only come up for sale maybe once a year or maybe slightly more than that but usually are not very feasible as most of the remaining ones are all in the US and come up in varying conditions. This one too was in the US, but given it's in fairly good condition (rust-free, artwork mostly fairly intact, all parts there) and after working out a plan to ship it (since it's huge and weighs just under half a tonne), I decided it was now or never and took the plunge. It's very rare and it's even more rare one comes up in decent shape structurally without been stripped of parts. It's very solid, the minor rust under it seems to be surface rust and the shell is almost fully rust-free, along with the hydraulics, bearings and electrics looking in fairly good shape. Got a decent deal on it as they often go for crazy money now but when adding in the price of shipping and everything it certainly wasn't cheap either, I'm keeping it in temperature-controlled storage at the minute. I've tested a couple of bits on it and it takes power (needs a big step down as is 1000w 110v), has some of its lights working, CRT thankfully works (as you can see in the photo I've upped the brightness for testing) along with it seems some of the boards in it are working, power supply and a few other bits seem okay.
The Restore
So restoration wise, it needs the following: New Bezel (bezel is cracked), New Cashbox/ Coin Tower, Warning Lights (inside the cockpit) repro, Front Artwork (apparently tore when storing something on top of it), Some Stickers (warning stickers), Paint in one or two spots and an investigation into the board. There's a few other pieces of artwork that I may touch up (a little bit of the art on the side from the rolling motion has faded a little) and a few other bits and pieces but are not my main focus for now.
The board lights up takes power and has lights on, my concern is that there are some Custom IC's on it, once they are dead it's often game over for the board as parts are difficult to find, I know of only 2 people repair these boards still, if anyone has a Sega X Board (Afterburner, Standard or DLX, Thunerblade, Super Monico GP) that is working (or even not working, I could combine the chips off both boards) and is willing to sell me it let me know!
Another issue is the fact there are so few still left, I don't know of many people with these and with everything in perfect/ very good condition on it, getting the art scanned in high quality has been an issue, I have instead tried edit and repro the art myself (splicing images and my own photos together) + recreating parts. They're a work in progress but look decent, I may end up going with these.
So yes, there's still a good bit of work needed on repro'ing each but it's definitely a start, anyone I've asked hasn't provided a decent scan or haven't had a decent looking machine to begin with so I've decided to open up Photoshop and do my best, I think with a few more hours work they'll turn out okay, if anyone else does have one please let me know as a fresh scan would be appreciated! The warning lights are going to be difficult to repro as I don't have a clear image of them anywhere, and very little remains of the original casing. I will probably LED the warning lights on it too as I have no idea what type of Bulbs fit it (may be in the manual), I will leave the light casing there anyway in case I ever want to go back.
I found this cool, TV outputs for operators back in the day. I suppose considering they cost $6500 brand new (15k in today's money adjusted for inflation), they'd have to have features like that, just never seen it on a cab before.
As for the coin tower, if anyone has one (also found on other DLX cabinets like rad mobile I believe), please let me know if it's for sale or if not measurements would be great! I plan to repro this too if not (3D printer will be used).
I'll update the thread whenever I make more progress! Should be an interesting read and helpful for anyone why goes down this route down the line, if anyone reading this has one and ever needs anything measured, scanned, or anything at all just ask!
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Thanks all! It is very doable, my only main fear is the board repair if needed, it looks like it will need to be repaired and surface mount stuff is not in my skillset nor do I have the spare custom ICs. If anyone here can help with anything it would be much appreciated. I have a guy which looks like he can do it board wise, but otherwise it's going to have to be a mame approach, I just hope if so the motor control board takes analog inputs for motion, not digital as I would potentially need to rework this board if so.
Yeah have a unit for it at the moment, as yes that is the plan! Anything that's not been used in Level Up or anywhere else, for the time being, is being moved into the unit, probably over the next week or so (although some are projects so won't look this nice initially anyway). Will make it a lot handier to do repairs too as I will have plenty of space by shimy-ing just 2 machines around. I've actually mapped out the unit's dimensions on Sketchup (as it has accurate drawings and dimensions of each cab) and the collection I have so it should comfortably fit about 14/15 machines, although have another few elsewhere and a few from the states on the way so will have to move on a few at some stage. Bought a nice 2400 watt step down transformer too should cover a lot of games. Would definitely recommend doing that if you want your own mini-arcade for relatively cheap renatal space.
Yeah, it would definitely be something cool to operate somewhere down the line, I hate the idea of hoarding machines just for yourself, especially super rare machines. Either for a special few days at the arcade or a convention or something. And yes that is true, luckily I have had a few friends who have had a van so far for some items, but the weight and size of the thing is not much less than my own car an 03' Toyota Yaris so I have some hope of transporting it in that! 😀
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Yeah I suppose that's true, although my thinking would be dlx support Rom probably wouldn't be included in mame as it mightn't work with the motor test.
Cheers! Its a fantastic game, I suppose it was probably now or never for it but a bit of a risky investment as cabs are sky high at the minute!
I suppose depends what your definition of big is, i.e. big as in Afterburner like the size of 3 or 4 regular cabs, or big as in feck I need to double the size of the arcade to squeeze this one extra game in like Virtual Formula or Ridge Racer Full Scale or that Initial D huge simulator in Joyopolis! Does someone actually have one here? Crazy if so
Moved a few more stuff in too into the unit too this eve, starting to come together
Post edited by dav09 on1 -
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So it's been 4 months since my last update, so it's been long overdue an update. With other projects and priorities, I haven't spend as much time on it as I would have liked. BUT over the past few days I've been working hard on it again, and I'm delighted to say I was able to fix the PCB and most of the cabinet! Besides aesthetics of course, those are a whole separate issue.
(I had already cleaned the filter board above, but photos below of how it looked before).
So for the cabinet issues, nearly every single cable had been plugged out. I think this is because the previous owner told me that he had a problem with it tripping the trip switch (but I haven't had this issue). So I had to plug everything in again and find all the loose connections and everything. It's difficult to know what had been done to this, as far as I know, at least the last 2 previous owners couldn't fix this and couldn't get it running so there was all sorts of things plugged out and ripped out. So I've now fixed most of the connections, sound, controls, lights, etc are all working now. I ended up getting it for an amazing price because of this (although shipping was the killer) but I didn't know of all of these issues, I just knew it was a big project.
Okay next... The big one. The main PCB. So these PCBs are famous for their big custom IC chips, if they fail you're pretty much screwed. There's a couple of these, and after first glance of the board I really thought this board was a non-runner. It was filthy, looked somewhat corroded at a glance in parts. Also, removing the thing was difficult, according to the manual, the whole board it sits on can be removed, but I couldn't get any screwdriver down that far. So I had to remove the PCB from the cage, and had to come up with my own contraption to remove two screws as the base of the rolling part is only inches away, took me an hour to remove those last two screws and work in a really confined area as the unit has very little space (it's literally almost touching the wall as you can see above, really tight space to remove it from).
(It was actually worse than how the picture looks, i had already applied some isopropyl alcohol already at this point, more like the filter board above).
But, I reached out to Ken at irepairsega asking about the PCBs and he indicated that only really the custom IC3 15-5211A have started going bad, others are generally okay. So I thought it was worth a shot taking a look at the board. I tested some of the components and they seemed okay. I'm no good at testing ICs and ROMs so those weren't tested. I spent a few hours cleaning it as it came back really good! Some traces were really caked in dirt really badly. But time and effort and the board was looking almost as good a new! No visible traces damaged which is a relief as apparently the Sega X board was known traces being damaged easily. Believe it or not the dirt/dust seemed to preserve the board somewhat, no corrosion whatsoever. As it visually looks really good with no rust or damage.
So I gave it a try. And boom! Straight away it came back to life.
So next I adjusted the monitor, the photo above was after adjustment, still has too much red above in the coner still or else just needs degaussing. But once the monitor was adjusted the game played great. (Some before and after images below). I had previously adjusted voltages too, so had it on the right voltage for it to work, not sure if someone had previously adjusted them or if the stepdown affected the HAPP power supply to have it slightly low.
Video of me testing (ignore my dodgy piloting skills, mostly testing controls!)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RKIHkO8pWzXLzYFdAs45SX9Yf-q-6HFK/view?usp=sharing
Right next up. The motion element. So thankfully, the motion is nearly working. The motors move and spin up, along with the motion PCBs, but might need a clean too although aren't as bad as the main PCB. The issue is the cabinet does not move much. I would say it's likely either oil, brushes, gears, bearings, etc. But I'm going to start with oil next, as all the visible stuff seems okay and the motor sounds healthy. Any type of oil recommended? Will WD40 do the trick? The motor power is on 1 in the menu settings but doesn't move enough in the test screen for me to adjust that up (it gives an error on test).
Anyway I'm very happy to be a person with a functional (or semi-functional) Afterburner DLX! The other issues will be sorted in time. I have some videos of me testing the game and controls. It's actually a really good game, forgot how good it was. This is a long term project so I'm not expecting it to be finished soon, but I know if I keep tipping away it will eventually be done, I'm in no mad rush. This cabinet I would say was sitting up a very long time by the looks of it, dust, dirt motion problems, etc. and I would say passed through many many hands, could easily be 10/20 years, so I'm glad to bring it back to life.
Post edited by dav09 on6 -
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So now onto the full motion. So looking at the motors and PCBs things looked okay but there were a couple of loose connections and the PCBs looked like a clean would do them good, so I cleaned both PCBs that have anything got to do with the motion drive. The main one being the Triac Drive board:
I'm not sure if the left and right pitch was working before, as it had a loose connection, but it certainly is now! I've only one more motor to get working before the cabinet is fully functional!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UWDGiV-Ocb0jteZCMWfh5U6hodp_duOt/view?usp=drivesdk
Now here's the kicker. The up/down roll motor did actually work, it seemed to not have much power, kept cutting out and I only tested it a few times, but I found that a piece of metal had jammed one of the guide wheels it was on. Once I got it out, I immediately tested it again and boom, the fuse blows on my step down (which surprised me as there are lots of circuit breaker on this). Immediately the game started up once the fuse had been replaced but the up/down motor did not show any sign of life after this like before.
So I have the scenario where my game needs just this one motor to be fully functional, left/right tilt working but up/down isn't. Has anyone here ever owned one of these or does anyone at all have any ideas? I'm thinking something possibly blew on the Triac PCB, I've checked the resistors and a few bits but not really sure how to test all the components. I know of someone who fixes these, but I don't want to send this without being sure. I have tried the circuit breakers, I might test to see if the motor is getting any power to them but that's probably unlikely.
One idea I have is to swap the left/right and up/down cables for the motors but no sure if this could damage anything, I know one is rated 6A and the other is 8A I believe.
Also, one of the triac chips are reading 19ohms while all the others are 29/30, could this just need a new one? I don't know a whole lot about these being honest, just reading from Google. Something I've also notice is this has been replaced before and is different from the 3 other chips. This is one of the up/down motor Triac chips too. But again, I don't know much about these.
Post edited by dav09 on1 -
