Arcade Legends arcade machine can't boot up?

john rainbo

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I know this is the most vague question in the universe, but a friend of mine has an Arcade Legends arcade machine that just stopped working. It boots up and shows a crazy blue screen... he contacted the company and they had him first replace the battery in it, which (to no surprise) did NOT fix it. They then had him hook up a computer to it, and that came across with no errors, either. The next step is to have a tech of theirs come out and charge him a million billion dollars to fix it.

Anyone have any knowledge about these, or a website that could help diagnose this machine? If I'm not mistaken, it's a computer inside a cab, is it not? I want to swing by his house tomorrow to help him with it, but I'm not sure what I'll be looking at, here.

Thanks
 
Does he have the original install disk for it? if he didn't have any service packs added (or has the original jump drive packs to reinstall them) he can try to reinstall the system on the hard drive (assuming the hard drive is the issue). and it could be power supply related, too.

Yes, it is a computer inside...
 
If it is the original Arcade Legends, the computer is an Ultracade running the Joshua OS with some slight modifications made for Chicago Gaming. If I remember correctly the only modification was they disabled the coin-op function.

They sold these with either a standard arcade monitor or an off the shelf computer CRT.

If you have the version with the arcade monitor the video is passed through the I/O jamma board, plug in a computer monitor directly into the port on the back of the computer and see if you are getting the boot screen upon power up and see if the exhaust fan is running on the power supply.

I had this happen on 2 Ultracades. One time the I/O board went and the other was a bad power supply.

But since they are PC based, it could be anything.
 
I could probably help if I knew specifics. After you replace the battery, you have to reset BIOS settings on the computer. I had this done once by a pro, and it cost me an arm and a leg. Then I got all the information I needed to do it myself from someone at Chicago Gaming and if it happens again (and it will), I can do it myself. Not sure if you are experiencing the exact same thing I was, but it does sound similar.

It's an Arcade Legends 1 machine, right? (Doesn't have a 2 on the marquee graphic)

Let me know if you still need the help.
 
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Well, I went over there, hooked up a keyboard and monitor to it. Everything boots up fine. I can go into the bios screen. Everything there is set to the proper settings... nothing looks wrong. Then, when you reset it, the game just goes to a blue screen (video game screen) and that's it! Nothing. Just some blue screen that flickers and does nothing. Maybe it's his I/O board, or something?
 
Is it playing blind? If not, I'd suspect a bad HD image.

You can test the I/O board issue by hooking up a PC monitor to the computer to see if it boots to that. EDIT - saw you hooked up a PC monitor to get into the bios. Does it go to a blue screen on the PC monitor? If so, it's probably a bad HD image, or power to the HD...
 
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