arctic thunder: no signal in

Arcfan

New member
Joined
Jun 6, 2011
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Location
Florida
First time posting for general repair so please disregard my ignorance on these types of repairs! I have twin sit down arctic thunders and one unit now only displays "no signal in" on the monitor when booted up. I checked the obvious areas and noticed there are no boards lit up behind the back panel and the computer tower is not powered up (like on the working one). There is one board inside the seat that does light up (red lights; seems normal). My first thought is a bad power supply as I noticed there are 2 maybe three in the entire cabinet. Any other thoughts? Lastly, does anyone know of a reliable and reasonable repair guy in the greater cincinnati/northern KY area?

Thanks in advance!!
 
It is displaying "no signal" because the computer is not booted up. The one I service in a local theater had this problem a little over a year ago. It turned out to have bad electrolytic capacitors on the computer motherboard. Replacing those solved the problem and the computer booted right up and has been running perfectly fine ever since.

Fortunately, this game uses a computer motherboard that was soldered with normal solder so replacing the capacitors was easy with conventional desoldering equipment.
 
My Beachhead 2000 game was displaying no signal because the PC inside was not powering on. I had to replace the PC's power supply and then it powered up fine.
 
Well, I took apart the computer tower and noticed the power supply did not look like a typical power supply you buy off the shelf. Can you use a regular computer power supply to replace the existing one (given the wattage is the same or bigger)? I noticed the power supply in the tower said 150W and I believe 250 W max. It was marked Unisan switching power supply on the bottom of the supply casing. I have a voltmeter but really do not know how to properly test the current power supply to see if it is the problem. I have a feeling it is the power supply given that nothing else lights up in computer and the boards on the side of cabinet are not lit up either.

What about wiring? The connectors looked similar to ones on a common computer power supply but it looked like the power supply was hard wired into the AC power cord connector on the face of the tower. Also, the amount of connectors coming from the supply looked like a lot more than what you find in a typical power supply. Am I missing something?
 
It would be easier if you posted a picture of what you are looking at.

Are you for sure that the power supply is the problem? I would test it first. Power it straight from a wall socket, make sure the power supply's power switch is engaged. Try testing for power at the hard drive plug. Should be a 4 wire jack(2 black, 1 yellow, 1 red wire) Black wire should be negative and red should be +5V. See if you get power first. Also if power supply has a fan does it spin? If the power supply works, then you have other problems.

From what I remember, the Arctic Thunder uses a standard PC AT power supply 250watts, not a ATX power supply. You can grab one of those from a PC made prior of about 1998. If not, they are probably plentiful on ebay.

When replacing it, make sure to get one of equal or greater wattage.
 
That is probably why I don't recognize the PS casing. It does have a fan on the PS casing and the tower itself and nothing is booting up in the tower or the boards on the side of the inner cabinet (except the board under the seat). I believe the wire jack/connector is 2 black, yellow and red. I will check again to be sure.

I may swap the other PS out into this unit (I have twin units). While I don't want to take apart a perfectly working system, this is the obvious way to confirm whether it is the PS outside of testing with a voltmeter. I'll try to post some pics of the PS from my phone into this thread later tonight. If I end up swapping the PS, does it make any difference which power jack/connectors are used to hook up HD and other boards so as long as the connectors match?
 
If I end up swapping the PS, does it make any difference which power jack/connectors are used to hook up HD and other boards so as long as the connectors match?

No, it doesn't matter which connectors you use as long as they fit.

I would just try swapping your known good power supply into your dead PC. It would speed up your diagnostic work.
 
Back
Top Bottom