Buying advice needed: Off Road Arcade Cab

jgreene

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Looking for some advice on buying an Ivan Stewart's Off Road arcade game. I've restored 4 pinball machines, but this will be my first dedicated arcade cabinet.

The game is a 3 player standup cabinet. The seller said the cabinet was in good condition and the game worked fine - except the monitor which was pulled (he said sync problem?).

Any advice for a pinball guy on common issues or things to check for with arcade cabinets? I'm assuming that if I power the game on without a monitor I should hear it boot up?

Thanks!
Jim
 
You should be able to coin it up and play it without seeing anything on the screen, you should still be able to hear the game sounds. If this isn't a cheapo $100-$150 deal (and he has a bunch of other games sitting around) then ask the seller to put it back to back with another game and show it running on the other game's monitor.

Try to get the pulled monitor in the deal anyway if you can. If not you can build a new one with an 8 liners chassis and a 25" tv (I believe that game had a 25" monitor).
 
Thanks, sounds like the guy is an operator of some sort. He mentioned having other non-working monitors to throw in on the deal.

Any opinions on doing an LCD conversion for these games? I have an old LCD PC monitor that I was thinking of putting in it. I've seen the conversion cards to VGA for like $40.
 
I'm no expert but off road is a pretty big cab with a faily big monitor(at least a 25 inch if I remember this from the 90s correctly). If I knew more of what I was doing I'd take that thing on since it's one of my favorite arcade games of all time.(but I have no idea where I'd put that thing)

I'd see if he has the original and if you know more than me you might could rebuild it/recap it. Other than that spare arcade monitors seem to be around for the asking if all it does is play blind...
 
It uses a 25" CGA monitor. The cabinet is HUGE, but the pedals and steering wheel sections do remove pretty easy. Even that, the cab is still a beast.
Installing a 26" LCD probably wouldn't look too bad, but I would try to get one of those 25" CGA CRT monitors to repair.
It's a fun game, but you must have friends to play it with. Not much fun playing the computer.
 
Some people think they have monitor issues and they really have board issues.
And nobody fixes these boards,and nobody will sell their spare.

THis cab is a big worthless piece of shit if you have a board problem.
 
After reading some on the LCD conversions it sounds like they are not the way to go.

Are LCDs frowned on because is the video quality is poor? Or they just a hassle to do?
 
I had not heard anything on the boards yet.

Is there something that makes these boards different or hard to work with that no one does repairs?
 
After reading some on the LCD conversions it sounds like they are not the way to go.

Are LCDs frowned on because is the video quality is poor? Or they just a hassle to do?

Fixed-pixel monitors (LCD) are poor at displaying low resolutions, they are built to display 1680x1050 (or similar) and anything else must be "blown up" to fill the screen. Analog CRT can display a plethora of resolutions with more pleasing visual results.
 
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