buying games in non working order

starbuck77

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Hey guys, I saw in the for sale section some games in a warehouse complete but non-working. I have never brought a broken game before, how hard is it to figure out what the hell the problem is with it? Do I need all sorts of tools to diagnose the problems? Help would be appreciated
 
Non working games can be a blessing or a curse depends on who is selling them.
Buying non working games from a highly technical person means normally it not going to be an easy fix.
Buying a game from a non technical person gives you a better chance getting the game to work.
Some games have batteries that cause corrosion on the mother board. They are much harder to work on.
Some games are not repairable due to the damage that occurred when they died. Lighting strikes come to mind. High voltage to the pcb come to mind.
Some games are rare enough and valuable enough to spend enough time on them to repair them. Some are just not.

http://www.arcade-classics.com/exidy_arcade_price_guide.html

Is a rough guide on the value on these machine. Condition is important so is the serial number. A low serial game can be worth more. Do a complete auction check on ebay to see some of the values..

If you do want to learn how to fix these games, have some basic electronic skills is important o have. See if you can find someone local to give you hand.

Do not go into repairing thinking your going to save money. Sometime it cost you way too much in time to repair an item. You will end up working of less than minimum wage.

If you just want to learn you will need Dvm, logic probe, esr meter and a scope will all help you in repairing arcade machine.

Oh yea an a soldering iron to remove and replace parts..

I hope this helps..
 
Buying games dead and fixing them is awesome. How else are you going to get them cheap? You can keep them to play, or sell them to raise cash for other games.

The nice thing about these games is that the fixes scale to whatever your skill set is. They were designed to be repaired in the field by non-technical people, so most things are modular. If you can use a screwdriver and know how to work the on/off switch, you can swap around PCBs, power supplies, monitors, etc until you have a working game. With a bit of knowledge, a $20 soldering iron and a $15 soldapullt, you can repair lots of boards.

Some flip sides to Alpha-tron's points. People who are technical and selling non-working games generally sell them cheap (free-$50-$100), while the general public still thinks a dead game is made of gold and worth $1000.

My advice is to do it unless you don't think you can get your money back somehow. Maybe you can't fix it and you sell it to someone else in the hobby for what you paid, or maybe part it out to keep other machines alive. Most games $100 and below pay for themselves somehow.
 
I Still lean towards buying games from non technical people. A well run operations might tend to salvage parts to keep their route working. running across one of these machines, The machine might have multiple problems. If you are lucky the parts in the machine will have little serial number stickers. So you can tell if Parts have been replaced.

Normally with non technical people One thing breaks and it ends up sitting.

There are some really nice technical people who will sell you a game cheap and point you in the right direction to either to get it repaired or fixed. This is more the norm. If you tell the technical person that your trying to learn to do your own repairs. He or she will tend to give you a straight answer about what is wrong with the machine your buying.

But every once in a while you will run across someone who more than willing to sell you a cab of junk parts.

Use your best judgement and do your research.
and try to have fun..
 
As I'm sure you know, this is a very broad question. Some really ARE just a fuse (most claim to be), others involve intricate board repairs. In summation, I would say to only buy them if you ENJOY working on them. If you're doing it to try to save a buck, you're essentially just gambling, and in the long run you'll probably net out fairly close to even with buying working machines, and you'll have had to spend countless hours troubleshooting and repairing to get there.

If you enjoy the journey, though, that is what this hobby is all about - there is satisfaction in bringing games back from the brink. Over time I've grown to enjoy repairing games almost more than I do playing them.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. It's just a little intimidating buying something that I know will not work, and to figure out the problem, without any starting point as to what the problems could be, and not really having the tools to begin the troubleshooting. I understand that just comes with time. I'm confident in my ablility to get them fixed, I just haven't done it yet so it will be a lot of trial and error.
 
I've only been in this hobby less than a year and I've realized buying nonworking games is a crap shoot. Luckily for me I've had more good experiences than bad but the bad ones happen.

Sometimes you buy a nonworking vector, get it home, fix some loose connections, and you're playing just moments later!

Other times, you go over and over a game only to realize after several advil later the game wasn't worth all the time you've put in.

If you simply enjoy playing the games then I'd stick to working games only. If you enjoy the repair process and the sense of accomplishment from repairing games then start picking up nonworking games.
 
Yeah, just make sure you price some of the unknowns into the game. Know what the parts are worth and whether you can get that money back by selling.

I've been pretty lucky with non-working games. Had a Raiden Fighters Jet I got dead. Swapped out the power supply, tweaked the monitor sync and it was great. Recently grabbed a MVS-4 for $100. Recapped and rejuved the monitor and it's playing just fine now.

If you haven't fixed games before j don't know if I'd buy a bunch of dead games. But one or two are good to screw around with and learn on.
 
I'm only about 18 months into the hobby and have two non-working games under my belt. One an Arkanoid and one a Flash pinball machine. Arkanoid was simple - just a new power supply and you could play. It has since needed a cap-kit, new marquee light, and a few other minor things. This was a good introduction to some of the "basics" of the hobby for arcades. Since the cabinet was only $80 to begin with I feel I'm way ahead on this one.

The Flash pinball is a whole other story. I knew this was going to be a tough one - it was scavenged for parts, so I have had to find many of the electronics. Even once I got it to a point where I could turn it on and sort of play a game there are a shit load of switch/diode issues. That's where I'm at now. Am I upside-down in the value of the game? In parts I bought, not quite - close. In time I am way upside-down. But, I've learned a TON about pinballs in the process.

So up to this point the value to me has been knowledge - it is really hard to truly learn stuff about this hobby without actually doing it. I try and read everything I can and none of it really sunk in until I was getting my hands dirty.
 
Really depends on how broken it is. You also have a chance that they just haven't tested everything and are just listing it non working. Could be as simple as a bad switch, could be multiple things.

As others have said I'd try to make sure the entire thing is there and it hasn't had a bunch of parts stolen from it.
 
Really depends on how broken it is. You also have a chance that they just haven't tested everything and are just listing it non working. Could be as simple as a bad switch, could be multiple things.

As others have said I'd try to make sure the entire thing is there and it hasn't had a bunch of parts stolen from it.

This was the case with my dedicated TMNT. Got is cheap because it wasn't working. The power cord had been chopped off so I stopped by Walmart to pick up a 3-prong extension cord on my way home.

Got it home, connected the new power cord, plugged it in, and began checking voltages. I quickly determined that the voltage was going into the ON/OFF switch at the top of cab but not coming out. I bypassed the bad switch and...I was being made fun of by my fiance as I was dancing singing the TMNT song kicking foot clan butt.
 
I have had "broken" games that were literally assembled COMPLETELY out of non-working parts. If an operator has a handful of the same titles, it is not uncommon for the first one to die to become a "parts machine" for all other failures of his other machines. On the other hand it can mean that rather than bothering to clean up a perfectly working game out on route, he just brings out one of the ones from the warehouse and brings the dirty one back to the shop but never gets around to shopping it to put out on route again.....
 
Having a quick look at your 'wanted' games -- Smash TV, Killer Instinct, Cyberball, it looks like you are into games of the late 80's/early 90's. Do not hesitate to get games you want from this era if they are non-working -- as an earlier poster said, by this point games were being made with easily replaceable components, and even a newbie should be able to fix most problems (with maybe the exception of PCB repair).

Case in point -- one of my first games was a Smash TV 25", and I was able to pick this up from an Op non-working for $100. All that was wrong with it was a dead power supply and some of the roms on the PCB needed resetting, and I was able to get all this figured out with the help of other guys on this forum. Fixing your first game is great for your confidence. It can be intimidating, but it is not too bad if you are willing to learn and do the work.

Getting non-working games is the way to go!
 
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I'm fairly new to the hobby, too. I've owned three games so far, and two of them had problems that I had to fix. My Atari Star Wars crapped out on me one day, and it turned out to be the power supply. I bought my Ms. Pac-Man with a bad monitor (it played blind) and just recently got it working again.

I was able to fix both machines by researching them online and reading through the forums here on KLOV. Don't be intimidated by non-working machines. Part of the fun of this hobby, at least IMHO, is bringing these machines back from the dead. I don't think anyone from Midway, Atari, Nintendo, Data East, etc ever thought that these games would still be around and being played 30 years after they left the factory. They were made as revenue-generating machines. If it wasn't for people like us that loved these games as kids, most would have been scrapped long ago.

My advice is buy what you love, but do some research before you buy. And trust your gut, too. If it feels like you are about to get ripped off, you probably are. Ask around the forums or search eBay to get an idea of what a fair price is for the game you're thinking of buying. Don't be afraid to walk away, and don't be afraid to haggle. I got two of my three games for WAY less than what the seller was asking, but at the end of the day we were both happy. Most of all, have fun. That's what it's all about!
 
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