Does "untested"= non working, missing components.

higgilo

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Does "untested"= non working, missing components.

I have been watching both here and ebay for the last couple of weeks and have noticed a unsetteling trend. Nobody ever says that thier boards don't work. You know from thier rep that they have a test set at least for JAMMA, but they prefer to just say untested. Im sorry guys but lets have full disclosure here on what is going on with the boards. Im just venting, but its frustrating when an "untested" board shows up with no cpu or eproms. It diddnt happen here, but I think its odd when a big collecter says that his JAMMA boards are "untested" when it takes less time to plug them in and test them than it does to write up the ad.

Sorry, newbie rant/clarification of terms.
 
The long and short... expect the worst, hope for the best... sometimes you luck out, but don't plan on that. Especially a complete cab, who isn't just going to plug it in? Honestly, you have time to list it for sale, in most cases take pictures and post those, but you don't have enough time to plug it in? Basically, assume something is wrong with it, and pay, bid, offer accordingly.
 
I usually bet that untested really means tested and found not working if it is a jamma game. If not jamma I cant blame them for not testing.
 
I bought a untested Mario Bros off ebay, and I got lucky and it worked perfect. Its a gamble you take and like everyone said, bid like it doesn't work.
 
I usually assume untested means not working. although if you do enough research sometimes you can get a feel for when a seller is truly selling something that has not been tested. In these cases I might take a gamble. Only if it's cheap enough though.
 
but, be aware, tested doesn't always work either, at least not after shoddy packing and the usps have gotten their hands on it.
 
I don't believe all ebay sellers are shoddy people, as I have sold untested boards on there myself, truly untested non-jamma or pinball boards because I don't have anything to test it with. However, my experience 100% of the time TO DATE is every untested board I have bought off ebay is truly a "I tested it, its not working, I'll pretend I don't know, and list it as untested board". Yeah, thanks guys.
 
Sometimes people have no clue if something is complete. if I were to die tomorrow, and my wife couldn't get one of my buddies to help go through all my stuff and sell it, she'd list pretty much everything that wasn't a game as "untested" even if the means to test it on the bench were here, but she wouldn't know that, or how to do it...
 
Sometimes people have no clue if something is complete. if I were to die tomorrow, and my wife couldn't get one of my buddies to help go through all my stuff and sell it, she'd list pretty much everything that wasn't a game as "untested" even if the means to test it on the bench were here, but she wouldn't know that, or how to do it...

I can see that from a one shot vendor or somebody just starting out, but you get a certain set of vendors on Ebay that have been selling boards for several years and consistantly they sell boards marked as "untested" that are clearly never going to work in their current state. I mean missing very prominant chips (CPUs, RAM chips, ROM chips, etc.) or in the case of pinball boards, showing signs of having caught fire at least once.

The other deceptive practice that has burned me on more than one occasion is the "reference" photo. They are not showing the actual board that is for sale, just a stock photo of a good board and a vague mention in their description that it is a reference photo.

I have gotten lucky a couple of times on JAMMA boards when somebody is blowing out a hundred boards and they put in the disclaimer that they are liquidating a bulk buy and didn't take the time to test every board. But I also have a big box of boards waiting for some bench time.

ken
 
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose... But, it's based on the seller. If you lose once from a seller, then assume everything they sell is crap. If you win... then assume you just got really lucky, and everything else is crap.

I bought an untested Robotron boardset on eBay for $60... worked perfectly minus one of the ICs on the I/O board had to be replaced.

Then I bought a "working when shelved" Pole Position set... maybe it was working when it was shelved, but while it was shelved the guy pulled off SEVERAL custom chips and a couple of the regular ICs literally rusted off.

For now, I don't usually buy "untested" or "working when shelved" items anymore unless it's something REALLY cheap, or has several boards (Robotron) that I could get tested and flip the working ones to get my money back. Or it's a board that will have a lot of customs on it that I need (Dig Dugs)... other than that, I steer clear if I can help it.

I'd say it's a crap shoot, but 99% of the time, it's just crap.
 
the past 3x I have got something "untested" they were all broken and im sure the seller knew it but I didnt pay much so I didnt care. I recently sold an atari jaguar on ebay for $20 untested (they go from 60-1xx working) because I actually dont own any games for it, the guy got it put a game in and it worked. I guess you just have to look for the honest sellers and check there FB
 
There are all kinds of variations on this, "working 100% except for audio" is a good one.

Plus, you can't just throw it on the test bench, see video and then say "tested working". Well, you CAN, its just not completely truthful.

I have a bunch of boards I liquidating from an operator 10+ years ago. All were marked working or non-working before i got them and the 5 or so I've pulled were correct. But, I can't trust that so I'm going to wait until I have the test bench capabilities and time to test them all to my satisfaction before I put them up for sale.
 
I completly ignore those sales. If a seller cant be arsed to plug it in to see if it works, when why should I gamble money on it?
 
Well then, how about this? I'm sure most of y'all would consider me to be an experienced arcade person, despite my lack of Ebay identity.

But I have a few things that I have no idea how to test (Qwak, some type of Vectorbeam board, a DL2 board, etc). I give them the once over for obvious damage or missing parts, but if there is an empty socket, I may not know if it's supposed to be empty or not. And if I don't have time to do some research (or can't find an answer), it would get listed as untested/as-is. I would assume that the person buying it would know what they want and would be able to tell from the pics if everything appeared to be there. But I would also price it cheap enough that it might not matter....
 
Well then, how about this? I'm sure most of y'all would consider me to be an experienced arcade person, despite my lack of Ebay identity.

But I have a few things that I have no idea how to test (Qwak, some type of Vectorbeam board, a DL2 board, etc). I give them the once over for obvious damage or missing parts, but if there is an empty socket, I may not know if it's supposed to be empty or not. And if I don't have time to do some research (or can't find an answer), it would get listed as untested/as-is. I would assume that the person buying it would know what they want and would be able to tell from the pics if everything appeared to be there. But I would also price it cheap enough that it might not matter....


If I had any untested boards, and I didn't want to atleast build an adapter to test them, or didn't have ANY means to test them (DL2 for example)... I'd atleast pull the EPROMs, verify them, and just say "untested, EPROMs verified" or something along those lines. As I never seem to sell anything, it hasn't become an issue yet.

But as mentioned above... you can go on eBay, right now, and see several sellers selling 100% working JAMMA boards, and selling "untested" JAMMA boards at the same time... those people are full of shit, period. "Oh, I'll take a $10-50 hit because I'm too lazy to hook up a board for 5 mins"... If that is true, then I don't trust them to be motivated enough to package them correctly or shit them before the end of the year.
 
im a seller of pcb's... i test everything jamma & nintendo to see if it works befor selling..because im set up to test thoes....but alot of the other stuff i cant test

if a seller is selling sumthing jamma that is listed as 'untested' then u pretty much know thats bullshit because just about everyone has jamma.
BEWARE OF UNTESTED JAMMA PCB's

as for other boards, alot of them are hard to test because you need a certain size edge connector, or a couple edge connectors, even then you have to make shure u get the pin out correct because if you dont and supply power to something that shouldnt have power then the PCB is now shit..garbage.

But when u buy untested the buyer needs to pretty much think that it is not working and is good for atleast parts. 50/50 chance that its working

if you dont know how to fix a pcb then you should NOT buy untested.

just my 2 cents...
 
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