Is this normal?

ArcadeCited

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So I'm working on an Arctic Thunder, Most of the important fuses are dead so I'm trying to make a list and sort out what fuses I need, however, I have run into a bit of a strange situation. I was checking the driver wheel board and discovered that 2 fuses are actually soldered to 2 more fuses which are installed on 2 separate fuse blocks... This is confusing me as I also own a Cruis'n Exotica machine with the exact same driver wheel board, and it seems to be all on the driver board. I've never owned an arctic thunder machine and am wondering if this is modded, or if this is the way they were manufactured... I assume this is a mod, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
 

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Wires soldered to fuses. No, that is not normal. If the soldered fuses are blown, that makes the others remote mounted. There is something going wrong with that mess that someone is trying to make it easier to change them.
 
Wires soldered to fuses. No, that is not normal. If the soldered fuses are blown, that makes the others remote mounted. There is something going wrong with that mess that someone is trying to make it easier to change them.
If that's the case, I'm replacing the whole board, may as well. I'm in no mood to do trial and error on this thing, especially if it ends up with me having to reflow it.
 
Or you could troubleshoot it, to actually figure out what's wrong.

Rod90 is correct, that's definitely not original. My guess is the same as his, it looks like someone basically added extension cords to the fuses, maybe to allow changing them through the coin door, without needing to move the whole machine(?) Presumably because they were blowing regularly.

If fuses are blowing excessively, it means something downstream from them is drawing too much current. That could be any number of things, and might not even be isolated to that board. (I'm not familiar with these, so it's hard to say.)

But in general, guessing and replacing whole boards is not usually a great strategy, when you don't know what's causing a problem. You can end up with just more damaged boards.
 
Or you could troubleshoot it, to actually figure out what's wrong.

Rod90 is correct, that's definitely not original. My guess is the same as his, it looks like someone basically added extension cords to the fuses, maybe to allow changing them through the coin door, without needing to move the whole machine(?) Presumably because they were blowing regularly.

If fuses are blowing excessively, it means something downstream from them is drawing too much current. That could be any number of things, and might not even be isolated to that board. (I'm not familiar with these, so it's hard to say.)

But in general, guessing and replacing whole boards is not usually a great strategy, when you don't know what's causing a problem. You can end up with just more damaged boards.
After replacing the fuses, the driver board works perfectly fine, and I managed to get the game to calibrate and the game boots up, however the game will play for a bit and then freeze after a bit, but whenever the game is running, the wheel works perfectly fine, so someone randomly did this modification for no apparent reason, I assume the original fuses died, they were too specific so they just soldered wires to it, and wired it to new, bigger fuse blocks...
 
In the end I got it working, but now a new problem, the game freezes after awhile, my guess is the power supply in the computer since the hard drive is powered by the power supply.
 
After replacing the fuses, the driver board works perfectly fine, and I managed to get the game to calibrate and the game boots up, however the game will play for a bit and then freeze after a bit, but whenever the game is running, the wheel works perfectly fine, so someone randomly did this modification for no apparent reason, I assume the original fuses died, they were too specific so they just soldered wires to it, and wired it to new, bigger fuse blocks...
That makes sense to me, the field tech probably just used what he had available, and was a hero for a day.
I would rebuild or replace the PS, install the correct fuses, remove the temporary fix, and go from there. Do those machines have a PC or PCB? You can get a plug n play flash drive from EBay for $50 if the hard drive is failing.
 
That makes sense to me, the field tech probably just used what he had available, and was a hero for a day.
I would rebuild or replace the PS, install the correct fuses, remove the temporary fix, and go from there. Do those machines have a PC or PCB? You can get a plug n play flash drive from EBay for $50 if the hard drive is failing.
It's a PC tower, yeah I am considering replacing it with an SSD for reliability but that's if the hard drive is the problem... Hopefully not, because the Power Supply is expensive...
 
That makes sense to me, the field tech probably just used what he had available, and was a hero for a day.
I would rebuild or replace the PS, install the correct fuses, remove the temporary fix, and go from there. Do those machines have a PC or PCB? You can get a plug n play flash drive from EBay for $50 if the hard drive is failing.
Also the coin door lights are extremely dim, which are powered by the computer
 
My Rush 2049 will occasionally blow one of the fuses for the force feedback. I have more than once thought about putting in a remote circuit breaker, or at least extend the fuse holder to inside the coin area so I don't have to wheel it out to change 'em.

Glad to know I'm not alone in my laziness/practically!
 
but now a new problem, the game freezes after awhile, my guess is the power supply in the computer since the hard drive is powered by the power supply.

Before digging into that, try setting up a fan aimed at the PCB and the force feedback board. See if that keeps it from freezing. A lot of games of this ilk suffer from overheating issues.

Worth a shot, and free to check.
 
Before digging into that, try setting up a fan aimed at the PCB and the force feedback board. See if that keeps it from freezing. A lot of games of this ilk suffer from overheating issues.

Worth a shot, and free to check.
Highly doubt it since all fans are working, and I've cleaned them out, left the back door off of the machine, but I could try just in case, I suspect the PS because the coin door lights are very dim and the coin switches don't work very well, all of which are also hooked up to the computer and powered of course, by the same power supply.
 
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