Just picked a Karate Champ: power cord question

jacklick

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I am 9 days into this arcade collecting and just picked up my 4th game. Cabinet is in great shape; a previous owner spent some time on it for sure. Joysticks are leaf springs and player 1's are not super responsive. Anyway Figured I would share some pics.

Have a concern/question on power supply too. I read that you should be concerned when the power cord doesn't have the ground plug. Well this one doesn't and has some line filter and a back door safety switch. Should I be getting a new power cable asap?
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=134080&stc=1&d=1361142415
Thanks!
 

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I always replaced the whole power cord on my games. It's cheap and easy, and looks cool too.
 
I always replaced the whole power cord on my games. It's cheap and easy, and looks cool too.
What is the motivation for always replacing the cords? Please enlighten me how it looks cool or is that all of them are uniform.

I want one of those myself!
I didn't have any prior knowledge of the game but it looked like it was in good shape and a decent price, so figured why not.

It's not a huge deal, I wouldn't sweat it.
Ok...that puts my mind at ease a bit.
 
It's not a huge deal, I wouldn't sweat it.

Floating ground can be a bit of a hair raising experience. If your game's ground plug is cut off, the ground circuit in the game will look for other ways to get to the earth. If you happen to be that ground object, you'll get a buzz when you touch metal parts that are in the ground circuit (think: coin door, control panel, etc).

I'd either replace the cord, or replace the cord end.
 
JUST having a ground lug on the power cord isn't really enough to do anything.

That ground lug has to be connected, inside the cabinet, to all of the metal housings, coin door(s), control panel(s), etc., etc. THEN should there be a short, it provides a nice low-impedance path to earth (and hopefully blowing a fuse or breaker) instead of finding another path to ground... via a human.

Now that the academic point is cleared up.... I've got a game with no ground lug, and I don't lose any sleep over it. I'll fix it one day...
 
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Floating ground can be a bit of a hair raising experience. If your game's ground plug is cut off, the ground circuit in the game will look for other ways to get to the earth. If you happen to be that ground object, you'll get a buzz when you touch metal parts that are in the ground circuit (think: coin door, control panel, etc).

I'd either replace the cord, or replace the cord end.

I will go ahead and replace it. Will give me piece of mind too. Do all games have EMI line filters?

Thanks for all the responses.
 
JUST having a ground lug on the power cord isn't really enough to do anything.

That ground lug has to be connected, inside the cabinet, to all of the metal housings, coin door(s), control panel(s), etc., etc. THEN should there be a short, it provides a nice low-impedance path to earth (and hopefully blowing a fuse or breaker) instead of finding another path to ground... via a human.

Yea, everything else in the cab looks grounded or at least has ground wires coming to the emi/power cord area. Next step is to add a new plug or cord.
 
Great looking game. I have one in my collection and they are a ton of fun! Probably my Fav fighting game :)
 
Let me clear this common and often ignorantly referenced issue up...

The ground slot and the neutral slot of an outlet are IDENTICAL!

Go to your fuse box, and you'll see that the neutral and ground wires go to the same place.

Now what that 3rd prong does, is tie the ground to earth simply so that one doesn't get a shock if there's a short to anything metal in your cabinet. The path of least resistance...

While you may get a zap from it missing, that 3rd prong isn't your real issue...fixing the source IS, adding the 3rd prong with a new power cord is just a band-aid, you HAVE A SHORT somewhere in your cabinet, fix IT...THEN fix the damn cable.
 
Let me clear this common and often ignorantly referenced issue up...

The ground slot and the neutral slot of an outlet are IDENTICAL!

Go to your fuse box, and you'll see that the neutral and ground wires go to the same place.

Now what that 3rd prong does, is tie the ground to earth simply so that one doesn't get a shock if there's a short to anything metal in your cabinet. The path of least resistance...

While you may get a zap from it missing, that 3rd prong isn't your real issue...fixing the source IS, adding the 3rd prong with a new power cord is just a band-aid, you HAVE A SHORT somewhere in your cabinet, fix IT...THEN fix the damn cable.

No one said I had a short. The game works fine. Thanks for the exclamations though.
 
No one said I had a short. The game works fine. Thanks for the exclamations though.

I don't recall saying YOU did...just a generalization, as there are many many people on here and elsewhere, that seem to think that ground prong does something magical and will somehow prevent your house from burning to the ground.
 
I saw that on craiglist...it was a good price.

Yea it was less than 5 miles from me so even though I didn't have a burning desire for the game figured why not. Checked out your youtube...nice collection.
 
Most of the power cords are nasty and beat up and when I do a restoration I like to replace them. Spending all of that time effort and money and not replacing a $3 part? Yeah right. Plus I like to make them a little longer than normal.

Plus, if you want like I did on my Warlords cocktail, is to make a super short plug, and use an extension cord like so:



Warlords29.jpg


Warlords30.jpg


See, now doesn't that look cool?
 
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The ground slot and the neutral slot of an outlet are IDENTICAL!

Not true if it's a GFCI outlet (or something similar that acts on a larger scale).

Try hooking your arcade game up between hot and ground (instead of neutral) on a GFCI outlet and see if it works.
 
Wow! I definitely have something to shoot for on a restore.
 
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