Day 2 Progress:
So I had pulled the PSU out of the machine to bench test it... Plugging it in it was clear that the cooling fan was making the racket.
I had a box full of brand new PC fans so I opened up the PSU cut out the old fan and spliced in the new one...
noise is gone but then I tested the voltage... I was getting 5.6 on the 5V line and 11.3 on the 12V line... I should have tested this before going through the trouble of replacing the fan.
I attempted to adjust the output and as soon as I touched the pot the PSU started making this high pitched electrical charge noise, like a bomb ready to explode,

I quickly shut it off and the charge noise even continued for a few seconds after the power had been cut... I'm not touching that thing, cut my losses and bought a new one.
------
since my last update all of the parts I ordered came in
- New Suzo-Happ Power Supply
- New Suzo-Happ buttons and joysticks
- Cap kit for the monitor
- Flyback for the monitor
- Adjustment pot kit for the monitor
- NOS marquee graphic
- KI2 PCB with a Flash kit in place of the hard drive
- Reproduction Lexan Control Panel Overlay (from ctozzi)
- Reproduction Control Panel Graphics from GameOnGrafix
Using a slightly more powerful variant of Lift Off, and a plastic paint-scraper I was able to make short order of the rest of the side paint... it still took a few hours but... yeah, it looks great.
The NOS marquee was much larger than it needed to be (presumably for use in conversion cabs) so I had to trim it down to size. I wish I took some pics of the process I used but basically, after removing and cleaning the old glass I put down a large piece of cardboard, laid the marquee on top of that, and then the glass on top of the marquee. basically a marque sandwich with the glass on top an cardboard on the bottom.
This was my procedure
- I eye-balled the placement of the glass over the marquee,
- I measured how much the marquee stuck out on each side. I took measurements on both sides at each corner to make sure it was perfectly centered left to right and that the image was going to be level and not crooked....
- to adjust the glass instead of pushing it, I gently tapped the glass to nudge it every so slightly into the perfect position.
- Once I was confident it was where I wanted it I then taped the top and bottom and remeasured to make sure I hadn't knocked anything out of alignment (measure twice as they say)
- I then took a new sharp razor blade and trimmed the left and right sides of the marquee using the glass as a straight edge.
- once the sides were cut I tapped the newly cut sides, then removed the tape from the top and bottom.
- I then cut the top and bottom again using the glass as a straight edge.
Had I access to a paper cutter I would have simply used a fine point marker to make crop marks at the corner points of the glass and cut that way as a paper cutter would have made nice true cuts, but this method worked well.
Now I have a new sweet looking marquee
I went to install the new power supply and noticed there was a lot of nails and screws and the like floating around the bottom of the cab. I decided that was probably dangerous and could cause problems if the cab ever gets moved and one of those finds it way to the PCB or the power supply (or worse, the monitor) so I cleaned up all the debris inside the cab, it still needs a vacuuming but at least there are no metal bits floating around anymore.
I was informed that the original PSU mounts to the top of the metal cage at the bottom. The PSU that came with the cabinet was just screwed to the bottom board (you may have noticed in the videos above)... I figured the original PSU was likely bolted to the metal cage for grounding purposes, since the new one didn't work with the original mounting points I did the next best thing and bolted it to the cage on the side:
.
-----------
I was planning on getting the new control panel graphics on and the control panel populated but unfortunately the graphics I bought from gameongrafix didn't fit right... I've opened a support ticket with them... this is essentially what I sent:
^here you can see there is close to an extra inch of material along the top, also notice the scaling, the Nintendo logo on the GoG overlay looks slightly smaller than the original
^left to right isn't as bad but you can see there is at least 1/8" of extra material along the left edge
^extra material on the bottom, it also seems from this comparison that the CPO I received has slightly smaller print than the original too
^Since the overlay was clearly too largeI was hoping that I could use the Lexan CPO (that I bought elsewhere) as a guide since the Lexan CPO fits FLAWLESSLY with my cabinet... unfortunately as you can see here when I line up the button holes the joy stick hole is out of line, meaning I can't use the lexan as a guide for trimming your CPO
^interestingly the buttons on the left side still line up but the left joystick hole does not.
This is extremely frustrating because unlike the buttons, which have a lip that could hide some slight misalignment, the joystick holes are essentially naked so you'd clearly see the misalignment all the time.
Because of this I figured I'd see if I could get JUST the joystick holes lined up and let the buttons be slightly out of alignment but I found it impossible to get both joysticks to line up, they're too close together, and they're crooked causing the holes for the start buttons to end up WAY out of whack.
Rather than dealing with reproduction headaches I'd like to get a good condition Original CPO either NOS or a good condition used one. If you have one or know where I can get one let me know.
While I was cleaning out the machine I also noticed that while the original harness is still in the machine the previous owner cut all but 1 button on the player 1 sub-harness, and completely removed the player 2 harness and kick harness... I'm sure I could splice some fresh wires in there but I'd rather use original sub-harnesses if I can. I wonder if/where I can get that stuff.
I also noticed there's a panel missing from the coin door, presumably there was a bill collector installed at one point. If anyone knows where I can get a plate for that hole, I'd be grateful
