My $75 Mario Bros.

Mattroid

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So after a little arranging in the current house and after picking up my wife a Skill Crane she wanted last year, I've somehow managed to go from having room for one cabinet to four. Up until yesterday I had three (SFII, Skill Crane, and a Neo-Geo).

While at work I got a CL notification on my phone. I check it expecting it to be the some old overpriced crap people here have been trying to unload for months. But it wasn't - it was a beat up Mario Bros. for $150. I messaged my wife kind of as a joke, not expecting her to go for it. She replied back, "Do you want me to txt him?"

Skip ahead a bit - by the time I got home from work, she'd talked to the guy and he'd said that it didn't currently work as it had died about a year ago. He'd since replaced the parts but had not yet hooked them up so he's not sure if it works or not. My wife told him that we'd give him $75 as-is, but that if he could confirm it worked, we'd give him the full $150.

He took the $75 just get it out.

I assume it won't work, but hey, I'm happy. I spent some time reading through previous restoration threads and I'm really looking forward to trying to fix this one up. I'm a newbie at classic machines like this, so I've no clue what I'm doing. All this Nintendo stuff is foreign to me!

Apparently the part that went out was the power supply, so that's what he replaced and never hooked up. It all looks very straight forward to put back together, but is there anything I should look out for? He was also in the middle of restoring the control panel as you can see in the pics, but he gave me the buttons and sticks.

Anyway, on to the pics! Look for a restoration thread this summer!

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Mmmm, dirty. I like 'em when they're dirty!

Sweet find!

Haha, yeah. It's easily the most beat up cab I've every had. The benefit of that is that I'll be more motivated to actually restore the thing, just so it will look half way presentable!

Here's hoping it still works. If so, I'll say $75 was pretty damn good. If it doesn't work, then...well, who knows. I guess it depends on what it takes to get it running.
 
So after a little arranging in the current house and after picking up my wife a Skill Crane she wanted last year, I've somehow managed to go from having room for one cabinet to four. Up until yesterday I had three (SFII, Skill Crane, and a Neo-Geo).

While at work I got a CL notification on my phone. I check it expecting it to be the some old overpriced crap people here have been trying to unload for months. But it wasn't - it was a beat up Mario Bros. for $150. I messaged my wife kind of as a joke, not expecting her to go for it. She replied back, "Do you want me to txt him?"

Skip ahead a bit - by the time I got home from work, she'd talked to the guy and he'd said that it didn't currently work as it had died about a year ago. He'd since replaced the parts but had not yet hooked them up so he's not sure if it works or not. My wife told him that we'd give him $75 as-is, but that if he could confirm it worked, we'd give him the full $150.

He took the $75 just get it out.

I assume it won't work, but hey, I'm happy. I spent some time reading through previous restoration threads and I'm really looking forward to trying to fix this one up. I'm a newbie at classic machines like this, so I've no clue what I'm doing. All this Nintendo stuff is foreign to me!

Apparently the part that went out was the power supply, so that's what he replaced and never hooked up. It all looks very straight forward to put back together, but is there anything I should look out for? He was also in the middle of restoring the control panel as you can see in the pics, but he gave me the buttons and sticks.

Anyway, on to the pics! Look for a restoration thread this summer!
WHY!!!?!?! I was gonna pick that up! lol
 
After a quick glance, I think I see how everything goes together, but if anything is missing, I can't tell...I've attached a couple of pics and noted where I believe things plug in.

In pic one, the two big connectors look like they go to the control panel - easy enough. The two wires outlined in red appear to run to the other red outline where there are three connectors. I do not see a wire to plug into the smallest of the three - anyone know if I should have one or not?

In the second pic, it looks like the two wires outlined in red go together, in which case, I put that thing in there backward and will need to turn it around. Then it looks like the yellow plugs go together.

I attached the third pic just to show a close up of the edge connector. I haven't yet looked up the pinout, so I assume it's fine, but figured I'd post here in case anyone noticed something obviously wrong. Also in this pic, what are the white tube-like things sticking up on top of the cage? They are on the underside of the CP as well.

Other than that, there are two standard plugs, one of which is the monitor. I assume maybe the second one is the marquee light, but I didn't look. I don't see anything else that really needs to be connected - can anyone tell me if this looks complete or not?
 

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Looks good, I was hoping someone was going to save that one. If you need any parts let me know, I recently parted out a water damaged Nintendo cab and have extra parts laying around.
 
Looks good, I was hoping someone was going to save that one. If you need any parts let me know, I recently parted out a water damaged Nintendo cab and have extra parts laying around.

Cool. I'll let you know. I'm hoping to get to look at this more tonight or tomorrow.
 
Mario Bros Parts

If interested, I have a control panel with new overlay, new side art, and a lot of other items for this machine for sale. Drop me a pm if interested,
 
Well, as was expected, it doesn't fire up. I can hear a slight buzzing, but it's so feint I can't quite tell where it's coming from. I'm not surprised, but it looks like I have more work ahead of me than I had hoped. Oh well, it should be a good learning experience! I wonder what the odds are that maybe it's just a fuse?
 
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Congrats, Matt. I'm surprised you restrained yourself to only one cab all those years. Great that the wife is fully supportive and working deals for you. If you end up giving up on the restoration aspect, you could go with the arcadesd board in horizontal mode and have MB, plus many others for the same real estate. Have fun with it.
 
Well, as was expected, it doesn't fire up. I can hear a slight buzzing, but it's so feint I can't quite tell where it's coming from. I'm not surprised, but it looks like I have more work ahead of me than I had hoped. Oh well, it should be a good learning experience! I wonder what the odds are that maybe it's just a fuse?

The slight buzzing could be the speaker. Make sure the volume is turned up a bit just in case it's turned all the way down. The knob is on the monitor chassis. If the pcb is working you should hear some game sounds when you power it up. Can you see if the wire from the speaker to the monitor chassis is present? I can't really identify it in the pics. And if the monitor isn't powering up, check the fuse on the chassis to see if it's blown.

Find and download the Mario Bros. game pak conversion manual. It should show you how the wiring is supposed to be.
 
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Congrats, Matt. I'm surprised you restrained yourself to only one cab all those years. Great that the wife is fully supportive and working deals for you.
Thanks! In the past, it would have been near impossible to have any more than one cab anyway. Fortunately, the layout of this house somehow allows for this. It's even possible I could fit one more on the same wall before I block the front door, but I'm not expecting to get anything else any time soon :p

The slight buzzing could be the speaker. Make sure the volume is turned up a bit just in case it's turned all the way down. The knob is on the monitor chassis. If the pcb is working you should hear some game sounds when you power it up. Can you see if the wire from the speaker to the monitor chassis is present? I can't really identify it in the pics. And if the monitor isn't powering up, check the fuse on the chassis to see if it's blown.

Find and download the Mario Bros. game pak conversion manual. It should show you how the wiring is supposed to be.
The speaker does appear to be wired to the monitor. I assume because the monitor doesn't fire up, then the speaker probably won't work either? If that's the case, then it sounds like the main thing I need to focus on is the monitor. I did find the manual, so I think I'll spend some time hunting down the various fuses today.

Edit: Yeah, I think it might be the speaker. Though adjusting the volume knob has no effect. I did notice that if the monitor is plugged in when I turn it on, I do hear what sounds like the monitor flipping on (as opposed to when the monitor is not plugged in and I hear nothing). Though I do not see any glow in the tube or anything.

By the lack of vertical mounting bolt holes on the side I am thinking that was a popeye originally.
Are those the holes that would be closest to the back of the cab? If so, the holes are there, just covered up by the side art. You can see the ones on the left side in the pic of the inside of the cab. According to the serial plates on the back, this was a DK.

serialplates.jpg
 
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Pulled all the fuses tonight - one of the ones on the monitor is clearly blown. Would be awesome if that's all it is, but we shall see. Also picked up a multimeter finally. Not sure how I've gone almost a decade in this hobby without one...
 
Any suggestions on where to find the fuse(s) I need? I haven't had any luck locally or online. This is all I have to go on based on the manual:
Main fuse: 5A 100V (90~120V)
Power Supply fuse: 4A 100V
Monitor fuses: 4A 100V (slow blow), 0.3A 100V (midget type)​
The one that is blown is the 0.3A one on the monitor.

I apologize for my n00bishness here in advance: Finding appropriate fuses seems to be a pain unless you can physically see them...or am I missing something, or maybe even just thinking too much of it? Also, does the "(90~120V)" next to the main fuse mean that if the voltage rating is in that range, it's acceptable? If so, could that apply to the other fuses as well? I ask mainly because when I look on Mouser, they have 90V and 125V, but nothing in between.

There's a nice little electronics supply place not too far from me, but they're only open from 8-5, so getting there is a pain. I'm not even sure they'll have these, so I haven't looked into taking time off just to run down there.
 
FYI --- DO NOT plug the monitor into a regular wall outlet. It is rated at 100v and that is why there are two outlets on the bottom of the cabinet. They are 100v.

I have a Mario Conversion (in a DK Jr.) and can help you out with wiring etc..

From my exerience on the 20EZ's (ive repaired 3 so far) it sounds like either the VR or HOT blew, they is why the fuse blew. The Flybacks (thing with suction cup) do go, but they are more on the low end. I would bet that someone plugged this into the wall during their testing and blew the VR. Thes sound. while on the monitor is actually a separate card that happens to integrate into the monitor chassis. IE: it will power, but the volume is controlled through the main chassis.

If you just want to send the chassis out to get repaired I suggest sending it to Buffett here on the forums.. Shoot him a PM. He is quite the Sanyo and Monitor guru and he has all the parts to get you up and running. It's probably not worth just replacing the fuse as it will most likely blow again. If you have solder skills, you can get all the parts from Buffett too.

Unfortunately, since there are no fancy LED's or anything on this game you can't actually tell if the game works unless you have the monitor working.

If you have a multimeter, make sure the outlets on the bottom put out 100v. then also test all the other connectors from the power supply and make sure that they send out the proper voltage. That is something you can do while the monitor is out of commission. This way you can either get a switcher or a cap-kit to get the power supply working.
 
By the lack of vertical mounting bolt holes on the side I am thinking that was a popeye originally.

Nope, it was DK:

2012-06-23+13_08_49.jpg


serialplates.jpg


The mounting holes are there, but no bolts. Either filled in, or the artwork was placed on top of the holes. Plus the serial number tag is for a TKG4, which was a DK cab.
 
FYI --- DO NOT plug the monitor into a regular wall outlet. It is rated at 100v and that is why there are two outlets on the bottom of the cabinet. They are 100v.

Irony of this is that I did do that about 5 minutes BEFORE I figured out that I shouldn't do that. I tried that because the monitor didn't fire up when plugged into the outlets on the PS, assuming the PS was bad. So by the time I did it, someone else likely already had :p

Not to say it still wasn't a rookie mistake on my part! I assume that the guy I got this from did the same thing in his testing and this probably explains why he was willing to let it go so cheap - he probably didn't want to admit his mistake :)

We've got a lot of good monitor guys on this board, so I'll see what they say - thanks for the recommendation! I wonder what this repair is going to run me :p
 
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