My First Customer Repair

zenomorp

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Donor 2015
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I was browsing the local Craigslist ads for arcade related stuff and came across a posting asking for "Repair Technician Needed." I sent the guy an email telling him that depending on the symptom, I can help him. He told me he had a Moon Patrol that all of a sudden stopped working.

I asked him if it played blind and he said "yes." So I started telling him that he may need a new monitor chassis or a simple chassis repair or voltage problem, etc. We set up a time and I went over to take a look. Turns out that he didn't know what I meant by "plays blind." The monitor was working fine, but the board was dead. I headed right for the power supply.

Began reading voltages and....nada. Bad power supply. No problem. I told him I had a couple extras and I'd be back the next day to replace his bad one. Next day rolls around, I head back to his place and install the new supply. Bad news...only thing on the screen is a glitched up screen shot of the game. I asked if he had a pencil with an eraser. He could only find one of those big pink ones like we all used in school. I told him that will do nicely.

So, I cleaned both sides of the board's edge connecter, hooked the harness back up to it, and...Presto! His Moon Patrol is now working at 100% again. He was very happy and impressed that I could fix it so easily. He was worried it would cost a lot. He tipped me for my service and off I went.

Just felt like sharing this good experience. Thanks.
 
Thanks. This guy new nothing about arcade machines or anything related to the internals.
 
Awesome! It's guys like you that brought me to this site and finally live out my hobby dreams!
 
hah my first customer repair was a buddy with an aerofighters board that he thought was broken, turned out he just had to adjust his vertical sync... 2 minute fix his jaw dropped.


Grats on your first out of house repair!
 
Congrats on the simple fix. Makes you feel good.
My first repair was on an R type. Cap kit and rebuild the PS. That was a year and a half ago and the game is still in my shop. I was told recently the guy sold his properties and left town. I told his friend what the bill was and if he wanted it to get hold of me ASAP. That was over two months ago and nothing. I now own a dedicated R type.
My second and last was 2 cap kits for a friend and instead of cash, he is giving me a dedicated track and field. He really wanted his 1943 working. It's dead but I had 2 minutes with it and a DMM, the power isn't making it past a fuse block, I think. Could be simple.
 
Nice job on the repair. I've often thought about doing field repairs for customers off CL, but I just don't feel like being married to that many random people. There's no way I'd give my number to THAT many people. I'd never hear the end of it.
 
Good job dude. I had also seen a local ad like that. It was too far away though.
 
Congrats man, certainly feels good to fix somone else's game for a change.

I spent a couple hours today fixing a GO7 that is in a cab that I sold a friend a few months ago. He called me the other day, and said that the game has started taking like day for the monitor to come on, and then when it did, it was blurry for around another 24 hours! Well thanx to the monitor section here, I found an old post concerning basically the same thing.
So I went over to his place armed with a replacement neck board from a donor chassis I had. Replaced the neck board, and the monitor fired up as it should, but there was no red.. :mad: Neither red pot did anything, so I pulled 2 pots off the faulty neck board (pots were new on that one) put them on the other n.b., and STILL no bloody red! :mad:
So as a last measure, I took the socket off the replacement board, and installed it on the original board, (had to put the dam pots back on too), and we had red finally. Spent a little time tweaking the colors, and left there with him having a nice looking GO7 that powers up as it should. Heck, he gave me $20.00 and a couple beets too.

Thank goodness for the Hakko 808, or I'd have been even longer.
 
Congrats man, certainly feels good to fix somone else's game for a change.

I spent a couple hours today fixing a GO7 that is in a cab that I sold a friend a few months ago. He called me the other day, and said that the game has started taking like day for the monitor to come on, and then when it did, it was blurry for around another 24 hours! Well thanx to the monitor section here, I found an old post concerning basically the same thing.
So I went over to his place armed with a replacement neck board from a donor chassis I had. Replaced the neck board, and the monitor fired up as it should, but there was no red.. :mad: Neither red pot did anything, so I pulled 2 pots off the faulty neck board (pots were new on that one) put them on the other n.b., and STILL no bloody red! :mad:
So as a last measure, I took the socket off the replacement board, and installed it on the original board, (had to put the dam pots back on too), and we had red finally. Spent a little time tweaking the colors, and left there with him having a nice looking GO7 that powers up as it should. Heck, he gave me $20.00 and a couple beets too.

Thank goodness for the Hakko 808, or I'd have been even longer.


Sweet. Seems like you should have received a bit more for your trouble. Yeah, the folks here REALLY know their stuff. This place is great.
 
OK zeno... yer a Car Guy..where's the Fiberglass Contact Brush you should be Carrying :D...you wouldn't have needed the Eraser if you had one of those in yer Pocket :p


LOL!

something to pick up for polishing contacts :)


Good JOB !


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Daniel.

Hey. I can only carry so much in the bucket in the trunk. Gotta take the damn thing out and set it on the ground at the shows. It looks tacky enough under the bumper without all kinds of other random stuff in it lol.
 
yeah, those erasers go a long way. imagine how stupid I felt when it took me about 3 years of fixing stuff to make that discovery LOL

I personally just steal a pencil out of our prize case every time I go to clean an edge connector :D
 
doesn't that scratch the shit out of the contacts? I would think that's just as bad as corrosion. I've only ever heard of the eraser method.

nope...it's like 15000 grit polishing compound


the fiberglass brush removes the oxide only..not the metal..it makes gold contacts polish up nice :)

and silver and solderpads :) and copper :)

get one and use it on a penny...you'll see :)

i been using them for years..beats using a file or sandpaper :)


http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3998315

trust me..you might not think ya need one..but once ya own one you'll wonder why ya never had one :D


Good Luck.


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Daniel.
 
Great job helping someone out always good to read something like this. Way to keep the arcade world up and running!!
 
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