Replace Light in Ms. Pac-Man Marquee with always-on LED?

[pokeydonut]

Hello -

I just bought an original Ms. Pac-Man cabinet for my wife's birthday and it's great. However, we're limiting the time that it's powered on to protect the monitor, so when we're not playing it, it's just turned off, which makes it look kind of sad.

Is there any reason why I can't remove, the attraction/marquee panel, take out the fluorescent tube bulb, and run a wire into there from the outlet to power a super low-energy LED bulb that I can keep on all the time? It won't generate any heat so it shouldn't be that big an issue and it'll make it look a lot more friendly and inviting to play.

Has anyone else converted their marquee to something that's always on? Does everyone else leave the game on all the time and I'm being overly conservative? I don't know anything about maintaining this thing so I want to try to make it last as long as possible before I have to learn.

Thanks,

Adam

 

[TheNickDuong]

You can get something like this and run the lead out the back of the cabinet. Run it in addition to the existing light fixture. In some of my games, I have replaced the burned out light fixture with a standard AC Led fixture from walmart. Here's a video for below on replacing the existing fixture

 

[Charles Kline]

Hello -

I just bought an original Ms. Pac-Man cabinet for my wife's birthday and it's great. However, we're limiting the time that it's powered on to protect the monitor, so when we're not playing it, it's just turned off, which makes it look kind of sad.

Is there any reason why I can't remove, the attraction/marquee panel, take out the fluorescent tube bulb, and run a wire into there from the outlet to power a super low-energy LED bulb that I can keep on all the time? It won't generate any heat so it shouldn't be that big an issue and it'll make it look a lot more friendly and inviting to play.

Has anyone else converted their marquee to something that's always on? Does everyone else leave the game on all the time and I'm being overly conservative? I don't know anything about maintaining this thing so I want to try to make it last as long as possible before I have to learn.

Thanks,

Adam

No we do not leave games on all the time. CRTs and power supplies (and every electronic component for that matter) has a finite life. Every hour needlessly on wastes an hour of its life.


And yes, if you wanted to add an LED fixture to the marquee so it could be lit up all the time that would work. It'd make an awesome night light.

 

[pokeydonut]

And, unrelatedly - is the high score supposed to reset every time you turn it on and off? Is there some dip switch I can change somewhere to make it save the high score when it turns off? Or is that just a cost of doing Free Play

 

[TheNickDuong]

Ms Pacman does not save High Scores. you can get a couple different solutions from highscoresaves.com. You'll get free play with attract as result of using one of the kits as well.

 

[ArcadeTechGW]

The LED strip option will keep you from going broke to some extent.

You can add a motion sensor, and the marque will turn on when you get to the location.

Nothing says you can't do it.

 

[pokeydonut]

Thank you everyone. I did exactly this. I got that LED light strip, took out the fluorescent bulb and mounted the strips under the marquee and ran the plug out the back. Couldn't be easier. And I did install the highscoresaves kit - thanks for the suggestion. Now it's exactly how I wanted it. Thanks everyone!

 

[Marquee Mark]

You can get something like this and run the lead out the back of the cabinet. Run it in addition to the existing light fixture. In some of my games, I have replaced the burned out light fixture with a standard AC Led fixture from walmart. Here's a video for below on replacing the existing fixture

You can rewire the original fixture to use LEDs. it's super easy and costs almost nothing, except for the new LED tube. This also allows you to just replace the tube in the future should it go out as opposed to the entire fixture.

It's one of the first things I do to my cabs to protect the marquee. The ballasts in fluorescent lights generate way too much heat.

Edit: typos