What's a decent stock of parts

Sectorseven

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The only electronics place close to me is Radioshack, and their selection is poor to say the least. I'd like to be able to have enough parts on hand that I don't have to order a single part online and wait for it to arrive every time I need to fix something. But I also don't want to over buy and end up with things I'll never use. Are there any kits that have a decent selection of parts in them, or can you recommend a list of things to stock up on? I'm talking about electronics repairs in general and not just arcade related stuff.
 
Most kits have too few of the common components and way too many of the ones you will never use. Your best bet is to buy a plastic parts cabinet with plenty of drawers (search for pictures of Mod's workbench).

Then when you go to buy something, like fuses, but 2 to 3 times as many as you need and label a drawer and drop them in.

Speaking of fuses, inventory your games and find out what fuses they each take and get a selection of those fuses. It sucks blowing a fuse at 9:17 pm and knowing that the Radio Shack is 12 minutes away and they close at 9:30.. :( (been there done that, got the fuse :)).

After fuses, it all depends on what repairs you do. Cap monitors, again inventory your cabs and buy some cap kits. Board repairs, check the boards you repair and see what common parts you need. Audio amps seem to be one of those hard to find on short notice parts that are worth having one or two on hand.

Don't just go buy a bunch of parts, unless you want to be in the parts reselling business. Buy based on your usage patterns.

Good luck, you can buy $1000 worth of parts and the one that goes is the one you don't have.....

ken
 
Definitely fuses fuses fuses... You can get both fast-blow and slo blow ones from your local Home Depot (they charge more than Radio Shack but at least they have them).

You can also get stuff like the fuses at auto parts stores.

I've also been learning lately that if you keep a few extra components around like used power supply boards etc, sometimes you can scavenge them for the parts you need to get back up and running until you get to buy brand new ones. I've recently been "borrowing" some caps from power supply boards that I had lying around that were tested and still good.
 
If you're going to keep collecting, and not just keep a few cabinets and stick with 'em. I'd say monitor parts, fuses, etc etc.

Commons... they'll be most of your problems.

Know what companies sell what parts... like with B&D, I know that if I have to order anything from them... to tack on a couple packs of fuses because they've got a decent price break at 10 fuses. So, I stock up there on fuses, but only when ordering other parts.

My go to source for pretty much everything else is Mouser. I keep capkits saved in "projects" there so I can order them easily.

Keep a cap kit on hand for every major monitor that you'll probably run into. They're only a couple of bucks a piece and they're good to keep on hand for a late night CL run for a game with "monitor issues". 4900, 4600, K7000, Sanyo EZs... stuff like that. For G07's... keep everything on hand. While I don't have a spare flyback, I do keep HOTs and width coils on hand... ... same with 4600's if you can find a good stock of width coils.

The cap kits are nice because, if you take good notes and remember what you pulled... then you can cherry pick out of them for board repairs for games that might have a cap broken off... just make sure you always replace what you picked out as soon as you can... can get messy sometimes if you don't.

Besides fuses and monitor parts... like was said above, double/triple/quadruple orders of any 74XXX logic. They're ALWAYS good to have on hand and most are dirt cheap.

Diodes. Get a shit ton of over powered diodes. They're dirt cheap (I got a roll of something like 100 for a couple of bucks). You can use them to, well... replace diodes. But also replace bridge rectifiers in a pinch and stuff like that.

Any oddball parts your machines might have... they usually cost more, so just pick up a few spares when you can afford to, but don't go out of your way to make sure you have them. (long armed micro-switches like on some pins and Ice Cold Beer... for example).

As you come across "junk" boards... harvest them. Z80's, RAM, EPROMs, even PROMs in case you get that board later in a project. ... I'll even take the DIP switches off of them because I'm THAT cheap.

Wire, connectors, pins for those connectors, leafs, micro switches, LEDs, a good selection of resistors and smaller pots to ghetto replace resistors while you order in replacements (adjust the pot to the value of the resistor and run jumper wires)... it's dirty, but it'll hold until your new parts arrive. Ballasts, are another big one that you never think you'll need until you do. I don't know about everywhere else, but the cheapo $5 ballasts that Lowes and Home Depot used to carry aren't available here anymore. I lucked out and stocked up before they vanished... so lucked out there.

Oh, and sockets. Even if you have to order them by the gross from China, get a good stock/selection of sockets in all common sizes, then just get some crazy sized ones like 28 pin narrows... in a pinch you can cut them down to whatever size you need.

And I think I'm about done rambling... sorry about that.
 
On top of fuses, I'd say...

A molex kit (look for a previous discussion on that topic)

Resistors (Radio shack does sell a nice large assortment in a bag)

Voltage regulators, maybe at least 1-2 of each (I think 2n3055, 7805, 7905, 7812/7912, and 7815/7915.

Diodes like 1n4007 or 4004. For some reason I've needed a lol off 4007. Again radio shack sells a nice assortment that has several 4007s but I used them all up in one shot. I kept the others and ordered a crapload more 4007s from digikey.

Light bulbs for coin doors

IC sockets, at least a few each of 14, 16, 18, 20, and 40 pin.

And to complement the monitor cap kits, at least one AR2 rebuild kit. Buy it for a -02 or whatever the most populated one is so you're ready for the worst.
 
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Instead of stocking separate sockets for each possible type of IC, I typically just stock up on "strip sockets". You can break them to the lengths required for whatever socket you might be in need of. I keep the standard cheapie dual-wipe and machined sockets for the really common stuff, but the "strip socket" stuff has paid for itself a hundred times over.

I can't direct link to it, but if you go to the following link they are at the bottom of the page. Part number SIP-40-MP
http://www.greatplainselectronics.com/products.asp?cat=44
 
The only electronics place close to me is Radioshack, and their selection is poor to say the least. I'd like to be able to have enough parts on hand that I don't have to order a single part online and wait for it to arrive every time I need to fix something.

This will never happen. The amount of shit you have to keep around to pull this off is amazing. I've got a shop where I work on games everyday, and I have to order things for juuuuust about every machine. I usually just order 2 or 3 of everything I order, and I still don't have what I need.
 
The best way to achieve this is to collect broken things, I have a stash of scrap PCBs, mostly arcade, some TV chassis and some odd things I just find smashed by the road side. If you are focusing on arcade PCBs then 20 or so scrap boards will mean you rarely have to order things in. In the field of electronics in general I am afraid the scope is just too wide, you would need a warehouse full of stuff to never have to order things in. At least with the scrap boards even if you end up with tonne of them they usually are virtually free. The only thing I order these days are eproms and sockets, everything else gets robbed from scrap gear. Having a good modern EPROM reader helps as it can test all TTL, DRAM/SRAM as well as eproms. Also a desolder station means you can quickly and easily release the spares from the scrap boards without over-cooking them. If you add an ESR meter to your kit you can save yourself a lot of time by only replacing the electrolytic caps that are actually bad, and also you can reuse old ones that are still perfectly good from your scrap boards.

At the end of the day tho no matter what you have in stock you will always end up having to order the odd thing in from time to time.
 
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Good advice all around. It's amazing how there can be so many different components used in our day to day electronic devices, and yet there's no place even remotely close where you can just buy what you need. I guess people just don't fix things anymore?
 
Good advice all around. It's amazing how there can be so many different components used in our day to day electronic devices, and yet there's no place even remotely close where you can just buy what you need. I guess people just don't fix things anymore?

We live in a disposable society.
 
The RadioShack here in town doesn't even sell a heatsink!! The kid didn't even know what a chip socket was.....SAD....
 
We live in a disposable society.

True but its more economics than anything else. Very few things are economically repairable these days due to the cost of labour in the West, plus unless you are wholesale swapping boards there is no way to define how long or how much a repair will cost until you have completed it. Unless you work at minimum wage as a repairer the owner will likely baulk at the repair costs and buy a new one, all the while claiming you are trying to rip them off. Very few people can pay a mortgage or bring up a family fixing electronics these days, so its left to the hobbiests really.
 
True but its more economics than anything else. Very few things are economically repairable these days due to the cost of labour in the West, plus unless you are wholesale swapping boards there is no way to define how long or how much a repair will cost until you have completed it. Unless you work at minimum wage as a repairer the owner will likely baulk at the repair costs and buy a new one, all the while claiming you are trying to rip them off. Very few people can pay a mortgage or bring up a family fixing electronics these days, so its left to the hobbiests really.

Indian Casinos here in the U.S. have determined that it is cheaper and more cost effective to replace a $700 touch screen monitor, rather than repair it for $50 in parts and $50 in labor. Dumpster diving at the reservation can be very rewarding for some people.
 
Indian Casinos here in the U.S. have determined that it is cheaper and more cost effective to replace a $700 touch screen monitor, rather than repair it for $50 in parts and $50 in labor. Dumpster diving at the reservation can be very rewarding for some people.

The sad thing is that on a spreadsheet somewhere it does look cheaper to them...

Electronics as a hobby is dying too, the lack of parts and knowledge in the stores just reflects that so few customers are still around for it to be something to base a viable business on, its the same here in Austraila. Its why these stores are more and more specialising in USB powered gimicks and moving towards selling laptops/mobiles.

Again its the fact that the market is flooded with impossibly cheap electronics from the East, the ability to do anything even remotely impressive at home these days with electronics is long gone and its doing things impressive that gets kids attention and interest in the hobby. That plus SM technology means hardware is vitrually impenetrable these days and so much now relies on software that pure electronics is rarely enough to do much these days.
 
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Be careful, this is how I started out. Nothing bothers me more than not having the parts on hand to finish a job and having to wait a week to get them.
 
Is electrical engineering as an educational path / degree in decline? After all, someone must be designing all these devices.
 
Its still a career path certainly, but its not the industry that keeps radioshack in business as their parts are usually 10 or 20x the actual price per unit. Its the electronics hobbiest that is in decline and the retail outlets for parts are fading with them.
 
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