isucamper
Permanently Banned
Some of you may remember a Qix converted Zookeeper that was on Chicago's craiglist several weeks ago. It was listed as in good shape but not powering on. It had been obtained in a forecloser and the seller stated that there was probably a switch he couldn't find to turn it on. I had some email contact with the owner and I offered him $200 for it at one point, but he said he had accepted an offer for $300 and the buyer was to set up shipping. I kind of gave up on it at that point but last week I emailed the seller again to see if the sale had gone through. He said he still had it and he'd give it to me for $200. Got in the car and 6 hours later I had a Zookeeper in my garage.
Not an ideal cabinet I know, but being horny for Zookeeper I couldn't pass it up. It's in pretty good shape, but as the seller stated it wasn't powering on when I got it home. I found the switch underneath and flipped it... still no luck. The cabinet was locked up tight and I'm always reluctant to drill out the lock knowing that there's probably a nice set of keys hanging off the inside of the coin door.
The back lock was pretty simple, and some people on here have recommended lock picking as an alternative to drilling so I watched a few videos and took to it with a paper clip. After several unsuccessful tries, I started asking around work and as luck would have it one of my buddies had a lock pick kit that he let me borrow. Using it, I popped the back door open in about 30 seconds. Much easier than using a paper clip.
The inside was filthy, but pretty complete and unhacked. There were even keys on the coin door!!!
Unfortunately, they don't work in the lock. Oh well.
This cabinet had a decent owner at some point, as the conversion to from Qix was really clean. He had some notes in the manuals and seemed to know what he was doing.
Also, the original battery had been replaced with something else. Anybody recognize this? Do I need to worry about it leaking??
Seasoned Taito cabinet owners can probably already spot my problem in the picture of the inside, but I had no idea how to trouble shoot this issue. Plug it in, flip the switch, and nothing. Not a hum or LED or anything. It was just dead. I did some continuity tests on the power cable as it was pretty frayed, but it checked out ok. I knew about the two interlock switches, but I had them both pulled and still nothing. Turns out, there are the two switches behind the coin door, one for power and one for RAM or something. I had the RAM switch pulled thinking it was the power, but the power one was just dangling, not making contact with the coin door. This morning before work I got screwing with it again, pushed in the switch and pop... power... picture... upside down error message... close coin door (I had pushed in the RAM interlock as I fiddled with it).
Ok... I pulled the interlock switch out for the power, closed the door, and tried again. Power... picture... upside down error message "This location..."
Ok... tried again. Power... Zookeeper music. I couldn't believe it. For as crappy as all the components looked, the machine powered up and I got 2 games of Zookeeper in before work. It was even saving high scores!! Although there were no high scores set on the machine already which I thought was strange. Anyway, I was pretty much high all day as a result of my success, be being a total newb and everything.
However, when I got home after work, the game had stopped working. The 5V LED on the power supply is not on. It was on this morning when the game was running.
Does this make sense? Could the power supply have crapped out after being powered up for the first time in a long time and then sitting all day in reasonable humidity in my garage? Did it just have one last death rattle to tease me with before kicking the bucket?
What's the solution to this? New power supply? Anybody have a good example of a power supply replacement that a novice can follow?
Not an ideal cabinet I know, but being horny for Zookeeper I couldn't pass it up. It's in pretty good shape, but as the seller stated it wasn't powering on when I got it home. I found the switch underneath and flipped it... still no luck. The cabinet was locked up tight and I'm always reluctant to drill out the lock knowing that there's probably a nice set of keys hanging off the inside of the coin door.
The back lock was pretty simple, and some people on here have recommended lock picking as an alternative to drilling so I watched a few videos and took to it with a paper clip. After several unsuccessful tries, I started asking around work and as luck would have it one of my buddies had a lock pick kit that he let me borrow. Using it, I popped the back door open in about 30 seconds. Much easier than using a paper clip.
The inside was filthy, but pretty complete and unhacked. There were even keys on the coin door!!!
Unfortunately, they don't work in the lock. Oh well.
This cabinet had a decent owner at some point, as the conversion to from Qix was really clean. He had some notes in the manuals and seemed to know what he was doing.
Also, the original battery had been replaced with something else. Anybody recognize this? Do I need to worry about it leaking??
Seasoned Taito cabinet owners can probably already spot my problem in the picture of the inside, but I had no idea how to trouble shoot this issue. Plug it in, flip the switch, and nothing. Not a hum or LED or anything. It was just dead. I did some continuity tests on the power cable as it was pretty frayed, but it checked out ok. I knew about the two interlock switches, but I had them both pulled and still nothing. Turns out, there are the two switches behind the coin door, one for power and one for RAM or something. I had the RAM switch pulled thinking it was the power, but the power one was just dangling, not making contact with the coin door. This morning before work I got screwing with it again, pushed in the switch and pop... power... picture... upside down error message... close coin door (I had pushed in the RAM interlock as I fiddled with it).
Ok... I pulled the interlock switch out for the power, closed the door, and tried again. Power... picture... upside down error message "This location..."
Ok... tried again. Power... Zookeeper music. I couldn't believe it. For as crappy as all the components looked, the machine powered up and I got 2 games of Zookeeper in before work. It was even saving high scores!! Although there were no high scores set on the machine already which I thought was strange. Anyway, I was pretty much high all day as a result of my success, be being a total newb and everything.
However, when I got home after work, the game had stopped working. The 5V LED on the power supply is not on. It was on this morning when the game was running.
Does this make sense? Could the power supply have crapped out after being powered up for the first time in a long time and then sitting all day in reasonable humidity in my garage? Did it just have one last death rattle to tease me with before kicking the bucket?
What's the solution to this? New power supply? Anybody have a good example of a power supply replacement that a novice can follow?

