John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

Hi everyone,

 I'm new to the arcade collecting hobby and my wife recently got me a Star Wars Trilogy Arcade upright cabinet for our 10 year anniversary after years of me begging her. I have only had the cabinet for a couple of months when I started to notice that I had to power on the game a couple of times to get the monitor to display the picture. After that the game worked perfectly. A couple of days ago when I went to turn it on, the game did not boot up at all and now just has a solid white screen on the monitor. No picture, just a white screen. Is there anything I do to try and fix it? At 39, I also have Parkinson's disease so I'm a bit limited on how much I can do with my hands. I still am able to change fuses and do other small things when my meds are working. I hope it's nothing major and I'm really bummed that it has happened to my personal Sega holy grail after only having it for a couple of months. It's my fourth cabinet, but my favorite one for sentimental reasons.

I sincerely appreciate any advice you could give me. John, Shawn, Joe, and the rest of the Arcade Outsiders are the reason why I got into this hobby. Thanks so much for your time!

Sincerely,

Christopher Cribbs (Coffee)

Hi there, what do you mean by power on the game to see the picture? The monitor and game boards both should be on at the same time and if your monitor is on when you plug it in and let's say when you hit a switch the board comes on, it's not necessarily supposed to be that way, I'm a bit confused about that statement. Have you checked voltages on the power supply and on the board as well?

Hi Otaku, thanks so much for your response! Sorry for any confusion. Both the the game and the monitor would come on at the same time. But I had to turn it off and on again a few times just to finally get the game to boot up with a picture and sound. Once it was working, it played great. Now everytime I turn it on the game has no sound and just this white screen.

I'm going to pick up a multimeter today, but I just realized I have no keys to the back of the cabinet. I need to drill that out and replace it with another cam lock. Man I hope my board isn't toast! Thanks again!

You've very welcome, Coffee! :) Definitely sounds like a board issue but hopefully it's a smaller issue and something very simple and the board isn't "toast", hehe, might just be a connection issue to the board or somewhere on the board!

Otaku

Thanks so much Otaku! I sincerely appreciate it my friend! I will keep you posted after I check the voltages this weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed it's just a fuse. It was crazy when it stopped working. I just finished working on my new Gauntlet Legends cabinet and plugged it in for the first time. When I turned it on it worked great but then I looked over and my Star Wars cabinet stopped working. Bad timing! Thanks again!

Well after having my friend help me check the voltages last night, I found out the Star Wars game was not getting enough power to boot up properly. My four arcade cabinets are hooked up to a single power strip in my garage which only has one power outlet. Once I unplugged the other games, my Star Wars cabinet booted up just fine and played like a charm.

Now I just need to figure out how to get more power to my garage to make sure all my games play properly and to future proof it when I get more cabinets. It really is all about the voltages.

USE THE FORCE
that's how I get extra power to my games.

Awesome VertexGuy. Truly awesome. Lol! May the force be with you all and our games!

Is this the huge sit down rear projection game? or the more rare actual upright?

The projector in those games are quite complicated and really difficult to service. I can't really give you many tips to work on one since I don't have that many hours of experience with them and i frankly hate working on them.

Does the monitor ever turn on if you just leave the game on for a few minutes?
When the game is on, how does it look, washed out?

I think he fixed it (well, figured it out at least :P), and it seems to be the upright version.

I use the Schwartz . . . will that get me the same results?    ;D