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

Hello again forum!

I recently picked up a dead Pacman cabaret on the cheap and have been troubleshooting it in order to bring it back to life. Yesterday I burned out a voltmeter testing the power chord, so I know it's getting electricity, but when I tested the RFI filter (with a new voltmeter), it was dead. So I think I found my problem. I've looked up solutions online, and many people are suggesting removing the RFI filter altogether. However, I can't find any illustrations of what it should look like without the RFI filter hooked up. Does anyone know where I can find such an illustration?

Thanks!

okay I am trying to understand how you blew up a most likely cheap meter. I am hoping you put it on current mode or something when you measured it and it blew the fuse inside the el'cheapo meter. which means you probably blew the transformer fuse.

You don't need that filter board at all, and in most cases it makes things worse. Throw out that board, check all of your fuses on the bottom of the cab and go from there. Do remember that pacman uses AC voltage and not DC going into the PCB.

Don't worry about finding a picture of what it should look like. Just unplug the harness from the rfi board. Unplug the rfi board from the pcb and plug the harness directly onto the pcb. Throw the rfi I the trash.

I wasn't sure if my power chord was bad, so I had the voltmeter on 200AC setting. Unplugged the molex connector on the power chord, then put one lead up to the negative port on the power chord, and touched the other lead to ground. Then POP! Yeah. I'm still learning.

Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, I'm talking about the Lead Interference Filter that connects the power chord's positive, negative and ground wire through to the transformer. The little silver box in front of the right side transformer, correct?

oh That's an AC line filter, we all thought you were talking about the EMI Filter board that usually goes between the wireharness and the game PCB.

First, no meter should ever blow up no matter what setting it is on. You might want to consider at least a $50 extec EX330 that way you dont end up hurting yourself.

The AC line filters do go bad, its generally a good idea to have those in the game since it keeps any RF noise going into the rest of your games and other electronics in your house. You don't absolutely have to have one though, and you probably won't notice one way or another. if you do want to install one back in there are literally thousands of places you can find them
such as this 4A one http://www.twistedquarter.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_37&products_id=75
Pacman only uses about 2A so anything above 2A will do you just fine. Also if your game is missing its ground pin on the plug, replace it. the filter can't really do its job without it.

YES!! That's exactly what I was talking about.

Thanks Ian!!

We have power!!

And then a fuse on the monitor board blew. So I'm getting no neck glow. Now here's the weird thing - I credit up the game, and I can hear it. Then if you press start, the game just makes the one-up "ding ding ding" noise repeatedly. The game never actually starts. A few weeks back the game board was tested in a Junior Pacman and it played just fine. I will probably take the board home tonight and test it in my Ms. Pacman. Hopefully I didn't screw up the PCB. I can't tell, though because the monitor won't come on.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

Update - I brought the Pacman PCB home and tested it in my Ms. Pacman, and it works fine (thank ya Jesus!). I think next week I'll pull the monitor board, recap it and replace the fuse that I think blew. I shall keep you posted.