A while back I wrote about how my Soul Calibur III arcade unexpectedly shut itself off while booting up, and would not turn back on again, as I was showing it off to a friend along with my other arcade systems last October. This was immediately and deeply frustrating for me because of the three arcade systems I owned at that point, this is the one my kids like the most, and to be honest I've got a pretty big soft spot for the Soul Edge / Soul Calibur series. I'm not sure whether I like Soul Calibur III better than I like Street Fighter II; that's a tough call and they both belong in their own class.
Regardless, my initial findings on this system were that it was repeatedly blowing a 3 amp fuse in the isolation transformer at the bottom of the cabinet. What threw me off was that a little fiddling caused the Happs switching power supply to blow its own internal fuse as I tried to investigate the source of the problem, leading me to wonder if the issue was due to something else in the cabinet being shorted. I disassembled the custom Playstation 2 system that was attached to a JAMMA harness and verified as best as I could that everything was connected correctly and removed excess dust, reassembled everything and found the monitor would power on if I did not have the switching power supply connected to the isolation transformer. So in my mind, the power supply was the likely culprit. Adding weight to this assessment was the frequency of defective power supplies in regular desktop computers I've come into contact with over the past fifteen years.
After moving the arcades into our kitchen I gave it one more try with a new 3 amp fuse in the isolation transformer, which also popped immediately as soon as I reconnected the switching power supply. I made a note of which color wires were connected to each connector on the power supply before detaching it from the cabinet inside the Soul Calibur III service manual, and removed it from the cabinet for further testing.
During my trip to pick up the Pole Position, I had mentioned to the seller that I was having these issues and he had given me a power supply that looked very similar to a standard PC power supply, albeit with different connectors to use for testing. One of the leads was a 115V AC connection that matched the connectors on the Happ power supply, so I hooked it up without anything else attached and turned it on.
A huge loud spark and a whiff of smoke confirmed the Happ power supply was the source of my troubles. I'm about 90% sure there's a bad bridge rectifier on the Happ power supply based on where I saw the spark light up, but as I'm not exactly comfortable with the idea of desoldering it and replacing it with a good one, I opted to order a replacement 130W Happ Pro from a seller on eBay instead.
I (foolishly) didn't pay attention to the seller's shipping details, just eBay's shipping calculator which estimated that I should receive the power supply by April 4th. That sounded reasonable along with the price, so I went for it. In hindsight I should have paid closer attention, as the details specified that the seller would not ship for 7 to 10 days after payment cleared. Consequently the power supply was placed in the mail on April 9th. Upon realizing this two days later, I contacted the seller with a grumpy message requesting more details on the shipping he had used, with the hope that I could get a better idea of when the part would arrive.
Dear arcadeemulators,
What method of shipping did you use to send my power supply? eBay's shipping calculator is telling me the package should have arrived by April 4th, 2012, but I see that it was picked up by USPS on April 9th. I hope everything is okay on your end.
His response seemed curt and provided me with no additional information.
that is only a estimate, the tracking was uploaded & that is the info you have
thanks
Gary
Ironically the power supply in question arrived the very next day. [facepalm] That's what I get for not listening to Brigitte when she told me to be patient. Patience, right right... oh well, nobody is perfect. I must learn humility, grasshopper.
Amid helping Autumn with schoolwork, giving Brig a much needed leg and foot rub, prepping grilled cheese sandwiches and Ramen noodles for hungry kids, cleaning random messes, dealing with a defiant pre-teen who claimed her Nook was no good because she found the classic novels I had loaded on it were boring and she would rather play crappy Popcap web games on http://ourworld.com, calming a screaming two and a half year old multiple times, I somehow managed to get the new power supply installed.
Switching on the system yielded success - I heard the fan inside the Playstation 2 kick on, and the monitor displayed a startup sequence for a few moments before going to a black screen. Looking inside the cabinet after waiting a few moments, I noticed the DVD-ROM tray was ejected and there was no disk on it.
I switched off the cabinet, detached the Playstation 2 from the Jamma harness and took it apart, removed the DVD-ROM drive and also disassembled it and found the Soul Calibur III Arcade DVD floating inside. I extracted it carefully and managed to get it out without any serious scratches. I reassembled everything and put the Playstation 2 back into the cabinet, turned on the system, ejected the DVD drive and put the disk back in, then watched as the game loaded for the first time since last October.
Initially I had no sound and the player one controls did not work. I found a detached red power line that was spliced into a cord running to the control panel with a loose piece of heatshrink just floating around on it, doing nothing to protect the connection from causing a short.
I need to stop for a moment and comment on the pure laziness I keep running into that is evident from past repair jobs performed on these arcade systems before I acquired them. Whether these shoddy repair jobs were done by previous owners who simply had little to no technical knowledge, or performed by supposed "professionals" who were just trying to fix the problem as quickly as possible so they could collect their payment and move on to the next job, I really don't know. What I have realized is that I am way too anal to let these sorts of things go without addressing them.
I grabbed a box of matches from the cabinet where I keep them and lit one, waved it under the heatshrink and watched with satisfaction as it shrank against the wire connection, simultaneously locking it in place and protecting it. I then attached the connector to the appropriate point on the switching power supply and fired the system up again. Player one controls were now working, but I still had no sound.
Our neighbor stopped by, and he has worked as an electrician in the past so we both took a look at the internals, and found that there was a direct line running from the subwoofer and tweeter attached just beneath the marquis light and ended in a four-pin connection that was not attached to anything. My assumption was that the process of bringing the cabinet into the house on its back, then turning it sideways before lifting it back upright is what caused this, and we reconnected it. Most likely this method of bringing the cabinet into the house was also what caused the DVD to get stuck inside the drive. We reconnected the speaker wire to a corresponding wire inside the cabinet, and presto! Sound was now working again, albeit very loudly.
This system still has some issues that need to be addressed. The player two joystick does not want to respond when pressed to the right, and the player one joystick sticks, for lack of a better description. It's annoying when you play and you cannot press it in the direction you want - it feels as though it is catching against something and won't go all the way in that direction until you try it again. Also, the player one start button works only half of the time, and the player two guard button does not seem to be working at all, so I'm planning to attempt to clean the connection leads in case corrosion is causing an issue there, and failing that I'll replace the micro-switches. I'm also going to see if I can figure out what is causing the player one joystick to catch, and I need to adjust the speaker volume to something more reasonable for indoors.
Overall, I'm pretty satisfied that I was able to identify and resolve what was preventing this system from turning on. The other issues are pretty minor by comparison and I can deal with them as I get the time.
Next up in arcade repair to-do list - getting both guns working in Invasion: the Abductors and either fixing or replacing its power supply.
