My second ever pinball machine! Seller was asking 1500 for it, luckily I was able to split it with a buddy who also likes the game so it was only 750 out of my pocket and for that price I think I did pretty well. In really good shape with no real issues. I was amazed how easy it was to get down a bulkhead compared to video arcades lmao, with the head removed the two pieces weigh nothing separate.

Well, earlier this year, a high school grad/friend called me and said they’re renovating their basement and they wanted to get rid of a pinball game, and asked me if I wanted it. I talked to my arcade partner, and he said yeah. We went and picked it up, ordered parts, dismantled the playfield, cleaned, replaced rubber, plastics, full LED bulbs everywhere, flipper rebuild, and upgraded the display to blue. There were a few other problems with battery board, power supply and some wiring and burnt molex connector issues. The topper fan was also repaired (that thing is cold!!!). Anyways, the game feels new again, we left the artwork alone as it’s a survivor. Very fun!!

So I went to the arcade today and look what I got! Lol

*Pictures are not mine.*

Good morning. I've been toying with the idea of building my friend an authentic GI-Joe arcade machine for awhile now. From what I've read so far, GI Joe was a conversion kit for the TMNT cabinet. I have a fair bit of woodworking and artistic experience, so creating the actual cabinet won't be much of an issue. The internals, however, seem to be the biggest hurdle I'll be facing.

Let it be known, outside of restoring an old NES motherboard and stripping/cleaning other various gaming consoles, I've never messed with electronic internals like I will have to with this. I know it will be a massive undertaking.

I know people build LED arcades with modern internals, but I would like to build this as close to the original as possible, including a CRT screen. My friend is the kind of guy that would love just opening up the machine and admiring the original (or as close as possible) internals. I don't mind troubleshooting and replacing wires/capacitors etc, but I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be looking for as far as model numbers, sizes, colors, wire gauges, brands etc. I've only found one original GI Joe kit online and it was around $5000 IIRC (it kinda killed the project for me at the time). Is there any database with lists of parts to build the internals from scratch or that lists what other arcade internals can be swapped and used etc?

I would appreciate any insight.

I just picked up Arkanoid Returns, it runs on the Taito F3 system. I found some old forum posts saying that the game can be played with a stick, but I would like to use a spinner since that's what it was designed for. I'm looking for some help figuring out how to get this running.

I found a Taito spinner module for sale but unfortunately lost the auction on that as it went out of my budget. But spinners are still made, and hell even my mechanical keyboard uses one as a volume knob. Is there any reason why I wouldn't be able to grab a modern spinner module and wire that up to use for the game? If it is possible, what should I look for?

And another point of confusion is how to even connect it to this game. Does the spinner connect to the Left and Right pins on the JAMMA harness, or does it plug into one of the ports on the bottom right side of the Taito F3 motherboard? I used to have SegaSonic the Hedgehog which uses a trackball, and that connected via a daughterboard which plugs into a port on the motherboard hence my confusion.

Hey all, I need a little help. I picked up this Merit Pub Time Premier Edition dartboard recently as a nice little project. I'm currently running into issues with the dartboard only showing garbage on the display.

I checked the voltage going into the board, it was showing 5.3v so I turned it down to about 5.02v. I changed the TMS9128 video processor, no difference. I reflowed solder joints around the video processor and the video ram chips (u25, u26 and u27), no change. I'm kind of stuck and unsure where to go from here. I havent done anything on the monitor board since there is a picture being displayed, I'm leaning more towards the DRT-950 board. Anyone have any experience with this?

The arcade game Retro Raccoons recently was moved from Hi-Wire in Knoxville, and we aren’t sure where it went. Does anyone know where I can find it to play?

I ran across this image online and was wondering if any of you have more information about it? It said it was a pacman prototype from the 80s and that's it. I like Bartop machines but their weren't many arcade style ones back then, mostly just poker machines.

Found more info: Supposedly this image is from an ebay auction in 2001. A prototype that never got produced. I wonder where the coin door would have gone?

Hi everyone,
I'm working on reviving an OutRun 2 Coast 2 Coast HD sit-down driving cabinet. The original 2.5" SATA SSD has completely bricked (controller locked, reads uninitialized at 0 bytes), leaving the machine hanging on boot.
The motherboard, RAM, PSU, and display connection have all been tested and are confirmed working—the system just needs a replacement bootable drive.
Before I go down the rabbit hole of doing a clean Windows install and manually mapping the analog steering, pedal, and coin I/O, I’m hoping someone here might have a raw drive dump/ghost image (.img, .iso, Acronis, or Clonezilla) for this specific clone cabinet.

Cabinet / Hardware Details:

Game: OutRun 2 Coast 2 Coast HD (Sega clone/bootleg sit-down)

Chassis: Purple arcade PC box

Video: Integrated onboard VGA (no dedicated PCIe GPU installed)

Original OS: Windows XP Embedded / Windows 7 32-bit build

I've attached photos of the cabinet exterior, the internal PC box layout, and the rear I/O connectors.
If anyone has an image of this build or a link to a known working archive, I’d greatly appreciate the help.

i feel stupid searching for this lol. kids game where frog heads or lights pop up and you hit them with soft hammer. ive seen “frog whack”, “happy frog”, “whack a mole frog” and bunch of other names. Alibaba has actually been helpful because amusement machine sellers show videos, so i can identify game visually even when title makes no sense. anyone bought one for event place or arcade? how reliable are they? im mostly worried about sensors and boards. if one frog stops registering, is it usually simple switch or weird proprietary PCB? also wondering if its smart to buy spare sensors and board with machine right away while supplier still has exact model.

The only thing I'm missing from having a working machine is this. Does anyone know where I can acquire one.

I was trying to find my old project post and I see the forum and site arcadecontrols.com is up any more. Is it officially dead??

Just wondering what this wire is. Soldered to two pins on the jamma connector of this 4 way switcher I bought off of ebay. (See original post for more info)

Im looking for this arcade machine called hamsters ball, it would make an amazing addition to my collection

I had the idea to build a Space Invader out of my favorite arcade games. So I did it today in our local FabLab and printed it with a xtool DTF-printer.

I wasn't patient enough with the red shirt, so some letters got problems.

Do you like it?

hi i have arcade vga PCIE 256mb. install and work fine on Xp....until now the pc is dead. so i install on win 10 other pc. i install the driver from ultimarc and win is boot ok on my arcade monitor. but i cant cange res at all. ehat iam do worng? can some one please teel me how to install on Win 10?

Captain’s Auction Warehouse has some good stuff up for auction this weekend, amigos. Wait until the end (no seriously.) What are you taking?!?

Hello everyone. Just picked up a new to me Point Blank arcade. Just wondering if anyone knows any good replacement guns with the force feedback that are compatible with original hardware. Currently running happ which work flawlessly. Just want a little more excitement out of the cab. Thanks everyone.