Let There Be Light
Black, white and green. Hot, neutral and ground. Sounds simple enough right? Well my friends from Sega decided to throw a few extra colors in there just to spice things up a bit. Before I could proceed with just about anything else on the arcade system, I had to tackle the biggest (let's pray) hurdle; the electrical system. Because my only formal training in electronics was cutting through the MIT campus one time, analyzing and rewiring an electrical system was no small challenge.
First step was to do some research on electricity and basic wiring. I purchased the book Wiring Simplified which is an amazing book on wiring basics drafted from the National Electrical Code. While reading and re-reading this little beauty I was simultaneously mapping out the original electrical arcade system.
The original arcade electrical system consisted of two decoupled circuits. The first circuit used standard 120V alternating current to provide power to a 5V/12V direct current power supply for the arcade control ciruit boards. The second circuit used 1 Amp, 100V alternating current to provide power to the arcade mother boards, 100 Watt marquee light, coin op, and arcade display. The key to this whole system is the isolation transformer, which transforms the 120V electrical current to the 100V circuit while keeping the two circuits isolated. The logic behind this is based on the seemingly illogical way the arcade display handles power and this decoupling prevents the display frame from becoming part of the circuit and killing me when I touch it.
The wiring inside the arcade was a certified mess. Light blue, dark blue, red, orange, grey, black, white, green, brown, and puke colored wires did not immediately indicate how the hell this heap actually worked. Solder joints were covered in dust and wires were cracking and coated in mold. The power supply for the arcade controls was only partially connected which left it up to me to put the pieces back together. Using my newly attained wiring knowledge I was able to piece together how the system was originally designed by tracing the wires from the wall plug and testing specific spots and terminals with my multimeter.
Once I understood how the original electrical system functioned I could then start planning the modifications that were needed to incorporate the Pentium 4 PC and the arcade trackball. First thing I did was chuck the old power supply from the arcade and desolder all the wires. I wanted the new electrical system to be modular so I relied heavily on screw block terminals and blade terminals for almost all of the major connections. I wired the power supply for my PC into the 120 Volt circuit by cutting the three prong plug off of the main power cable and using wiring cap connectors to join the respective hot, neutral and ground wires. The arcade trackball requires a 5V direct current connection to power the infrared LEDs inside. To achieve this with the new electrical system I chucked the floppy drive from my PC, cut the 5V DC wires, and used spade terminals to connect them to a wiring block. For the neccessary 100V connections I used wiring cap connectors to reconnect the plug for the display and spade terminals with a wiring block to connect the 100 Watt marquee light.
With the wiring all hooked up it was time for a test... VICTORY!
First step was to do some research on electricity and basic wiring. I purchased the book Wiring Simplified which is an amazing book on wiring basics drafted from the National Electrical Code. While reading and re-reading this little beauty I was simultaneously mapping out the original electrical arcade system.
The original arcade electrical system consisted of two decoupled circuits. The first circuit used standard 120V alternating current to provide power to a 5V/12V direct current power supply for the arcade control ciruit boards. The second circuit used 1 Amp, 100V alternating current to provide power to the arcade mother boards, 100 Watt marquee light, coin op, and arcade display. The key to this whole system is the isolation transformer, which transforms the 120V electrical current to the 100V circuit while keeping the two circuits isolated. The logic behind this is based on the seemingly illogical way the arcade display handles power and this decoupling prevents the display frame from becoming part of the circuit and killing me when I touch it.
The wiring inside the arcade was a certified mess. Light blue, dark blue, red, orange, grey, black, white, green, brown, and puke colored wires did not immediately indicate how the hell this heap actually worked. Solder joints were covered in dust and wires were cracking and coated in mold. The power supply for the arcade controls was only partially connected which left it up to me to put the pieces back together. Using my newly attained wiring knowledge I was able to piece together how the system was originally designed by tracing the wires from the wall plug and testing specific spots and terminals with my multimeter.
Once I understood how the original electrical system functioned I could then start planning the modifications that were needed to incorporate the Pentium 4 PC and the arcade trackball. First thing I did was chuck the old power supply from the arcade and desolder all the wires. I wanted the new electrical system to be modular so I relied heavily on screw block terminals and blade terminals for almost all of the major connections. I wired the power supply for my PC into the 120 Volt circuit by cutting the three prong plug off of the main power cable and using wiring cap connectors to join the respective hot, neutral and ground wires. The arcade trackball requires a 5V direct current connection to power the infrared LEDs inside. To achieve this with the new electrical system I chucked the floppy drive from my PC, cut the 5V DC wires, and used spade terminals to connect them to a wiring block. For the neccessary 100V connections I used wiring cap connectors to reconnect the plug for the display and spade terminals with a wiring block to connect the 100 Watt marquee light.
With the wiring all hooked up it was time for a test... VICTORY!
1 Comments:
Hi Matt, nice one!
I came across your blog when I was searching for a single button to turn on my mame system. Not exactly what I wanted but similar. I'm following http://home.bendcable.com/werstlein/ design. I love your diagrams, what software did you use?
Thanks,
riadmelb
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