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Sega New Astro City Restoration. 56K Beware!


Berty

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It’s not often that you are offered anything for free, yet alone an arcade cabinet, so when Troy offered a Sega Astro City for free, I was stoked. The only catch was that it was empty and needed some TLC in certain areas. I would like to share with you the restoration process of this machine, and share some of the knowledge I have learnt along the way.

 

Having already owned one of these cabs has made the restoration process a lot easier than starting from scratch. Here are some pics of what the cab looked like when I first got it…

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image001.jpg

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image009.jpg

 

This is a picture of the cab as it arrived, although I had been too eager to get to dismantling it so I missed out on taking any pics when it was fully assembled. At this point in time I had done a lot of cleaning to the cab to inspect the condition of the paintwork and body. What I was most happy about was that the wiring in the cab was for the most part left untouched. Acquiring JST terminals is no hassle, but Tyco/Amp stuff is a real pain for me to track down in low quantities.

 

The cabinet is and will remain 100V as all of the wiring including AC line filters etc was all still in place. All doors and locks work also, coin mechanism and coin counters were also left in place, which is a real relief as the Sega Naomi will refuse to accept coin input unless a coin counter is present. What was a real surprise though was that there was a ticket machine installed in the cab. The installation looks like a factory job also, Troy also tells me that thi is how it came from Sega of Japan.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image004.jpg

 

Here is the ticket machine, quite an oddity. If anyone has anymore info on these then that would be of great help. The machine is “Yennox” brand and the large black piece is a feeder mechanism for the machine. All the wiring is there, although I’m not sure what does what yet.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image007.jpg

 

This is probably going to be the most annoying part of the resto. The Bose speaker cone had been lifted some punk, and the speaker grill was also pinched. There is also the standard yellowing of the surrounding plastic, but nothing a bit of specialised painting wont fix. For some reason, Sega loved this white plastic and used it on a lot of their stuff, including the Sega Saturn. A lot of speculation surrounds why the stuff goes yellow, but it most likely comes down to UV exposure as well as cigarette smoke. My other Astro has the exact same yellowing on this area and to tell you the truth I am not that fussed about it, but I will get around to fixing it soon. (The Canadian Club in the background is to help with the resto process).

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http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image005.jpg

 

Here is the CP. What the hell is that I hear you say? It’s the official Sega panel for Virtual On MSBS 5.2. This didn’t come with the cab though. The worst part about this section of the cab was a dirty big crack in the front of the CP.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image006.jpg

 

Here is the crack in all its glory. You can see how it has been previously repaired. You can also see the amount of scraping and denting to this section of the cab. This is the section of the cab that I am beginning work on first.

 

Control Panel Repair and Painting

 

The first thing I decided to do when I got the cab was to get cracking on repairing the control panel surround. As most of you will know, Sega spares are some serious $$$ so even if I had to spend the next year repairing this, I would still be better off. I also decided to start here so I could assess whether it would be feasible for me to respray the whole cab myself (and get a good result).

 

I began work on the crack by thoroughly cleaning the surface; this included sanding the whole panel back to the plastic layer. This is where I made my first mistake. In my haste to remove the paint existing paint work, I used a really course 150gritt sandpaper. This left some real deep scratches especially noticeable around the rounded edges of the CP surround.

 

Next mistake I made was when I was removing the “insert coin” sticker. I used a Stanley knife to lift the edges, in the process of doing that, some of the stickers backing lifted and I also left a few gauges in the CP. Not really that big of a deal though as this area will be covered up again when it gets finished. Back to the sanding, If I had to do this again, I would use maybe 200-400gritt paper and take a lot more time to do this. As you can see in the next few steps, although I did manage to get ride of most of the scratches, it was A.) a pain in the ass that I could of avoided and B.) it will still be noticeable in close inspections. I would also recommend wet sanding the areas as it keeps the dust to a minimum and provides a really good finish.

 

Once the whole thing was sanded, I cleaned the cracked area with acetone to remove the previous goo that was in there. Once the area was totally clean I then went about choosing a method to fix the crack, as well as hide any surface imperfections. The plastic in this area is really strong and slightly porous also. After some experimenting on a junker-astro CP, I found that super glue would give me the result I was after without having to muck around with epoxy resins.

 

Being very careful, I split apart the panel and filled the area with super glue, allowing about it an hour for it to set in a large scale vice before re-applying.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image011.jpg

 

If you are doing this yourself, do be afraid of applying heaps of glue to the area, you are going to need to sand it back later anyway. After about five to six applications, I then let the CP “set” in the vice for 24hours; paying careful attention to how much pressure the vice was applying.

 

Next step was to prime the surface. Once again is my haste to get the job done, I couldn’t wait for white primer, so I bought grey but it ended up being a good choice, because I could actually see where I had missed, the only downside would be that I needed to apply more coasts of white to get rid of any bleed through.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image013.jpg

 

I ended up using about two cans of primer to finish this stage of the job. The reason being all of the scratched that I had put in the plastic from using 150gritt sand paper. Above, you can see the crack. I literally spent a week and about two rolls of 400 grit paper sanding the area to get rid of any excess glue. Doing the top of the panel where the indentation was slightly harder though. Some of the glue had gotten into of the solid lip and replaced it with a nice gradual curve. I don’t have any pics of this, but what I had to do was wait for the glue to be properly set (about 72hours) then I used a Stanley knife to re-cut the lip. I then carefully poured acetone along the groove I had cut and peeled away the excess to re-form the lip. I didn’t pour any acetone near the crack repair just incase, so this section had to be done solely with sand paper and the knife.

 

After this I applied about three coats of primer at a time, and sanded it back with 600 grit, repeated and then sanded back again with 800 grit. Then re-primed and sanded back with 1200 grit until the surface was like glass. Below is a pic after the second coating and subsequent sanding. I would not of had to of gone to this length though if I hadn’t of been so hasty in the first place.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image012.jpg

 

Now enter tragedy! I had gotten the surface as well primed as I could of hoped for, the surface was immaculate, the primer was solid as a rock and the crack was almost unnoticeable. I then bough some “White Knight” brand appliance white spray paint. As soon as I applied the first coat, the paint began to crack and crack the undercoat! At this stage I was having too much of a tantrum to even consider taking photo’s but after reflecting on the incident, I believe that there was either some sort of chemical reaction or heat played a factor. Time to crack out the 400 grit paper again and start to re-prime…

 

After another few days, and a number of rain delays, I managed to get it back on track. Following the same priming process, I managed to remove the cracked paint and then apply automotive touch-up paint. The colour was “350G Gloss White” in the Power Plus range. After a couple of coats it became apparent that the colour wasn’t white enough. I did some experimentation with other paints, and found that the White Knight paint in “Appliance White” could bond properly to the automotive paint. I re-sanded the automotive paint with 600 grit and then applied the final coats of appliance white.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image014.jpg

 

This is a pic of the (almost) final product, baking in the sun. Here is another pic of where the crack used to be. I am not happy with the result but still it is pretty good…

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image015.jpg

 

The paint will still need at least a week of baking before it will be hard enough to proceed. So this is where we leave it for now. Still focusing on the control panel section, I decided the next thing I needed to fix was the insert coin sticker. Now I though that it would be a piece of cake to source another but my searches turned up nothing. Here is a scan of what the sticker looked like when I picked it off…

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image026.jpg

 

You can see how the silver backing had lifted and some of the colour was also lifted. If you haven’t seen one of these up close, the image is actually on the backing, and the grey section is meant to be silver (yes my scanner is craptacular). How I decided to get around this, was to scan the image, do my best to replicate all the missing colour in photo shop and then print it out using one of the colour lasers. Then, the only problem would be getting the silver back into the image.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/image035.jpg

 

After a little bit of touching up this was the end result. Note the black lines are there for alignment purposes. The colours are also a little bit off, and the picture is still just a plain old raster image until I can get my head around Inkscape.

 

Thus Concludes Part #1

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I have done some more since i typed that up. The panel has had a few more coats of white and will be ready for the final clear coat on Wednesday. Next step is to get the chasis and tube sorted out. I have paid for the chasis which is dual res, and will grab the tube next thursday if my pay comes through :confused:

 

So far, big thanks to Troy for the cab, Jomac for the chasis and soon Dorian for the tube. Part 2 should be up in two weeks with another big photo update and some more specifics about astro wiring.

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hi luke i can tell you that the speakers and grill are the same used in the 50 inch megalo cabs i saw a few at the unit the other day i will send em up

 

fucking awesome mate! I was quoted $65USD to replace the whole speaker and was almost going to do it.

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very cool - whats your plans for the monitor ??

 

Well, I have already got the chasis, its a sharp image 15/24K chasis. I am going to get the tube off Dorian, i hoped to get it last week but ran out of cash so hopefully next week it will be a go-er.

 

The chasis is matched to that particular tube. I also have a friend in the UK who has offered me an official Sega monitor frame if i need it. I havent had a chance to inspect the tube yet, but I am pretty confident in my ability to fabricate the mounts if it comes to that.

 

Once i get the monitor, i will make a big update to this thread.

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It is a butchered one I picked up locally for cheap. :) Door where coin mech normally is was cut up and a front entry mech installed, control panel almost hanging off due to people leaning too hard on it, etc.
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Round #2

 

Well, a long time has passed since the last update and to tell you the truth not much has happened. But here is an update anyway…

 

The first real bit of gear arrived a few days after the last big update I did; the chassis! It’s a Sharp Image 15K/24K jobby so I can get the most out of my model 1 fetish that I am going through at the moment. HUGE thanks to Jomac, I cannot recommend him highly enough.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image001.jpg

 

The great thing about this chassis is that most of the controls are actually on the remote control board, including the degauss. The degauss circuit was causing me concern because normally, the degauss function is controlled by the Sega PSU and that would have meant some wire hacking. Not only that but the Sega plugs are all pretty much custom jobs so sourcing replacements would have been a bastard.

 

Powering the cab was the next real issue that I had to face. As the machine was going to be primarily for medium resolution games, I needed a PSU with a 3.3v line for Model 3 and Naomi stuff. Luckily when I got the cab off Troy, I had also purchased an M3 Sega PSU.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image003.jpg

 

This is the first iteration of Sega’s M3 PSU. The PSU beside it is actually a 24V gun driver PSU, so I assume that this was taken from a “Lost World” setup. Anyway, you can see that this PSU has got all the vital connectors, but no service, test or audio functionality like other Sega PSU’s. Oh, and the connector on the top is the 3.3V line.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image005.jpg

 

This is what a normal New Astro PSU looks like. Note the pentometers for sounds plus the addition of a separate stereo amplifier. What I had initially planned was to use the M3 PSU and add in a Capcom Q-Sound amplifier for stereo sound. But I latter opted for a more simplified option and sought out a Sega JVS PSU.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image007.jpg

 

Here is the Q-Sound amp plus transformer. I still don’t know whether I am going to use this since the cab will have its own stereo amp in the PSU. Here is how the M3 hooked up into the Astro’s wiring; functional but not quite enough. I figured that I am going to the expense of getting a brand new screen, the least I could do was a make sure I got a PSU that I was happy with.

 

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image008.jpg

 

Lucy for me I spotted an NVS-4000 on eBay and decided to win it all costs. The NVS-4000 is a non-standard piece of kit. It was designed as a cost effective replacement for cabs running but Sega Model 3 and regular PSU’s. The NVS has got 3.3V output, multiple 100V AC outputs, stereo amplifier, fully adjustable voltage lines and looks like a block of flats.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image010.jpg

 

In my haste to organise everything I totally forgot that I needed a monitor frame to mount the huge 29 beastie that was going in there. Now the official Sega frame’s are great because they have got two bars that go around the back of the tube to protect the neck during rotation. Legend, and fellow Sega head Andy Geezer had a frame for me but postage cost prevented him from sending it .

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image012.jpg

 

This is the frame in my other Astro. You can see how the monitor mounts to the frame and then the frame to the body. I actually went to the trouble of re-creating the frame in Autocad so it could be fabricated in a worst case scenario.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image014.jpg

 

Here is Mr Geezer’s frame. You can get a better idea from this picture of why I thought it would be easy enough to fabricate. For those of you interested I have actually made a DXF file which can be used to fabricate the part at a decent metal working place.

 

Lucky for me Jomac came to the rescue (again) with the frame and with the tube that I picked up from Dorian at Gamedude I now had all of the shizzle I needed to get the screen into the cab.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/ImageX.jpg

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image016.jpg

 

Here tis’! All assembled. The extra green and gold wiring is for earthing; one to the chassis and the other to the frame. I made the earth wires Molex’s so I could disconnect them easily if I needed to remove the monitor. Below is a pic of the extra earthing points in the back of the cab. As this and my other Astro are still 100V then I need to earth these off properly to a regular point.

 

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image018.jpg

 

Because the chassis I was installing didn’t have the normal Sega plug, I had to modify the harness in the Astro to suit. The white plug is the original Sega one, it had R,G,B,S,G and AC & Degauss in it. I wired the R,G,B,G,S to one plug, and the AC and Degauss to another. Sneek will be happy to know that it can be reverted back to Sega wiring at any stage because I also made adapters for the Sega plug (on the right). Oh yeah, for anyone who is interested Pink and Light Blue are the colours for AC lines in the Japanese Sega cabs.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image020.jpg

 

Okay, so I got the monitor in fine and set it to medium resolution, only trouble was that the picture was upside down and back-the-front. Once I changed the wires around on the yoke the picture came good.

 

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image022.jpg

 

So, once I was finished playing with Star Wars Arcade, I then got my act together and cut a piece of 15mm thick board to size (400mm x 500mm) and mounted Virtual On to it.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image024.jpg

 

I the put the cab back together so my shit wasn’t everywhere during the week. I put the Virtual On control panel onto the cab and viola!

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image026.jpg

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So that’s about it for this weekend! Things still to do are….

 

-The Monitor makes a cracking sound when turned on or off.

-Wire the monitors AC to the PSU so it can be controlled from there.

-Obtain a degauss coil for the tube.

-The picture is slightly rotated so I need to get the alignment right some how (help needed here)

-Respray the control panel and speaker surrounds (the panel didn’t turn out to be white enough)

-Mount the monitor remote control board somewhere easy to access.

-Replace an entire speaker assembly.

-Tie down the NVS.

-Print out the 100Yen stick.

-Obtain another glass holder. (see below)

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image028.jpg

 

-Fix a graphics glitch on Virtual On PCB

-Pay Andy Geezer for the Model 2B link board (Virtual On locks up if you don’t have the link board attached).

-Respray the monitor surround.

-Lots of cosmetic work

 

 

HUGE Thanks to….

 

Troy for the cab and parts.

Jomac for his excellent service and 100% backyarder friendly attitude.

Travis for answering all of my questions about the tube.

Dorian from Gamedude for holding onto the Tube for me for so long.

 

Next update…

 

I should have the speakers sorted and the game board sorted in a couple of weeks.

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-The picture is slightly rotated so I need to get the alignment right some how (help needed here)

 

Very carefully loosen the yoke clamp just enough to allow movement and rotate the yoke and retighten.

You can do this while its running but you gotta be real careful because its live stuff.

Also usually the yoke is glued in position so you may have to break the glue before rotation.

Make sure you keep the yoke position on the tube neck the same and mark the original position with a fine pen, moving the yoke up and down the neck can effect the screen.

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.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image012.jpg

 

This is the frame in my other Astro. You can see how the monitor mounts to the frame and then the frame to the body. I actually went to the trouble of re-creating the frame in Autocad so it could be fabricated in a worst case scenario.

 

http://www.cowboyberty.com/Astro/part2/image014.jpg

 

Here is Mr Geezer’s frame. You can get a better idea from this picture of why I thought it would be easy enough to fabricate. For those of you interested I have actually made a DXF file which can be used to fabricate the part at a decent metal working place.

 

Lucky for me Jomac came to the rescue (again) with the frame and with the tube that I picked up from Dorian at Gamedude I now had all of the shizzle I needed to get the screen into the cab.

 

 

 

]

 

Hey Berty, I am in the process of putting together a monitor for my astro. Any chance u could pm me the DXF file of the frame, so I can get part of it fabricated...

 

BTW...It looks great...

 

Cheers

 

Angelo

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Just thought that I would update this old thread to tell everyone that it has finally been completed. Sneek helped me out with more spares for the machine including speakers and parts needed for the control panel.

 

I have taken VO out of the machine and am converting it to be my main Jamma based horizontal machine, complete with Capcom control panel. Pics soon to follow, just waiting for another LS-32 to complete the job :)

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