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Will Womble Fix Your Board? Probably...
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Womble
People keep asking me if I offer a board repair service, and if so what my prices are. Over the past few years my answer has been yes and no, and very inconsistent, which isn't helpful - even I am confused.
So I am going to say a formal "yes", but with a few caveats and exclusions, basically this is a hobby so I'm increasingly declining repairs that require me to commit too great a proportion of my own free time.
Please read all of the below.
Pricing
$250 flat repair fee for JAMMA pinout boards, plus parts, return postage, on a no-fix-no-fee basis.
$400 flat repair fee for non-JAMMA pinout boards , plus parts, plus return postage, on a no-fix-no-fee basis.
Parts are included, unless I have to buy parts in. Usually this is when the repair needs a tonne of ROMs, a whole load of new sockets, or if I need to track down an unusual IC that I can't find in my heap of donor boards. Increasingly I don't even take on boards that are likely to need a tonne of parts replaced, as they are not a fun way to spend a weekend.
The biggest risk is if I need to find really vintage RAM chips or PROMs that I don't keep stock of. PROMs especially as they need to be "new old stock" as they can't be erased and re-used once they have been burnt, as a result stocks are getting low and some are now $30 a chip.
In a lot of cases I won't take these jobs on, as many of these chips are utterly unobtainable without risking buying a load of labelled-to-order fakes from China. Also, if I have to buy parts in they can take 4-6 weeks to arrive post COVID, and all parts are getting rarer.
If I can't fix it then it is up to you what you want to do, I can return it at your cost, or use as scrap so other boards can live. My preference is always to send it back, I don't need more scrap.
Finally - I do repairs as a hobby, not a business, I don't meet the ATO criteria. I went down the ABN path some years ago and it was a pain, my ABN has now expired.
Caveats
1) I can only do one a month, two at a push. Sometimes it can be 3-6 months before you see your board again, it depends on how much of a fight it puts up.
2) If you are in a hurry please let me know up front, in most cases I will decline, its a hobby after all - I have enough deadlines in my day job.
3) If you ensure the packaging is re-usable then it will mean the board will likely get back to you more quickly. If you include the return address on a label, or printed on an A4 page it will save even more time. Packing and posting back is a major pain. Without providing return packaging it can take me weeks to get it rolling again as life gets in the way of finding boxes and packaging, and getting to the post office for a quote, and then taking it back to drop it off. If it arrived boxed I know what the return postage will be, and I can re-use the box. Much much quicker. If you mummify the board in bubble wrap and tape so I have to cut it out then it will take longer.
4) No Neo Geo boards - sorry but no, so much track rot, and potential for problems with the edge connector, plus issues with the carts in your collection that I don't get to test with.
5) Anything with a suicide battery - I can't take responsibility for things that suicide in the mail, it happens, the batteries are nearly 30 years old. I'll let you know what options exist.
6) Anything that uses non-standard controllers, spinners, rotary joysticks, light guns, steering wheels will be a problem. I can't test those functions, or invest the time in replicating them. An exception here is Sega Outrun, Hang-On and Super Hang On which I do repair as I've got my head round those systems on recent repairs.
7) Anything that is medium or high resolution is out, I am not set up for that. The vast majority of arcade PCBs are standard resolution so this is mostly a non-issue.
8 ) Early Taito and Williams multi stack PCBs are an issue - getting them to a reliable state usually requires a major rebuild, so we'd need to agree on how much needs doing. As much as I like fixing boards I really don't want to see the same board over and over again as it works its way through all the other faults that are about to occur.
9) Anything newer than 1994 is out, am not set up for SMD work, not that you can get spares of the custom parts without scrapping another board of the same game. Doesn't hurt to ask but I'll probably decline.
10) Anything older than 1983 is also out - these always need a complete rip and replace, every socket, edge connector and pin header. They also come from an era when half the power supply is a brick in the bottom of the cabinet, I don't get to see that, so fixing half a power supply and expecting it to work, or stay working, isn't a viable approach. Finally, they usually contain a tonne of parts that I cannot source within Australia, so that adds 1-2 months postage delay and a high chance of getting faked parts in from China.
10) I don't fix anything that's an XXX-in-1, or Pandora boxes.
11) I don't do mod kits or conversions.
12) Anything related to CRT chassis, mains wiring, or cabinet wiring is out. So game PCB's only - liability madness ensues once I step away from low voltage DC land.
13) International folk - I have done repairs for folk in the US and the UK, but please check your postage prices first, if it costs US$100 to post me your board, it will cost the same to post it back. I agree this will make almost all repairs uneconomical, but it's your call.
14) Warranty - I don't provide one. All this gear is 30-40 years old, it was expected to be used for 6 months then scrapped. Eventually everything will die, so there is no reason to expect that something I fix will magically become immortal just because I touched it. I will fix the faults I find, and release it back into the wild. I don't bulk replace every single chip on the board, I also don't re-cap PCBs. I replace the caps that are faulty, damaged or missing. Having said that, I have never had a board arrive back at the owner DOA, or faulty again, but there is always a first.
I cannot bullet-proof a board without spending 100+ hours, and $1000 sourcing and replacing every single part on the board.
Questions I know I am going to get asked
Q: Isn't that a lot of $$ to fix PCBs when you can usually buy them fully working for half the fee
A: Not really, you are buying my time, what the board is worth working doesn't change that. Same as your local mechanic doesn't drop his rate if your car should have been scrapped a decade ago. It's actually pretty cheap to be honest, I could double it and still be lower than many of the professional options, not that there are many left.
Q: What about mates rates for AA members?
A: That is mates rates, I could charge twice that and still be cheaper than any professional option that exists.
Q: Can I pay you with scrap boards?
A: Maybe, but probably not, it depends what they are, so it doesn't hurt to ask. In general scrap boards are worth next to nothing, at best they have $5 of useful parts on them, but those are parts you find on almost all scrap boards so I have a lifetimes supply already. If I can only sell the fixed scrap board for $200 then it is the same as asking me to fix two boards for the price of one, obviously this takes twice the time. So unless the game is something I actually want to keep then I'd rather not.
Q: Can I send you a load of boards to look at and you can choose which are fixable?
A: Please don't, am trying to keep the amount of junk I have in the toy-room to a manageable level
Q: Can I post you a board now, and you can look at it when you get the time.
A: Please don't, am trying to keep the amount of junk I have in the toy-room to a manageable level. Am going to operate this on a 1-in-1-out basis.
Q: Do you do onsite work.
A: No - there's no way I can dismantle my workbench and transport everything I might need.
Q: Do you repair whole cabinets?
A: No, see point 11 above about mains side and monitors. Old mains wiring in cabinets is often well below modern safety standards, and usually contains decades of operator hacks (rotten wiring, gaffer tape, chopped earths, switched neutral, fuses blocks bypassed, incorrect fuses, fuses in both L and N etc etc). Taking on a cabinet means I have to make sure it won't kill you, or your kids, and is up to modern standards. That's a lot of work, even for a cabinet where the mains-side appears to work, and I am not a licenced electrician.
Legally if I touch it anything mains-side it is my problem, if I see the bad things, I have to fix them.
I don't touch monitors for the same reason.
Finally whole cabinets are just too big and bulky, they end up stuck in the garage for a month or two eroding Mrs Womble's patience. I'd really rather not.
Q: What about boards that just have a simple fault?
A: Most faults are simple, tracking them down is the hard bit, that's the bit that takes all the time.
Q: You realise that fee means you won't get many boards, bootlegs, or low value boards to fix.
A: Yes - great!!!
Q: Can you program ROMs for me?
A: No, there are other folk on here that can sort you out.
Q: Can you provide spare parts, or program EPROMs/PALs/GALs for me?
A: No, that way leads to madness, the chances of "that chip" you saw as the culprit in an online repair log fixing your board is slim, even if the fault looks the same, so most of the parts would end up trashed or welded to a junk board. Also if I provide parts then there seems to be an expectation that I get involved in troubleshooting it remotely when it doesn't fix the issue, almost as if my part should have fixed it and because it didn't then it's my problem.
Q: Can you de-suicide games, or can you convert it to another title for me?
A: No, this is the same as the "can you program ROMs for me?", except it is a LOT of ROMs, plus many hours of time troubleshooting why it didn't work, digging into jumper settings for JEDEC/Non-JEDEC EPROM layouts, poking around regional version issues and non-accurate PAL dumps.
Q: Will my board get a write up?
A: Hard to tell, I've got a huge backlog of write ups, most will never see the light of day.
Edited by WombleLink to comment
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