Okay. Here is the answer to a question that is on the minds of many Newbies. (if you don't know what a newbie is, you probably are one.) Chances are, if you are reading this you just got your first cabinet and there is a ton of junk in the bottom.

I get bigger

Weed out all of the REAL junk (candy wrappers, used condoms, old tolkens, and dead rats). Now we can get to the good stuff. First of all, you only need one good Power Supply and Isolation transformer. So if your cabinet is anything like mine were, you'll need to disconnect the 3 power supplys that were ALL running, and find the one good one out of the bunch. (By the way, if you don't have a good voltmeter, GET ONE.) Basiclly you should keep anything that looks like the items in the picture above.

Above is an Ideal Schematic that illistrates how you power should be managed. Let's walk through the schematic step by step. First you'll have your AC in.. this shouldn't confuse anybody, we've been using it for over 100 years now. I'll let you in on a little secret though.. All of your grounds should be connected. Either wire-nut them, or use a ground plane. In the top picture the metal plate that everything is attatched to is my ground plane. SW1 is a standard 120V rated Double Pole Single Throw toggle switch. (On/Off) F1 and F2 are the input fuses, just a little protection. They should probably be about 3 AMP Fuses. This might depend on the size of your monitor. Basically you should figure out how much current your machine should draw. I am using a 3 AMP SlowBlow fuse with a 19 Inch Wells/Gardner Monitor and it works fine. LP1 is your lamp, this could be a standard blub or a Flourescent. (a ground will probably be needed if it's a flourescent.) Remember to keep the light source BEFORE your Power Filter. Lamps (especially flourescents) can generate electrical noise, and you want to try to keep that away from the rest of your components. PF1 is a power filter. Not many of the machines you will come across actually have these. But I like to put them in, they can take care of electrical noise and small power spikes. If you don't have one, and want one you can pick them up from Happ Controls (part number 49-1003-00) I think they run about $7.50 or so. T1 is a Isolation Transformer, you'll need one of these to safely power your Monitor. They are pretty easy to figure out. 120AC goes in one side and 120AC comes out the other side. F3 is another fuse. This one it to protect all of your other components incase something horrible happens to your monitor. It shoud be rated closely to your specific monitor's power consumption. F4 is yet another fuse. This one is to protect all of your other components from your Board power supply. If your power supply is a Peter Chou style supply (like the one pictured above) you should have no problem running a 1 Amp fuse, since your supply should never draw more than that. All of your connections should be made my Wire-nuts or Quick Connect Terminals (Spade style connectors) this is just to make things easy. It will save you a lot of time, especially if something goes bad and you need to replace it. Just pull of the Spade connectors and slide them on the new part. If you don't like the looks of any of the components that are in your cabinet, you can find everything you need at Happ Controls. I swear by the place. Unfortunately, they require a $25 minimum purchase, but if you are refurbishing an arcade machine, chances are, you'll break that minimum pretty easy. If there is anything that you feel I left out, let me know. I'm not perfect, nor do I claim to be. When in doubt, ask for a second opinion. Please be careful when working with any kind of electricity.

Got any useful ideas or tricks that you'd like to share?
niobium@arcadezone.org