Sega Astro City 2 Restoration

[mourix]

After lusting for a candy cab since my teens I'm now almost 30 years old and an electrical engineer. So better late than never, I finally got hold of an Astro City 2 needing lots of tech maintenance and a bit of a refurb.

The Astro City 2 is a special edition that shipped with Virtua Fighter. Besides of adding bigger speakers, they upgraded the power supply and made an extended area in the back in order to fit the Sega Model 1 multi board stack.

This thread will be my restoration log, and I am also updating the wiki with everything I can find out about this underdocumented cab

So let's start. I got this cab for a good price sold as "High voltage turns on for a few seconds and then the screen stays black".



Before turning it on, I did a visual inspection. Seems the previous owner got scared of the cab not having a grounded plug so he botched in his own.. poorly. Lets see:



Besides the extra cable flapping around and screws being loose, the ground screw was fully stripped and I pulled one of the 100V wires straight from the ferrule without trying. Let's put that back in order first.



Now time to actually try it. I turned it on and was greeted with this:



A bit later I measured the power supply on the jamma pins and noticed -5V is missing. I turned down the brightness quite a bit to be safe and plugged in a Neo Geo board to get the picture below after twiddling the hold pots.



After about about 10 seconds the screen width suddenly expanded and the chassis started squeeling.. Ouch. The next step was pulling the PSU and Nanao MS8 chassis for some reflowing and recapping action. Currently waiting on a 75 euro cap order from Mouser.

To be continued..

[sven666]

Take some pics of the inside, never actually seen one of these, whats the reason for the massive humpback??

[SuperPang]

, whats the reason for the massive humpback??

Originally a Virtua Fighter cab.

[geotrig]

The squealing is most probably the flyback

[geotrig]

, whats the reason for the massive humpback??

Originally a Virtua Fighter cab.

The side profile really makes it an hard cab to like from the side so thank **** we look at them headon

[mourix]

Virtua Fighter on Sega Model 1 came in this huge metal chassis full of PCB's so it wouldn't fit the regular Astro City. That's why they added this compartment:



The front is pretty normal besides the extra large dual 5V rail power supply with additional 5V 12 A rail on top of the 7A one.



I agree the side profile is a bit of a compromise, but it was awesome to be able to remove the CRT chassis without needing to pull the whole monitor. The speakers are also supposed to be the best Candy speakers out there, so I can't wait for this thing to work

[o1s1n]

Reminds me of how the back of the Aero City juts out, annoyed me a bit as it meant I couldn't push the cabinet back in flush against a wall.

VuE2rSCl.jpg

Best of luck with the project! Looks to be in great condition cosmetically.

Very cool Lordsvale btw

[mourix]

With the Aero you can definitely see where they got the inspiration. Thank you for sharing.

I'm actually selling the Lordsvale to make space/funds for another summer of projects like this Astro

[mourix]

The control panel had this Virtua Fighter Kids instruction plate and the classic super yellow coin slot.



First let's clean and retrobright some. Funnily enough, most of the yellow was easy to wipe off with rubbing alcohol. Maybe quite a bit was actually nicotine?



I actually ended up making my own Instruction Space plate design as the repros one can easily get in Europe are not accurate yet really costly. I attached my rough design for anyone to print , but it would be amazing if anyone here could scan theirs for me to make it truly accurate.

So without further ado:

[mourix]

Recap time. First off the Sega 400-5220 power supply.



The Astro City 2 has this special upgraded power supply that in-cooperates two power supplies in one in order to handle the Virtua Fighter PCB stack once again. There is one normal +5V7A-12V1.5A-5V0.1A pcb, and an additional 5V12A board:



What they both have in common were these horrible Marcon caps. I'd say about 60% were leaking horribly. So I recapped it all with 105C 3000h+ caps from Panasonic and Nichicon.



Not to forget: the missing negative 5V rail was this litttle fella:

[mourix]

The monitor is the Nanao MS8-29FSG which is more common. Again, lots of leaky cap galore..



After reassembly I got this:



Tweaking the flyback screen and general brightness brought it right back in for me to enjoy my Neo Geo MV1C board breaking down on me again

[mourix]

I went a tad overboard with the cap kit mapping on this one. All added to the wiki now


https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Sega_400 ... wer_Supply


https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Nanao_MS8-29FSG

[mourix]

Eventually I got impatient and ordered a Pandora Saga DX box to get some life outta this thing. The geometry is not 100% but boy does it look pretty.



The emulation on the Pandora is miserable though. Next part will be getting a proper Groovymame setup inside

[hikaru]

Great job

[aerobert]

Very nice! Would love to see more of those speakers. Pictures, spec and of course, hear the sound!

[mourix]

Thanks! Definitely more pics/info to come as I figure stuff out. Right now the sound is a bit underwhelming/tinny but I have the feeling the Pandoras Box is not exactly a great source to begin with.

[o1s1n]

Oh wow, your monitor is looking super vibrant, that's really lovely.

Yeah I've a cheapo Chinese multi vertical board and the sound out of it has always been pants.

[mourix]

To finally bring this topic back from the dead: PCB shelfs!

According to the manual, the Astro City 2 fit the Virtua Fighter PCB stack in the back using a custom bracket kit. I haven't seen any Astro 2 having one anymore as I guess they got removed together with the PCB. However, the front is like a normal Astro Cab, so I can add the normal wooden plank.

I went bicycling to the hardware store with plastic bags due to Dutch rain and had proper 12mm plywood pre cut:



Some drilling action later there was this:



Some measuring, drilling, sawing, cursing, cutting, getting rained on and cursing again later there was also this awesome coin box shelf:



Up next: GrooveMAME

[NASguy]

I had a bunch of wooden boards cut for my New Astro when I first got it, I would just screw down a PCB to each one and swap them in and out, now I only have one PCB left and a CPS2 and they both fit inside at the same time I also put an small art stool in the back right side for a table had a Dreamcast on it

I've never seen the Astro 2 in person, the back is real ugly, all for model 1 boards...

So the speakers look a bit bigger, is it still just a woofer? Are those just bass port holes next to the woofer? Any idea what the stock speakers are rated? I sourced drop in 4ohm drivers back when I replaced mine, still going strong.