Naomi from Newport

[deadendthrills]

Thought I'd be writing this some time ago, then wondered if I'd be writing it at all, then figured I'd lose all the photos if I didn't put 'em to some kind of use. Hope it makes a good first chapter!

Around this time last year I decided that having a bunch of CRTs connected to RGB-Pi wasn't scratching the arcade itch, so before I even knew what a UKvac was I started looking at cabs. Still couldn't decide if I really wanted one - though if I was going to then it was always going to be a candy - when a couple of weeks later a Naomi appears on eBay. It was advertised as a New Net City but was ostensibly a chopped-down Naomi, and tbh I still couldn't tell you precisely which it is. I put down a maximum bid of £500 expecting nothing, and then a few days later I'm heading dowm the M4 to a closed-down craft beer store in Newport town centre... with £450.

It was pretty much the last thing in the place and they needed it gone. No one knew precisely how to wire it back up or turn it back on, but after a bit of twiddling with the pots we got a decidedly pincushioned image out of the old Pandora's Box 2 that was in there. Having gone into it expecting the absolute worst, I saw that as a plus. And besides, I was more concerned about the state of the outside.



This was an old Virtua Tennis cab from the Sega World in Trocadero, which I was told had been sold on to one of the big regional arcades when that closed. Besides the usual wear and tear:

- top left of the front casing had a big old chunk missing where someone had apparently tried moving it by the plastic
- whole top right corner of the front casing was missing
- bottom of the front casing where the speaker grilles meet the control panel was snapped clean through in the corners, meaning that bottom section was basically hanging off
- no coin mech or apparatus
- no Naomi and the tube/chassis had been swapped for an Astro tube and Sanwa 1745C chassis and yoke
- one deep chip in the glass and some very worn antistatic coating
- no topper
- the metalwork for the topper had somehow been completely stripped of paint down to the metal, to the point where I wasn't even sure if it was an outward-facing part

Back down the M4, and to work!

 

[deadendthrills]

The inner bezel mask seemed the simplest place to start as the plastic was basically fine but for some scratches and the generally grim finish of those Naomi masks - IMO, at least - compared to the Astros. I sanded it down and had it primed and painted using a more Astro-like glitter paint, which as it happens was colour-matched to one of the paints they use on Alfa-Romeos. The holder for the topper was stripped, primed and painted with Ford Arctic White. While I was waiting for the auto-shop to take care of that, I set to work on...


One thing I didn't mention was the gross paint-job someone had applied over the whole cab, presumably to try and keep it white, which based on appearances they'd tried to do with a brush. You'd have thought it was made of wood. I stripped that all back, smoothed with lots of manual wet sanding, then taped the outside faces of the cracked-through parts and hit it with no small amount of the fibre-glass. (Actually I've written that backwards: the repair was done first, then the sanding. Sanding with that damage would have pulled the whole thing to pieces.)


Having backed the missing areas with wire gauze, I cut some thick cardboard to fit the missing parts of the top and essentially built a new corner, wrapped those in more gauze, sat them in place and then rammed them full of fibre-glass resin, ensuring there weren't any compromising air pockets. I used a Dremel to then shape and finish the edges and ensure it all conformed to the original shape of the plastic.

 

[deadendthrills]

After a small eternity of sanding and repairing the front of the cab, that was primed and finishing using Arctic White. I put on a new Naomi badge and scrubbed, primed and painted the grilles. I sanded and buffed the plastic of the top light with auto scratch remover and was pretty chuffed with the result.



Waiting on the paint gave me a chance to recap the 1745C, change the pots and dial them in. One of the transistors - not the HOT or vertical IC - had failed which was partly causing the severe pincushioning, the rest of which was down to the Pandora's Box. Turns out the geometry was pretty ace in the end, and the tube was burn-free!



I also took the opportunity to sound-proof the rear casing of the cab, being careful not to block the small vents, as my kids were complaining about the 15kHz whine. I replaced the Sun PSU fan with a Noctua quiet one and put superglue on some resonating coils, silencing them. Cab was now basically completely quiet. One of the advantages of the Naomi form factor is that you can slip a small soundbar quite neatly onto the base and, if you're using RGB-Pi like I am, run it into the 3mm jack via the back vents.

 

[deadendthrills]

Genius that I am, I managed to smash the instruction panel glass into tiny bits trying to prise it out to remove the 'PLEASE DON'T LEAVE YOUR DRINKS ON ME' note someone had put in instead. I replaced this with a laser-cut acrylic panel with a black printed decal to match the borders on the Japanese glass. Then I did some hi-DPI artwork in Photoshop. I wanted something that complimented the Naomi colours which my kids would think was fun, which kind of ruled out some obscure instruction card I'd spend forever having to explain. I buffed the scratches out of the metal brackets.

 

[deadendthrills]

Now for the topper. After a month or so of wondering where on Earth I was going to find one that wasn't dinged to hell, I lucked out and found an Italian eBay seller with a NOS one. I say 'lucked out'... it cost £130 with shipping.


For the topper artwork I wanted to pay tribute to one of my favourite Dreamcast/Naomi-era games, Rival Schools 2 (aka Project Justice). Problem was that there's no particularly hi-res artwork for it, and this was especially true of the Japanese logo I wanted to use. I ended up having to vectorise and flesh out a 300px gif of the JP logo in Illustrator. I then AI-upscaled some fan art by Kim Sung Hwan and mixed it with some scenery and the new logo in Photoshop, resulting in really clean 300dpi artwork I then had printed on Translite.



By this point I'd also sourced a chrome JP-style coin slot from Malaysia (iirc) and wired a push-button into the adjacent hole to act as a credit button while I hunted for a coin mech. That ended up being a combination of a new Asahi Seiko AD81P3BB coin mech and a used Naomi one (for the metal housing) from Macedonia, under which I installed a microswitch wired to the pin for the 'select' (insert coin) button in RGB-Pi.

 

[deadendthrills]

Something that only started nagging me when I finally sat down to play was how bad the patina of screen was due to all the hairline scratches and worn antistatic coating. Cerium oxide, a slow drill and a nice big buffing disc can have those off in under an hour, but something else they're really good at is turning a previously sort-of-invisible chip in the glass into:



Have to assume this was just battle damage from its time in the arcade, but with the cerium in there it was impossible to ignore, so a compromise was going to have to be made. You can absolutely get even a deep chip like this one out but you're talking hand-sanding toughened glass for several days at numerous grits, then slow buffing with cerium oxide, keeping it at just the right wetness, etc. Pretty brutal... but here goes!



A week of this and the chip was gone, the compromise being you're left with an irregular curvature in that part of the glass. Nothing that affects the actual image, but at certain angles you can see it in the reflections when the screen is off. Anyway, back in business:

 

[deadendthrills]

So, this was supposed to be the boring bit where I talk about powder-coating the base, replacing the locks, etc. Unfortunately I decided to needlessly 'fix' the one thing I'd overlooked doing the chassis, which was a single electrolytic cap in the HV area. To this day I don't know what went wrong here - it was the right cap, good traces, decent soldering - but this took me from a functioning monitor to a vertical collapse, then a blown fuse, and at some point in that process a star-shaped hole punched through the tube neck under the yoke.



Fast forward to now and I'm hoping to get an MS2931 in there to replace it, and am currently sanding down the control panel housing while tearing down the rest to do the base. I bought a Blast tube from Joshua here on the forum while the chassis is coming from Yahoo Auctions JP, which could prove to be a very costly mistake but then beggars can't be choosers. I only plan to have one cab and this is it, so I figured I'll just treat it like a car and *sigh* stomach the costs. But at least I'll treasure it a lot more after all it's been through - which hopefully isn't much more!

 

[jerryspaghetti]

Great read mate. Really interested to try a bit of plastic repair using the fibreglass etc. method above. Keep it coming!

 

[Ace`]

Looks great, I'd be worried that the monitor will over heat now there's no way for the heat to escape though.

 

[deadendthrills]

That would have been my thought but the vents in that casing are pretty thin so I was able to pad around them without obscuring them at all. Given the huge difference in uptime between my usage and the life it had in an arcade, I'm not too worried - especially now as there's just a gaping hole where the monitor used to be.

 

[Vamino]

Nice read that, well done with the restoration.
Really unfortunate situation with the monitor, I've only been in the hobby for 10 or so years and as time goes on I tend to leave most things if there isn't an obvious problem. I've lifted pads/traces, killed monitor chassis and necked monitors which made me feel gutted. Hopefully that chassis from Buyee works as I know how expensive it can be when adding fees/shippng to the original rice of the item.

As Ace mentioned, I'd also have similar concerns with the monitor overheating if those vents had been blocked.
In my Blast which I sometimes play for many hours when the energy levels are there, upwards of 7hrs sometimes!.....I had a random extremely intermittent issue where the monitor image flicked now and again, it made a tick noise and the whole image wobbled. Very worrying to see that tbh.

So I swapped over the chassis for another one I bought off the forum as I thought it was cap related and it still did the same thing. I then mounted a fan to the monitor frame with cable ties pointing it at the chassis where heat was building up. It's much cooler now and I've not encountered that issue for months. I'll be doing something similar to all my cabs now as heat really does build up quickly inside the cab over a small period of time.

 

[deadendthrills]

The vents for Naomi are actually in the top of the rear casing. You can see where I've left them clear.

 

[deadendthrills]

For the sake of a quick update and the interest of anyone considering Buyee, my Yahoo Auctions JP MS2931 arrived the other day via their premium packaging service. Shipping was £60 in total, plus £68 customs charge upon arrival. Absolutely cannot fault the service, even if it took a few days of limbo for the package to clear customs.

One thing I noticed on the MS2931 is that a couple of the pins aren't soldered into their through-holes - but there also aren't any solder-side traces going to them. Am I right in thinking that's normal?

 

[deadendthrills]

Shot-blasted and powder-coated for the metal, 2K primer and auto paint for the control panel plastic to match the rest. The bezel is actually @jerryspaghetti 's old one - this one's a Blast curvature fit, to go with the Astro one I had before - and has received the same repaint. The way I see it, the key to keeping one of these is to have as many replacement parts options as possible, which when it comes to CRTs means bezels (plural).

This tube is from a 29inch Panasonic consumer set with a duff chassis I got for next to nothing from a guy in Telford. The tube itself is immaculate and a perfect fit or both the Blast bezel and the Astro frame. Couldn't quite believe it tbh. Not particularly looking forward to the yoke swap but there's nothing that can't be done with these if you've got enough time/patience/magnets.




Also: new control panel, Sanwa screw-in buttons, and some more artwork I did to tie-in with Sega's recent anniversary campaign (recent as in two years ago). Will probably get the artwork redone with better alignment and on slightly better and thicker stock.

New locks, keys, etc. You'll notice the stickers aren't in their 'canonical' place and are a mix of Naomi and Astro, but in keeping with the bezel finish I'm going for a deliberate hybrid with this thing.

 

[jerryspaghetti]

Lovely job mate

 

[deadendthrills]

And a lovely job you did packing that bezel. Cheers for that. (Had fun removing that stripped screw, though!)

 

[TheDaddy]

Nice Job ! Screen looks very nice indeed.

Dave.

 

[deadendthrills]

Yeah, the screen's really nice but obviously there's work to be done marrying it to a Nanao yoke. The tube is a Philips previously paired with a Pano yoke with electromagnetic convergence, which the internet would have you believe can't be used in this capacity. I know someone who's done it, though, and if there's one thing this process has taught me it's that very few people online actually know much at all about this hobby. The greater the tones of condescension and certainty, the greater the chance someone's talking out their ass. People used to declare it was impossible to buff scratches you can feel with your fingernail out of CRT glass until they were shown otherwise, several times.

The guy I bought it from said it hadn't been touched in 15 years despite sitting in his bedroom the whole time. I didn't believe a word of it till I walked into his house - or should I say climbed though his hallway - and thought, 'I don't think any of this stuff has been touched in 15 years.'

 

[jerryspaghetti]

And a lovely job you did packing that bezel. Cheers for that. (Had fun removing that stripped screw, though!)

Sorry I had t even noticed a screw in there!

 

[Ace`]

What a beauty, please document the tube swap if you get a chance I'd love to see how that goes as. I've never seen it done on 31k or a tube this size.