Sega Astro City 2 Restoration

[mourix]

Found this Sega Astro City 2 cabinet with a faulty monitor for a good price so let's restore another dream of mine. 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 a huge bump in the back in order to fit the multi board stack monster that is the Sega Model 1.



As it got home I did a quick check first. Found these goodies inside..yay!!!@#@#@



But for the more serious part. 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. I guess the next step is pulling the PSU and Nanao MS8 chassis for some reflowing and recapping action.

To be continued..

 

[Retroman839]

Chassi aside looks in great condition
Nice get

 

[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.

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🤠

https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Sega_400-5220_Power_Supply

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

 

[Lardonate]

Astro 2's sure are big boys! That whole back thing is nuts. Don't seem to pop up very often these, only know a few people with them. Good job getting it all up and running nicely!

 

[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

 

[Retroman839]

Yeh you’ll be sorted but the looks of that picture .. Pandora has a poor video output ..
Nice one you’re nearly there .
Other options I use are
Rgb pi
And raspberry jamma

 

[mourix]

Thanks! The Pi community is pretty amazing software wise but I still prefer the raw quadrupeled horse power even a 30 pound old PC gives.

 

[Retroman839]

Not wrong
Groovy is cool
Pi 4 is neat though
Will be nice when pi 7 or 8 rock up

 

[Mr20to5]

Nice write up and that cab looks in really really good condition. Not seen one of these variations before. It's quite different in places, as you show. Very interesting.

 

[david656]

I went a tad overboard with the cap kit mapping on this one🤠

https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Sega_400-5220_Power_Supply

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

Ah so you're the guy I have to thank for mapping the MS8-29FSG! how strange you did it mere weeks before I attempted it myself! (shameless plug here) I did a video of my recap

not the best, but gives an idea of the reflow work. I'm going to follow your lead and create similar diagrams for the MS9 and upload to arcade otaku. I might direct message you if that's OK as I'm planning to update both the MS8 and MS9 pages on the wiki and would like to run some bits by you

 

[mourix]

Ah so you're the guy I have to thank for mapping the MS8-29FSG! how strange you did it mere weeks before I attempted it myself! (shameless plug here) I did a video of my recap

not the best, but gives an idea of the reflow work. I'm going to follow your lead and create similar diagrams for the MS9 and upload to arcade otaku. I might direct message you if that's OK as I'm planning to update both the MS8 and MS9 pages on the wiki and would like to run some bits by you

It's really nice to see my overkill ways resonate with people, and your one hour deep dive definitely showed that 😄 Your comment and the video made me really happy. Great results after the hunt that included your own equipment.

I am just a random wiki editor too, but feel free to direct message.

 

[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

 

[mourix]

Groovy time!

For a GroovyMAME setup in an Astro you need the following:

• A computer. I got an i3-7100 HP ProDesk for 35 euro and doubled the RAM for a tenner.
• An AMD graphics card to run CRT emudriver. I got an AMD R7 240 which then needed a new fan off AliExpress..
• An jamma to pc converter. JammaSD in my case.
• Something to connect the Astro kick harness. I made my own pcb for this.
• Cables and mounting. See images below

Made some mounts for a compact package.

The kick harness breakout in action.

Installing it in the cab.

Days of software crap laterr.. Done!

 

[mourix]

Painting time.

The yellowed plastics were an elephant in the room I really had to address.
After lots of research I ended up on Honda Frost White. Here goes 50 euros of paint.

Disassembly is definitely a big chore on this cab, so a lot of prep went down before this stressful painting hour.

But the results are here. Remember the coin insert?

And this picture makes me happy every time:

 

[Akira99]

Painting time.

The yellowed plastics were an elephant in the room I really had to address.
After lots of research I ended up on Honda Frost White. Here goes 50 euros of paint.

Disassembly is definitely a big chore on this cab, so a lot of prep went down before this stressful painting hour.

But the results are here. Remember the coin insert?

And this picture makes me happy every time:

Amazing work, it really is, keep up the great work

 

[mourix]

And with the final touches on the software, it is now done

As a final step, I added more pics to the AO wiki!