Early Birthday Present!!!

[Josh128]

A cherry Mace: The Dark Age original dedicated cabinet! Ive always wanted to play one but was never able. Saw it on Ebay recently and I made some joking comments to my wife and to my amazement she didnt balk, in fact she kind of thought it would be cool. So I scrambled to find a place for it in the house, turns out the only place that would half-work was in our bedroom. $1000 + freight and it was delievered to my door!









The cab and PCB are all original and manufactured in May-June 1997. Its in AWESOME shape for a 23 year old machine! The monitor has been replaced, its a Wells Garder K7000. Its a standard res, while this machine is capable of outputting medium res like the San Francisco Rush cabs, but it still looks fantastic. BTW if anyone knows how to switch the resolutions, please let me know-- I cant find the info anywhere. I would love to squeeze a 27"-29" Wei-Ya/Makvision tri-sync CRT in there to get the medium res, and I think I could do it with some minor mods.




Everything works pretty great on it so far, I have had to clean a few of the buttons that were sticking and I think one of the coin switches isnt working, but thats about it. I wouldnt mind renewing the switches for the sticks and buttons though to some good high quality ones. Any suggestions? Also, it appears to use a JAMMA harness, presumably like other Midway style cabs, so Im guessing I can slap an MVS in there and swap as needed for the great way to play my Neo games as well. Anything to look out for when doing this?

[NoAffinity]

Get replacement sticks and buttons at paradise arcade shop or focus attack. IL are the preferred replacements for american style. Happ were likely the original sticks in there but they are made in china now and of dubious quality these days. However, the IL's do have a stiffer feel. For the sticks, you may just want to replace the switches only if they arent having other issues. But definitely replace the buttons, it's a good investment.

For neo, the pinout can be slightly different - a slight modification of jamma to include stereo audio. You will want to make sure you get a mono mvs board. I know there are 1-slots that are mono audio, not sure about 2/4/6 slots, someone else can probably provide additional guidance on this or google may help.

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[Josh128]

I will definitely be going with an MV1C or MV1B, I think both have mono audio by default to the JAMMA. So you are saying I'll need to mod the MVS to output stereo to the JAMMA or mod this cabs JAMMA? Im not 100% but I think it currently is configured for stereo audio.

[NoAffinity]

Jamma standard is mono only. Unless there is an external amp between board and speakers, and some alternative wiring for audio that doesnt come off the jamma edge, it is mono. I can see I the picture that the speaker pin is wired on your jamma harness. That doesnt mean there isnt some alternate routing of audio, but best way to know for sure is follow the speaker wires back from the speakers, see where they go.

If it is wired off the jamma edge then a mono mvs board will plug and play. The mv1-ax is mono. I have one and can confirm it.

Good info here, section 8: https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Beginner ... MA_cabinet

Seems even the 1 slots with stereo have a switch so you can toggle it to mono.

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[Josh128]

I verified this evening that this cab and game are definitely stereo-- the built in sound test checks left and right channels individually. As far as the wire routing though, I'll have to check. I'll have to look into what I should do with the mono MVS - whether I can mod it for stereo output to match my cab or leave it as is. Thanks for bringing that to my attention!

[NoAffinity]

So, looking at the manual for the game, it is a modified jamma wiring. Your harness is not labeled showing the second speaker + connection but it is the other red wire next to the wire that is labeled speaker +. Both speaker +'s are in the components side and both speaker -'s are on the solder side. Long story short, it does have stereo coming off the edge connector.

Theres info out there on modding mono 1 slots to support stereo. However neo geo stereo is not the same pinout as your cabs stereo via edge connector. You may have to work out additional routing mods on a neo geo board to marry it up with your cab's stereo connections.

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[Austin]

Congrats on the find! Mace isn't something you see every day.

I love those dedicated '90s Midway cabinets. Had a KI2 myself for a while but had to sell it a few years back. Miss it dearly.. definitely want at least one Midway cab like that again in the future.

[Josh128]

Thanks Austin! Im giddy like a schoolgirl over this thing. I love the mid to late 90s Midway / KI style cabs. Supposedly, dedicated MACE cabs are quite rare indeed. I found the DIP switch for turning in medium resolution last night and indeed confirmed that my monitor is not 25KHz capable. It had a display but it was all jacked up / not syncing. I definitely want to convert my K7000 to a U5000 or equivalent dual-sync monitor. I mean, this monitor has a great picture, but this game looses so much detail going from medium to standard res.

Now I find myself going down the rabbit hole of adding other JAMMA hardware such as Neo Geo MVS and maybe even a PC with GroovyMAME to this thing. Low lag 2D arcade gaming would be incredible on this thing. The possibilities are many at this point. When you had your KI cab, did you ever add other JAMMA systems or a PC to it and if so, what was your favorite setup?

Another thing I really want to do is touch up the blemishes on the control panel graphics and little blemishes on the edges of the side panels. There seems to be no second source control panel graphics available so I may have to make my own. Im thinking of photographing or scanning the existing panel closely in high res and digitally fixing the blemishes, then having a replacement print done on vinyl or suitable paper. Have you ever looked into such a thing?

[Austin]

KI2 aside, I primarily swapped in a few JAMMA PCBs I had at the time, like Double Dragon, as well as my STV board (mainly for Radiant Silvergun, Soukyugurentai, and random drunken bouts of Baku Baku Animal with my brother.. great times!).

[Josh128]

Awesome man. KI2 was my fav in the series, probably from all the time I spent on the N64 KI Gold. I had the SNES KI as well when it released, and its decent considering, but it was so very hamstrung compared to the arcade I dont think I enjoyed it as much. Was a big fan of the original arcade though. Those shiny plasticky looking graphics blew me away in 1995, lol.

Its funny a lot of kids from our generation chase this stuff down with passion and its relatively meaningless to other generations. Its all about the stuff we grew up with, like my dads generation oogling over 60s and 70s muscle cars. I think they are cool too, dont get me wrong, but I didnt grow up with them-- nostalgia makes all the difference I guess!

Also just to clarify, the dude playing the game in the picture above is my 15 year old son, not me. I "Lord Deimos'd" his face because I put this pic up here without telling him, lol.

[NoAffinity]

Echoing the statement - definitely a great git!

Normal jamma should plug in no problem, but with only one speaker working. The second (unlabeled on your connector) set of speaker wiring is unused on standard jamma.

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