Hey all. I have the NSM City II jukebox, circa 1980's with mechanical loading of 45's.
It's been working like a charm for ages, then last night - I go to switch it on, everything lights up, the digital display panels shows A.LL 3 (not referenced anywhere in the manual!) then the digital display panel disappears, and when I preload credits to play music, the display panel remains blank, and nothing happens - no credits, no music selected, no music played. There is clearly power to the jukebox (record selection all lights up fine) and I don't see any cables internally that are loose. The unit hasn't been moved recently, and we do switch it off after use so hopefully haven't burnt anything out!
I can freely move the mechanical unit that selects and uploads the records so presumably it is working fine.
So with my limited knowledge, I am guessing there is a/an issue (maybe a fuse?) with the digital display and b/an issue between the connection from the credits button and the mechanical unit. But with all that said, I'm no technician and could be right off track!
I've got the diagram map and the manual, but cannot make sense of either.
So my query - any guesses from anyone as to what I should be looking for to fix the problem and/or does anyone have the expertise and can make a (paid) house call to fix it (Kanton Schwyz) before this Saturday?
Our Christmas party on Saturday night revolves around jukebox entertainment - yikes!
Hahaha. We do have a few toys I guess. Lucky all the motorbikes are much better behaved. And the arcade games machine hasn't given us an ounce of trouble.
We'd bought the pinball machine 2nd hand, and I don't think it had been serviced much since new in 1974, thus it wasn't in good order when it came to us. Found a fabulous fellow not far from Zurich airport to give it a complete overhaul (although I didn't let him repaint or re-glaze it). It is working like a charm now.
Darnski to the jukebox though! My OH and my neighbour's lads are all out of town so I don't have the muscle to lug it down the stairs, into the car and off to a repair shop right now.
if it is the eprom battery then you are SOL unless by some fluke a company here has the rom image and burner to bring it back to life. someone on the forums must have re-enginered the eprom by now into a more eeermmm permanent solution (been away from the scene for a while)
bastard amusement machine companies put batteries of death in there equipment, mainly video arcade games, but also it seems NSM, these batteries kept the memory alive (they could have easily used ROMS which would last a life time) when the battery dies the memory goes with it so your jukebox (or arcade machine) is now like a computer with no hard disc, it has no operating system, its blank.
so now you have to send the main board back to NSM (or someone who knows how to bypass it) to get them to change the battery and re-load the memory.
in the trade we call these batteries of death. (and no, you can't change the battery before hand, they are normally soldered onto the board)
probably - this is the most likely cause looking at the forums.
you are of course correct, just keeping it simple.
here's what a battery of death looks like (the big yellow thing), once it runs out you have a rather expensive paper weight and need to pay a small fortune to get your hardware activated again
According to what I've just read - the system BigBlue shows in his photo is a crude anti-tamper device.
The memory is actually fairchild flash. If there is a voltage fluctuation - like the battery voltage dropping, the system detects this as a tamper with the encryption and erases the NVRAM.
yes it is also an crude anti tamper device, to stop people pulling the roms and copying the game, with the added benefit of capcom getting hundreds of pounds off you every few years when the battery dies
(and it never stopped the games being pirated anyway, only ever hurt legit operators)