Hey folks, I hope this is the right section. I have a grand total of one arcade machine. (we all start somewhere, right?)

It is Afterburner, a favorite of mine growing up. Well I got "kind of" scammed on this eBay purchase. I went to the guys garage and he had it playing there, so I saw it all working, etc... He had tons of games in the garage, many in various states of repair. He let me know that the flight stick would "rarely" not work well.

Needless to say now that it is at home, it never works well! The firing buttons either don't fire or are very random. Of course, eBay man is unresponsive and seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth.

I'm ok with electronics, not great, but can get around them. (I did all the electrical for our house, for example, but that obviously isn't internal components/boards).

Should I try to find someone to come out and repair this, or open it up and give it a shot myself? Problem is I don't know exactly what to look for. I suppose a simple loose wire at the fire button is my best hope, but I would think that the guy who sold it to me, who does repairs, would have made that simple fix, if that was all it is..

Anyway, thoughts? Open it and look for... something? Or just have a game repair guru come out and fix it?

Thanks!

I agree with your assessment that if it was something easy the guy probably would of fixed it himself. I'm not sure what type of switch is in an Afterburner, but I'd open it up for sure and make sure the switch is in physically good and the wires have good clean solder joints on them. Is this the standup afterburner, or full sit-in cabinet? Either way, I could imagine that assembly being a bit of pain. See if you can find some schematic's for it online to get an idea what pin that fire button is wired too on the actual board inside the cabinet, maybe a bad connection there.

Having someone come in wouldn't be cheap, if you can find some local it would probably be cheaper to bring the game out to them. Also check the news groups, rgvac is or at least was very active and you could find some help there.

http://www.videogameparts.com/category.sc;jsessionid=17794FE4F3BFF77E02C195AEAE7D808A.qscs trfrnt04?categoryId=62

That site has some parts for Afterburner... never bought from them so I can't say if they are reliable or not.

I know this sounds really basic but have you tried cleaning the contacts on the buttons with white spirit? I have a MAME cab and quite often over time the buttons become jammy and don't fire, fire randomly. I just open her up and give them a little clean and then that usually seems to fix it.

I dunno if this might help you. It's a site with the user manual on called diplidocs. Google it and it definatley has the Afterburner one. I sell reconditioned/second hand arcade machines in the UK and usually point my customers here for user manuals as they are never kept but the machines original owners (that are usually huge arcades).

I'm all out of ideas now. But you have my sympathy. I've been screwed over by sucky eBay sellers in the past. Grrrrrr!