Sega Naomi Universal Stand Up/Sit Down Reclamation Thread

[SCUltra]

Hello Arcade People,

I drove in June to Vancouver and picked up my first ever Cabinet, A Naomi Universal Stand Up I found on Craigslist for $380 USD. (*This will be the first page of several until I catch up to where I currently am.) Condition was as follows. There was no monitor. Someone had ripped off the monitor shroud to get to the monitor, cracked front bezel with chipped corner, missing game marquee, screws, grime, dirt, dust, dried coca-cola, etc. Of course I was overjoyed.

The previous owner said he had picked it up from a local Vending Machine Distributor who was selling out a warehouse during the start of Covid but that he had given up on finding a monitor to restore it and opted for an Arcade 1UP instead. (pictured) I tried to contact the company, Pacific Vending several times as I thought the monitor could have just been removed to service another machine that I could possibly purchase but could only reach a recording. The reviews I was able to find online of the company made it clear it wasn't going to be worth the effort.

Something I didn't realize was SEGA had made Naomi cabinets here in the USA too. I thought this was neat at first until it became a nuisance/problem. (More on that soon.)

The first thing I did was remove and clean the sticky dried coca-cola syrup filth from under the top of the control panel

 

[SCUltra]

Next was a pressure wash /simple green bath to remove the rest of the filth. Used air tank to help speed up drying

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Looks mint after a clean up!

Are you planning on keeping it upright or chopping it to turn into a candy cab?

 

[SCUltra]

Looks mint after a clean up!

Are you planning on keeping it upright or chopping it to turn into a candy cab?

Thanks! At first I planned to chop... I would love a sit down too, but it's really grown on me, so keeping it tall.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Yeah fair enough

When I did mine, it was being chopped all the way through since it just didn't line up with the rest of the Candies haha

Have you got a lead on a replacement monitor or are you going something else like an ... erm LCD?

Also looks like everything was intact with the wiring which is always a bonus.

 

[mattsoft]

Holy crap, amazing what a little simple green will do!

 

[SCUltra]

Complete disassembly and Wash/Degrease of the Naomi MB and game, JVS I/O, Power Supply, Sound Amp, Redoing the thermal grease (with supervision ) replace PSU fan with Noctua, etc.

After cleaning I noticed on the JVS I/O there was a filter that looked scorched. After it failed continuity I removed it. Tried to replace it on digikey etc but was not able to locate it. In the end I opted to get a new board from China. I still have the other board and it may work I'm not sure how important the filter was but the board wasn't that much and I just didn't want any issues.

 

[meyerli]

Very nice cleanup job.
Love the VT2 control panel.

 

[SCUltra]

Speakers. Finding out this cab takes normal car stereo speakers was kind of a relief. Replaced stock with the Infinity Reference REF-4032CFX. They sound great IMO but at first I was only getting sound out of one channel of the amp. Reflowed the inputs on the bottom of the board as others have mentioned and had both channels again. One potential gotcha on the amp was the external volume control. I had no sound until I connected it and turned the dial.

 

[SCUltra]

Bondo/Body Filler: As mentioned earlier the cabinet front white bezel left (facing) corner was completely broken off/missing. I found only one piece in the coin box so glued this back in place and worked around the rest with bondo to recreate the corner as best as I could. Thankfully the top part of this cabinet is all sharp angles so I was able to use posterboard and hot glue to make molds to build it up. (bondo, sand, add glue, sand, repeat.) as well as filler for a few odd bits here and there.

 

[nidulans]

Amazing job (especially rebuilding the corner) but needs more cat in box photos.

 

[invzim]

Great cab, good luck in sourcing a CRT.

Looks like you have everything well under control. My one advice would be to put a sticker like this on the back cover

 

[SCUltra]

Great cab, good luck in sourcing a CRT.

Looks like you have everything well under control. My one advice would be to put a sticker like this on the back cover

Thanks, That’s a great idea. (I’ve done this move twice already )

 

[PASTBLASTER]

Coming along nicely!

 

[ItsBobDudes]

Looking good! I am looking forward to seeing how you handle getting a monitor and how you handle the NA molex control harnesses!

 

[SCUltra]

Looking good! I am looking forward to seeing how you handle getting a monitor and how you handle the NA molex control harnesses!

For the monitor I'm usually pretty good at finding things but finding good arcade tubes has proven to be extremely challenging in my area in Washington.

I don't blame the Canadian dude who sold it to me for giving up but I don't give up when I want something. I've been lurking on this forum for awhile and had noticed @hoagtech was in my local area so I sent a message explaining what I was doing and asked if he ever had any leads for monitors to let me know. I got lucky. He replied with "come on down!"

Luckily @hoagtech likes trading so we both came out on top I think. I am now the proud owner of a zero hour tri-sync makvision/weiya with LG tube.

also @hoagtech doesn't know it yet but I am his new best friend and am looking forward to our next trading day.

Unfortunately the Weiya frame does not line up with Sega's for the Sanwa/Nanao and I couldn't find the frame on the cheap so I took a drill and made it work. I'm not going to show you those two new beautiful bottom holes. I'll just say that brass galvanized steel gets hot quickly so remember to take breaks if you have to do this. I still will have to make one more adjustment to the top bezel to get the monitor exactly center with the Naomi bezel. The new tube looks really good but it is a flat tube not rounded as the original so I may get a bit creative with the bezel which I'm fine with.

Unfortunately after making my holes I did something really stupid. On the front of the cab there are two pieces of heat shielding left from the old nanao/sanwa. I didn't think about removing them and when I dropped in my new monitor one of them actually cut into the deguassing coil and caused a short when I turned it on. The monitor looked horrible for a few days and i thought I might have permanently damaged but after awhile it looked like I only had two bad corners to deal with. I was able to clear it out with a degaussing coil.

 

[ItsBobDudes]

How does it look with the bezel ?

 

[SCUltra]

How does it look with the bezel ?

I'll get there soon.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

I have to say, the restore you're doing is AMAZING!

Very luck to have scored that monitor.. that's a flat screen right? I imagine the bezel you have is for a curved screen? I''m sure Yaton could find you the right bezel if you really wanted to considering they came with three variants, curved (Naomi Universal), semi curved (Net City) and flat (New Net City).

 

[SCUltra]

I have to say, the restore you're doing is AMAZING!

Very luck to have scored that monitor.. that's a flat screen right? I imagine the bezel you have is for a curved screen? I''m sure Yaton could find you the right bezel if you really wanted to considering they came with three variants, curved (Naomi Universal), semi curved (Net City) and flat (New Net City).

Thank you kindly. Thats really interesting to know as its highly possible I might have a NNC soon to see whats what about the inner grey bezel unless the interchangeability is all documented somewhere.I would definitely be into figuring out what fits. Not going to lie I have some bad ideas floating around in my head.