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I finally picked up a megatouch Jade edition upright at an arcade/coin-op auction a couple weeks ago. I know very little about them other than what I've read on here along with a operator's guide that I downloaded from Merit.

When I got it home and turned it on, I see that it has a few issues.

• First and foremost, it locks up at random times and requires that I turn off the machine and turn it back on to get it back working again. I've read online that that issue could either be the power supply or the hard drive. Is that a true statement and if so, how should I test to figure out which one is the culprit?
• Being that this is basically just a linux machine with special security, is it possible to clone the hard drive in case that it is a bad drive? I would guess that it is possible but Merit's site says otherwise.
• Once the random locking up issue is fixed, the screen is very blurry and has the brightness turned up very high to make it bright enough to see. I know that is a common issue with the CRT monitors in Megatouches (according to a few websites that I've found) but I don't know what I need to do to fix it. I've read that part of that could be the flyback and other suggestions were to replace some caps but I don't know which ones should be replaced.
  

Basically its playable but I'd like to get it more stable and unblurry enough to read the words. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Its a 19" Tatung CRT monitor if that makes a difference.

Here is a picture of it when I first got it in the garage. It has Jade software on it but apparently it was a Diamond at some point since the marquee has Diamond in it. It also has some cheap gray vinyl over top of the original graphics on it. I've been peeling it off little by little for the past week. The original graphics looks a million times better than the boring solid gray stuff they put over top (IMO)

Yes, clone the hard drive...

Lockups can be memory, motherboard, power supply or hard drive related. For those models, I'd recommend backing up the hard drive first... then checking for bad caps on the motherboard before checking the power supply.

Thanks
I'll get the hard drive cloned first and foremost in case it is a hard drive issue. I have a few sticks of PC-100 RAM laying in an old PC so I might put one in the machine to see if that helps. I know they typically come standard with 32MB of RAM and can benefit from some extra memory.

I like the upright cabinet since most everything is easily accessible and spaced out enough that I can get into it.

i deal with neil 44 on ebay call him   he is the best and can tell you whats wrong and fix it at a fair  price i,ll say your board is bad  that why it was at auction

Many times on that model it's just caps on the motherboard or in the power supply that have gone bad. Those are the things to check next after the hard drive.

I'm working on getting the drive cloned in the next day or two. Then I was going to go through all of the caps on the motherboard and power supply next. I looked at the RAM and it looks as if someone upgraded that already since there was 128MB in it. I'm going to have our desktop support team clone the drive for me since that is what they do all day for a living. I could do it myself but if they're willing to do it for me for free, might as well let them

 :96-

free is good

I'm going to guess that it was the hard drive causing the issues. They plugged it into a machine here in their lab and started pulling the image and it sounded like 3 cars crashing into each other when they turned the machine on. It was overheating before they could get the image so their trying to recover it as we speak. Its actually in the freezer right now in hopes we can get it cold long enough to get the image.

They assured me that they'll be able to get it recovered for me. But just in case, does anyone know what version of Linux that runs on a Maxx? Has anyone ever tried to build a drive with all of the files from the original drive and installing the OS seperately

Its been a month and I've had no good progress to report since I've been crazy busy with work and whatnot.

It's definitely the hard drive at this point. We had gotten an image off of my old drive but it appears to be corrupt. Anyone know of a good place to get a Jade 2 drive (other than feebay)?

neil 44 on ebay just call him tell him  steve  w  from va sent you he,ll treat you right , tell him i know him from livin in  nj  before , his number is on ebay

Does anyone know what tool is best to clone the drives?  I want to make a back up of my drive.

chdman is small, easy, and works under Windows.

Oh, and it's free... part of the MAME utils.

RJ