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December 8, 2021
This section will be written from my point of view, and I'll update it as time goes on. I bought this cabinet on December 2, 2021 on eBay for $200. Considering how much of a good deal it was, and how close it was to home (only an hour and 20 minutes' drive) I bought it almost immediately. I picked it up in Pennsylvania on December 4, 2021. The owner had done pop-up carnivals and had many other arcade equipment as well. However, he died two years ago, so his arcade cabinets and other equipment were being stored in a barn (where this machine sat for two years.) His son had to clean out the barn so started listing everything on eBay, and I just happened to be searching for Crazy Frog things on it at the right time.
Its serial number is F24T-0125 and was manufactured in November 2006 in Taiwan (where Feioli is based in).
Testing the cabinet for the first time, I noticed several problems. It was filthy, given that it was sitting in a barn for two years, but I cleaned it up best I could. The decals are in pristine condition, I'm super happy with how nice this cabinet looks. I did find that the even-numbered heads all did not detect hits, while the odd-numbered ones did. I believed this to be something wrong in common with all three heads, like a wire connecting the three gone bad. This would cause the test mode to fail with code 2-1. I emailed Coastal Amusements' service email, and was told I needed to get replacement sensors. At the time of writing this, I never got a follow-up from the person in the parts department (who was CC'd on the email.)
I created a short YouTube video showing off the cabinet (embedded on the right.)
A few days later, one of my friends who helped me carry it into the room it is currently in (this was a four-man effort, this cabinet is heavy!) accidentally turned the cabinet off and on again too quickly. I was careful to let the cabinet fully power down before turning it on again, but my friend made a fatal mistake which I can't blame him for. After this, the cabinet would not boot properly anymore, and on the off chance it did, the audio would start to crackle until it eventually stopped responding.
Thinking this was a problem with the power supply, I decided to try to test voltages with a multi-meter. However, this was again another fatal mistake, as I accidentally must have touched a live AC terminal to ground or somewhere else it shouldn't have been, causing a giant spark to fly from the power supply. Currently, not only will the machine not boot, but there is no power to the lights either. Long story short, I killed it by being stupid.
I will have to see about getting some replacement parts for it then. I'll need those three hit detection sensors, and probably two new power supplies and an anti-interference board. Hopefully, those were the only things I killed, and I didn't kill the motherboard. If I did, it would suck, but all is not lost. The rest of the components are in working order, so I would have to reverse-engineer everything, and could probably program a Raspberry Pi to work as the brains. Hopefully, though, I will be able to find replacement parts through Coastal or Feiloli.
January 21, 2022
I actually did not kill the cabinet thankfully. Turns out, it was a 10 amp fuse that blew on the power socket when shorting live AC to ground. I don't know if spending an extra $180 on a new power supply and anti-interference board was necessary. I ended up replacing both anyway. I also realized that the crackling and dying problem was because of a stupid mistake I had made with the anti-interference board. There are three power sockets on it, but I did not realize that two of them (which the two power supplies were plugged into) was set to turn on with a delay, while the last one turned on instantly. What I must have done was plug one of the power supplies into the instant turn-on socket, and the rest of the lights turn on with the delay along with the second power supply. Luckily, nothing broke.
The cabinet sat for a good while, but I finally got around to replacing the three broken head sensors, and now all six heads detect hits. The game feels much more complete now. That being said, there's still a few issues. Some of the heads don't turn properly, due to a few reasons. Some heads are just gunked up with crap, so the bearings are sticky and won't move. Some of the pulleys got grease on them so they slide and don't turn the heads too. Lastly, at least one rotation motor (on head 4) is completely dead. I'll have to do some testing on that. Also, head 6 thinks I hit a drone when I hit Crazy Frog, so its wires might be backwards.
I made an update video showing the game working fully.