Neo Geo MVS

SNK were the first to bring multiple games machines to the arcade in the form of their Neo Geo MVS (Multiple Video System). This was a cartridge based system that allowed arcade operators to have a single cabinet that they could change the game in without calling out an engineer. Soon they brought out 4 and 6 slot versions that had an extra button on the front of the control panel to switch the game. These are very nice cabinets, well made and not as huge as most arcade machines.

The ability to have multiple games in the same space that would be taken up by a single machine appealed greatly to arcade operators, and for exactly that reason, it makes a lot of sense in my crowded games room. I took the plunge and bought a Lordsvale cabinet off ebay. It had been converted to a PC based MAME system and my quest to restore it to its former glory began.

Inside the cabinet was a nasty old MAME PC running Windows95, PC speakers, and an i-pac board. My Plan was to return it to its original format and get some Neo Geo stuff back inside.

The original JAMMA loom was in there but many of the wires had been cut, and others just disconnected and everything was a mess inside.


I started off by ripping out all the PC Stuff. This took longer than expected as it had all been very well screwed down and required me to disassemble everything to get at it all. Still, that gave me a chance to clean inside the cab.

Once that was all out I set to wiring in an arcade power supply, I checked all the voltages were as expected and continuity to the JAMMA connector, all was well so I check continuity to all the buttons, sticks, RGBS and speaker connectors.

I cleaned up some dodgy connectors and rewired the speakers, then I've fixed an issue with the coin mech, and set it to 10p per play, in my mind this is how all arcade games should be!

The power supply was looking very tired and only 8Amps so I replaced the PSU with a new 15A one to make sure there's enough juice in there.

The control panel was looking very dirty and had some of its original buttons replaced. The buttons that were original had lots of wear so I gave it a good clean, touched up a little chip in the artwork, replaced all the switches in the control panel, and given it all new buttons.

Next to the game system itself, I bought a 4 slot board from someone on a forum, while this was working when posted it unfortunately suffered some damage during transit.

In test mode all is well, everything looks perfect, but if I put any cart in any of the slots I got some fairly severe graphics issues. All the sprites had lines of corruption on them. Take a look at the screen-shots below to see an example of what I mean from Puzzle Bobble.

After checking continuity on the badly corroded NEO-253 chip I found that the legs must have a break. I guess they must have just snapped during transit.

I gently cleaned back the corrosion and they were so bad that two of the legs came away completely. some of the other legs looked like there was very little solder left on them and generally the thing was a mess.

I de-soldered the surface mounts and cleaned it up as best I could. Not having a spare chip I made some new legs from single core wire and bridged the two gaps. The traces were corroded too so I took them to the holes you can see in front of the legs.

This worked and the board is now up and giving a perfect image. It's a very rough repair so if I can find a spare chip I'll remove this one and try to repair the surface mount pads and traces.

Game Screenshots