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Irem Madonna / Madonna 33

A late-80s Irem candy cab, a collector favourite. All-metal & glass construction (no plastic/plexi), compact (≈ ¾ of a standard candy), with a look close to the Sega Aero City. Stock monitor a Nanao MS8-25FAR (25″). The Madonna 33 is the 33″ variant.

Two Irem Madonna cabinets side by side, on location.
Two Irem Madonna cabinets side by side, on location. Photo: Chris Ainsworth, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Identification

Field Value
Manufacturer Irem
Era late 80s
Type JAMMA candy cab, metal & glass
Screen Madonna (25): Nanao MS8-25FAR (25″) · Madonna 33: 33″
Size compact (~¾ of a normal candy)

(When the Madonna 33 shipped, the original was renamed Madonna 25.)

⚡ Connectors & power

Aspect Value
PCB connector JAMMA
Power AC 100 V ±10 %, 50/60 Hz — 3 m mains lead
Consumption 120 W
Dimensions 620 × 840 × 1320 mm (W×D×H, instruction panel excluded)
Weight ~100 kg (総重量 約100 kg)
Screen 25″ high-resolution flat CRT, Nanao — rotatable (dedicated handle)
Environment 0 → 40 °C · 30 → 80 % RH, non-condensing
Cash box ~2,600 to 3,200 ¥100 coins

Manufacturer's figures, labelled

The Irem flyer archived here, 仕様 box, gives 設置寸法: 横幅(W) 620 mm · 奥行(D) 840 mm · 高さ(H) 1320 mm（インストラクションパネルを 除く） — width, depth and height explicitly labelled, the height being the cabinet excluding the panel. It comes with a three-view dimension drawing (REAR / FRONT / SIDE) carrying 620 on the front and 840 on the side.

The rest of the box: 入力仕様 AC100V ±10 % 50/60Hz, mains lead 3 m, 消費電力 120W, environment 0 °C–40 °C / 30–80 %RH (non-condensing), 総重量 約100kg, cash box ~2,600–3,200 ¥100 coins, monitor 25 inch.

The owner's manual, archived here since, repeats that block identically — same figures, same 120 W, same 100 kg, same （インストラクションパネルを除く）reservation. Two Irem documents, no discrepancy: rare enough in this wiki to be worth noting.

It is a remarkably narrow cabinet: 620 mm, less than a Canary (660) and 13 cm less than an Astro City.

What else the flyer says

  • 25″ high-resolution flat Nanao monitor, with a rotation handle and adjustments reachable from the front.
  • Sliding control panel locked by a single key — wide opening, easy swap. Mahjong / quiz / 6-button panels are options, as is an ashtray holder.
  • Fully front-serviceable, mains switch included.
  • Service socket and network cable pass-through at the rear; casters as standard.
  • The coin mech also counts coins that pass through, for accurate income measurement.

(Sources: the archived Irem sales flyer for the whole table above.)

Common faults

Symptom Likely cause Lead
Unstable / washed-out image Nanao MS8 chassis / recap Recap + adjustments
No picture power / harness / chassis Diagnose power → monitor
Dead controls JAMMA harness / microswitches Diagnose I/O, clean

Repair & maintenance

Modernise (video, PSU, JVS, upscaler, PC/FPGA) → Modernising a cabinet. CRT monitor (discharge HV!) → CRT safety · Nanao MS8 chassis (MS8-25FAR) · recap → Recap · power → candy PSU · diagnosis → PCB fault-finding.

Procedure — a cabinet that will not start ✅

There is a CRT in this cabinet

The tube stays charged with the cabinet unplugged, and the anode cap is the first thing your hand meets behind the monitor. Discharge it, work with one hand, and never alone if you can help it. → CRT safety

This cabinet is documented as 100 V

It does not go straight onto a European socket. It needs a step-down transformer rated for the whole cabinet, monitor included — not a travel adapter. Feeding 230 V to a cabinet built for 100 V destroys the supply, and usually the monitor with it. → Cabinet power

What this adds

Ordered for a cabinet, not for a board: mains, low-voltage supply, loom, monitor, then the game. The overwhelming majority of "dead cabinets" are dead for a reason that has nothing to do with the PCB — which is why the board comes last here.

1. Mains, and what sits between it and the cabinet. The switch, the fuse or breaker, the isolation transformer if there is one. A cabinet that shows no sign of life at all is almost never electronic.

2. The low-voltage supply — measured under load. Aim for +5 V where power reaches the board — the JAMMA edge, or the JVS power connector, depending on the cabinet — with the game running, not on an idle bench. If the supply has an adjustment (most candy and JVS bricks do; the ATX brick in a PC cabinet does not), do it then and not before: set off-load, it leaves a board that boots and then glitches. With no adjustment the measurement still earns its keep — it tells you whether the supply holds. Check +12 V too, and −5 V if the board uses it: many do not, and an ATX brick does not provide it. → Cabinet power

3. The loom and the connector. Reseat, and check the grounds — a cabinet with a poor ground gives rolling picture, phantom inputs and noise, all at once, and none of it looks like a wiring fault. → Wiring

4. The monitor. This page describes the monitor as: Madonna (25): Nanao MS8-25FAR (25″) · Madonna 33: 33″. CRT: no picture but the tube is warm and there is EHT — that is sync or video, not the tube. No EHT at all — chassis. A picture that shrinks, wanders or shifts colour is a chassis recap, and on these monitors that is a scheduled job, not a repair.

5. Scan rate — the mismatch that breaks nothing. If the board's rate is not one the monitor accepts, you get no picture and nothing is faulty. Check what this cabinet takes against what the board puts out before opening anything. → Modernising a cabinet

6. The control panel. Microswitches and the loom, in that order. A single dead direction is a switch; a whole player dead is the loom or its ground. → Control panels

7. Coin mech and sound. Last, because they hide nothing: a mech that no longer registers is usually dirty or misadjusted, and silence with a good picture points at the amplifier and its supply rails.

See also

Documents (archived)

Sources & attribution

  • Irem — sales flyer MADONNA, archived here (4 pages) — 仕様 box (voltage, mains lead, consumption, environmental range, 横幅(W) × 奥行(D) × 高さ(H) labelled, weight, cash box capacity, monitor) and a REAR / FRONT / SIDE dimension drawing; pages 3 and 4 for the Nanao monitor, the rotation handle, the single-key sliding panel, the optional panels, the ashtray holder, the standard casters and the service socket. Found via The Arcade Flyer Archive
  • Irem — MADONNA 取扱説明書, 36 pp., archived here — its 仕様 folio repeats the flyer's block identically (設置寸法 620 / 840 / 1320 mm panel excluded, AC100V ±10 %, 3 m cord, 120 W, 約100 kg, 25″). ⚠️ This PDF has no text layer: everything quoted from it was read off the rendered page. Via Hard*Candy
  • Arcade Otaku Wiki — Irem Madonna & Irem Madonna 33 (metal/glass, ~¾ candy, Nanao MS8-25FAR, 33″ variant, Madonna 25) — https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Irem_Madonna
  • Hard*Candy — Madonna / Madonna 33 — https://www.hard--candy.com/wiki/candy/Madonna_33
  • Arcade-Museum — WTB Irem Madonna Japanese Candy Cabinet — https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/wtb-irem-madonna-japanese-candy-cabinet.418490/

Image:

Review & corrections

How this space is used

Spotted a wrong value, an outdated procedure, a chip reference that does not match your board? Say so here, with what you observed (model, board revision, serial number, measurement). Every report is cross-checked against a source before anything changes — an unverifiable correction is published as “reported by …, not cross-checked” rather than silently applied.

Reading is open to everyone; posting requires signing in with Discord. Reports from the wiki's declared reviewers are handled first; anyone else's are read too, but go through a human before anything is changed.