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Sega Aero Table

The cocktail / table version of the Aero City — same generation (1988), a 26″ screen lying flat under glass, two players facing each other. Rare today, sought-after for old-school two-player play. JAMMA, standard Sega candy repair.

The Aero Table — the Aero City's cocktail variant.
The Aero Table — the Aero City's cocktail variant. Source: Hard*Candy — ⚠️ the site publishes no licence statement.

Identification

Field Value
Manufacturer Sega
Year 1988
Type cocktail / table (2 players facing)
Screen 26″ flat under glass
Connector JAMMA
Related table version of the Aero City

Table specifics

  • Horizontal (flat) screen under glass → mind the weight and the glass when handling.
  • Two opposed control panels → the game flips the image for player 2 (cocktail games); some non-cocktail games are played side by side.
  • A single JAMMA harness, like a normal candy.

⚡ Connectors & power

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 (one side) that panel's harness Diagnose the faulty side's I/O

Repair & maintenance

Modernise (video, PSU, JVS, upscaler, PC/FPGA) → Modernising a cabinet. Flat CRT monitor (discharge HV!) → CRT safety · Nanao MS8 chassis · 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. Connector on this cabinet: JAMMA. → Wiring

4. The monitor. This page describes the monitor as: 26″ flat under glass. 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

Sources & attribution

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.