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Arcade cabinet types

An overview of the main arcade cabinet families — from the American upright to the Japanese candy cab, via the cocktail, the sit-down/motion cabinet and the modern LCD generation. Each format has its own wiring, screen and repair constraints.

The main families

Type Description Examples
Upright tall vertical US/EU cabinet, marquee on top, ~19-25″ monitor dedicated US cabs (Pac-Man, MK), generic JAMMA
Cocktail / table horizontal screen under glass, 2 players face to face (flipped image) Pac-Man cocktail, Space Invaders table
Cabaret / mini a smaller upright (less bulky) mini-cabs
Candy cab (JP) small moulded-plastic cabinet, rotatable monitor, interchangeable panel, JAMMA/JVS standard Astro City, Egret II, Windy
Sit-down / cockpit / deluxe a sit-in cabinet, often motion (actuators) OutRun, After Burner, Sega R360
Modern LCD flat 16:9 screen, arcade PC, versus Vewlix, Noir
Bartop (modern) small countertop cabinet, often emulation/RetroPie DIY bartops

What changes between types

  • Screen: CRT 15 kHz (classic), 24/31 kHz or tri-sync (late candy cabs), LCD (modern). See Astro City and Blast City.
  • Wiring: JAMMA (56-pin edge, standard since 1985), JVS (serial, modern arcade), or dedicated harnesses (pre-JAMMA cabs).
  • Power: a candy brick (JP) vs a US cabinet PSU; the critical +5 V adjustment → candy cab PSU.
  • Controls: interchangeable panel (candy) vs fixed (dedicated).

Playing a PCB at home

Without a cabinet, you plug a JAMMA board via a supergun (JAMMA → RGB + gamepads + power). It's the "living-room preservation" route for PCBs.

Repair (cross-cutting)

  • CRT monitor: recap + adjustments (see Nanao MS8 / MS9); ⚠️ high voltage.
  • Power: candy cab PSU.
  • JAMMA/JVS contacts, harness, buttons/joysticks.

Repair & maintenance

Modernise (video, PSU, JVS, upscaler, PC/FPGA) → Modernising a cabinet. Cross-cutting methods: CRT safety · Recap · PCB fault-finding.

Sources & attribution

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Spotted a wrong value, an outdated procedure, a chip reference that does not match your board?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.