You would think that it’s all of the older arcade games that need the most repair. The truth is that all of the games need repair from time to time, including the newer ones. So we’re going to tackle an LCD arcade monitor repair in this one.
LCD Arcade Monitor Repair Video
You may want to start by watching the quick video we made about this repair. It’s got a lot of fun little details that are much better shared in video format.
New Arcade Games Break Too
I think a lot of visitors to the arcade just assume that we spend 99% of our time restoring and repairing old arcade games. But the truth is that newer games break just about as often as old arcade games. Part of this is that games are just built cheaply. The manufacturers cut corners to save money and parts just break (especially when abused by the younger crowds). Also, the games are played all day long, every day. They just don’t get much of a break like a home use arcade does.
One of the more common parts to fail in a modern arcade is surprisingly the monitor (sometimes called the LCD screen). And the most common part to fail in the LCD monitor is the backlight. The backlight is what pushes white light through the LCD panel (which is where the different colored pixels are).
We find ourselves doing LCD arcade monitor repair fairly often. In fact, I’ve done this exact repair four times on different arcade monitors in the last two months.
Makvision Wei-Ya MT42W-267C3 Backlight Repair
As you can see in the picture below this one definitely needs an LCD arcade monitor repair! This arcade monitor is a Makvision by Wei-Ya MT42W-267C3. It uses an LG LCD screen and the LED strips are mdoel LC420DUE-SFR1 for those that are curious.
You can see that there is a giant black smudgy looking dark bar across the front of the monitor. This is because the center backlight has failed (or so we thought more in a minute on that).
Opening the MT42W-267C3 is a giant pain. It’s like peeling an onion. You have to remove a ton of components just to get to the backlight.
Getting this large back panel off requires removing about 20 screws of various sizes and shapes. And a little foreshadowing for you… not all of the screws were in the right holes. Meaning someone has worked on this monitor before and did not put it back together correctly.
We always use a little segmented parts tray when doing this. Put each screw by size and shape into each compartment, in the order they came out. This way after we’ve completed the LCD arcade monitor repair we can just reverse the order and know exactly what screw to place where.
Replacing the LC420DUE-SFR1 Backlight Strips
And this is where we figured out that someone had attempted this repair already and the backlights had been FUBARed. You can see in the picture below that one of the LC420DUE-SFR1 strips is peeled up and all wonky.
So it looks like what happened is that someone already replaced all of the LED strips in the monitor. You can tell because they are the new style and have a different part number on them. And then you can see they tried to pull one of them back out of the panel, damaging them.
Well it turns out that when they removed the original LED backlight strips when attempting the first LCD arcade monitor repair they broke the PCB that connects all of the LED strips to the backlight controller. This would be very easy to do if you were not being careful and paying attenting when removing the LED backlight strips. They probably didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to fix this and just put it back together.
LED Backlight PCB Repair – LCD Arcade Monitor Repair
Without a working backlight PCB, this monitor is toast. But we can rebuild it. We have the technology!
David The 8-Bit Guy went to work on the broken PCB. The first thing he did was use some 5 minute epoxy to glue the actual PCB back together. He then used some tiny copper wire and soldered the broken traces on the PCB back together. It actually turned out to be an easy fix.
In addition to the broken PCB, we also realized that the diffuser standoffs were missing. This explains why the screen looked a little bowed in when looking at it from an angle. Luckily, I found some great replacements on printables and just 3D printed my own replacements.
And yeah, those work perfectly!
The Completed MT42W-267C3 Backlight Repair
And with the monitor put back together, our LCD arcade monitor repair is complete! The Makvision by Wei-Ya MT42W-267C3 is back in business and it looks just as good as the day it originally rolled off the assembly line (and maybe even better)!
It’s funny because a lot of the repair work we do isn’t fixing failed parts. It’s fixing mistakes made by other operators or technicians who were there before us. And many times their repair is actually worse than the original problem!
Luckily in this case it turned out fine and this monitor is back in business, ready to go into another game and fight another day!
