How to strip / disassemble a Konami WIndy

Taking apart a windy is generally pretty straight forward bu here are a couple of tricks. I thought I'd post a guide up so that anyone else who needs to do the job doesn't have quite as much head scratching to do as I did. I didn't totally strip mine, just took it apart enough to fit it through the doors into the room it will be living in. Doing to final bits to get it totally taken apart would be pretty self explanatory though. Taking one of these doesn't take any specialised tools. A decent Philips head screwdriver is pretty much all you need. Mine also had a single 10mm bolt. That's all though!

First you need to remove the exremely awesome marquee holder. That's just 3 screws around the back. After that you should open up the rear access hatch, discharge the monitor and remove the chassis. That had already been done on mine so no snaps for that. The monitor in these is unframed and the chassis rests on a metal shelf above the coin box.

Next open the cp and remove the 3 large screws holding the hood down.

You then need to remove the screws holding the monitor stays in place. It doesn't matter which end you undo them.

You can them lift the hood right up and undo the screws on the hinges. That will let you lift off the hood entirely.

After that you should very carefully pull out the tube. You'll need to take out a few screws and possibly a bolt holding in a ground wire. Be very careful with the tube's neck obviously since it's unframed.

The next step is to remove the front section (including the cp and door surrounds etc) from the base. With that bit removed the cab's easily small enough to go through even the thinnest door if you poke it through sideways.

Either side of the monitor mounting points inside the cp is a screw whcih goes into that front section. Take those out first.

While you're up there you may as well unhook the necessary wires from the i/o board. You don't need to take out all that many. The two USB cables have to come out along with the 3 on headers in the middle of the board.

To keep it safe you may as well slide out the pcb board and unhook the jamma > jvs converter too.

At this point it's easiest to tip the cab onto its back. Then remove the screws along the sides of the cab.


After that all that remains is to remove the screws which hold that front section to the base. The first few are easy enough to find inside the pcb door.

The last couple are tricker to get to though. They're under the cash box and can't be removed without shifting the cash box housing. First undo the 3 screws holding the coin door on.

Then remove the door surround screws.


With that done you can gently push back the coin box enough to get your screwdriver in and remove the last couple of screws which go into the base. There are 2 in there I think. Possibly three.

At this point the base section is loose. However there are some little raised nubs on the base which snap into the cp front section. That means you can't just slide the cp section forwards. You'll have to pull the base down slightly and lift up the upper portion a little to get the room. This is made a lot easier by having th cab on it's back. Alternatively you could just remove the base entirely I guess. You'll be left with this as the biggest lump. It's nice and light and easy to fit through a tiny doorway on into a car boot.

Other than the messing about with the monitor it's an extremely straightforward job. You'll probably have to undo a few ground wires I haven't mentioned but you'll spot that easy enough.

One out, one in

Yesterday I said farewell to one cab and welcomed another.

The departee was the consolised ID cab. I enjoyed playing about and building it and spent a lot of time playing on it too. I should have kept track of how much forza 3 I played on it. A lot! Outrun 2 was fantastic on it too. But I did use it a little less than my stick cabs and I had the opportunity to pick up something else to take its' place so I said farewell.

So the driver left in the morning. And in the afternoon a friend and I took a trip to collect this


A Konami Windy 2. The cab is in lovely shape overall but needs a bit of work.

The cp is a repro and has a few extra buttons near the starts which I need to sort plugs for. The main issue is the monitor. The cab was originally built with a toshiba tri sync in it but that's long gone. It currently has a pentranic / rodotron trisync but the chassis on it is dead. Even when it was working the geometry was pretty poor and it had quite a bit of side compression in 15k. I need to decide whether to get the current chassis repaired or buy a replacement.

Other than that it's all great though. It plays blind and the konami jamma > jvs converter in it is working great. Stripping it down was OK but it took a bit of figuring out. I'll put a guide up soon to help anyone who has to do it.

New arrival - NAC PSU

I got this bargain NAC PSU in the post today. I got it off ebay for £11 including delivery. It's loads cleaner than the one that was in my NAC and the test and service buttons work unlike on my old one. Result!

New arrival - Mushihime Tama kit

I got this rather nice kit in the post today. There's a ton of stuff in the box (a figure, bundles of flyers, special balltops and loads else). I'll maybe get around to taking some photos some time. For now I've popped it into the candy 18. The new chassis is working but the arc needs looking at I think. Luckily the cab's making its way to replay for the show and there'll be folk there who can give me a little advice on what to do with it.

Over the last couple of days I also moved my cabs around. I wanted to have them all in one room now the winter's drawing in. I tend to not have the heating on in every room. Since cabs don't like cold and damp I thought I'd shift them all together and worry about keeping conditions right in there. I also needed to make space for a new arrival or two I'm expecting in the nearish future... Once replay is over and they're all in one place I may take a line up shot or something.

New arrivals - Candy 18 bits

A friend bought an SNK candy 18 which was in a bit of a sorry state. It had a mahjong pcb and panel and an extremely burnt monitor. He decided to put an lcd in it and wire it for naomi. Since I am a stock guy he traded me the original parts he was discarding for a bit or two I had laying around. Here are my spoils!

A nice candy 18 mahjong cp


complete (but hacked) candy 18 loom with mahjong adapter, coin chute, PSU, service panel


Monitor bezel, marquee holder, a jaleco mahjong pcb (not hooked it up yet so not sure which. There are apparently 5 mahjong games which use this hardware) and, best of all, a nanao ms7 18 chassis. I swapped this with the poorly one on my candy 18. Unfortunately it has a similar arc in the lopt as my original. It doesn't need to warm up like my other though and the arc in this one doesn't affect play like the other. I'm super happy to finally get hold of this lot since it originally got lost in the post on the way to me.

New arrivals - MVS and a poorly pcb

I had a couple of parcels delivered today. There was a fair chunk of MVS stuff in there! Two of the kits are complete, the others are complete minus the flyers. The riding hero one has a bunch of cool extras including a giant cloth banner and a suction cup dangler thing. Pretty cool. The two metal slug games came as part of a trade. The others I bought from New Zealand through a most generous kiwi friend.

This lot brings me to 69 / 148 carts. There are also a few mini marquees in there. I haven't picked any up in a bit, I'm happy to add a few more. I do like having them in the U4. I now have minis for 56 / 133 games that had them.


I also received this wonderboy pcb. It's clearly had a bit of work in the past and is currently non working. I'll ship it off for repair soon. That won't be cheap but I got it for a great price. I'm looking forward to getting it up and running. I have a stack of a few pcbs to get repaired now, it'll be a hit on the wallet but it'll be nice to have them running.

New arrival - another MVS cart

I traded a faulty pcb for another MVS cart. This time it's Karnov's revenge AKA Fighter's History Dynamite. It's another VS fighter, not one of the better ones I'd say. It has some semi interesting backgrounds and locations but the detail on them isn't great. The game play is only OK too.

This brings me to 61 / 148 MVS carts.

New arrivals - MVS fighters

I received these three today in a trade. I'm not a fighter fan prticularly but I'm looking forward to having a go on the Last Blade. It has a great setting and graphics and by all accounts the game play is pretty much the best on the system as far as fighters go.

These three take me to 60 / 148 MVS carts.

New arrivals - Shmup Inundation

I received a very nice parcel today in the post. In it were five shooter pcbs. A couple are pretty run of the mill but there are a few off the beaten track goodies too.

This pair are air buster by kaneko and the jaleco shootie EDF: Earth Defence Force. Neither are especially exciting but I do have a soft spot for these early 90s side scrollers. It seems right that it turned up so closely to thundercross 2. There's a definate family resemblence.

First up is Taito's ray storm. The graphics haven't aged too well but I'm looking forward to giving it a good go. I'm not massively keen on the lock on weapon idea as I've seen it in other games. Perhaps I'll like it more in this.


The two most interesting ones are in this pic. Trigon from konami is the board on the left. It was released as lightning fighters in some territories. It's the only vertical orientation game in this group (ray storm is vertically scrolling but horziontal screen). The final board is the irem game dragon breed. I've had a couple of credits on this and am enjoying it a fair bit. The checkpoint system in this and trigon is pretty annoying though. Really spoils the flow and adds to the frustration.

Some pretty cool games here! Now I just need some time off work to enjoy them fully with some nice long play sessions. That'll be a while unfortunately.

New arrival - More MVS carts

The bottom one is puzzled. I'm looking forward to playing both of these. I'm not much of a fighter fan but the samurai showdown games appeal to me. Awesome music and characters designs and stuff. I love puzzle games so I'm looking forward to having a bash on puzzled. These pair bring me to 57/148 MVS games.

I also paid for another cab today to replace the cyberlead. I've decided to loan it to replay so it won't actually get as far as me for over a month. I'll have a play on it at replay though! Pics and stuff when it gets to me.

New arrival - Terra diver

Terra diver is, perhaps predictably, a shooter. Horizontal screen but vertically scrolling. It's on Sega Titan Video hardware, STV. It's basically the arcde version of the saturn. It has interchangeable carts similar to MVS. This motherboard has a modbios in it so region is selectable on start up. There aren't many decent games on this hardare. I may pick up a couple of others at some point but I'm not actively searching for any. Radiant silvergun's the other good shooter on STV but it's too expensive for me to justify picking it up.

Yesterday I had three faulty pcbs delivered. I'll see about getting them repaired at some point. They are prehistoric isle, tatsuijin and sky shark. The later two I'm looking forward to playing and the first is probably worth a credit or two. They were cheap enough so worth a shot. Hopefully I'll get them up and going somehow sooner or later.

New arrival - thundercross 2

I got my mitts on another pcb today. This time it's the side scrolling konami shooter Thundercross 2. I don't have all that many horizontal pcbs since I'm not as big a fan of them as vertical scrollers generally. I'd been on the look out for one of these at a decent price for a while though. It's not a really great game but it has a pretty awesome soundtrack!

New arrivals - Namco Classics Collection vol 1 and MVS

I had a couple of parcels today. One (which was incredibly poorly packaged) contained this rather nice namco classics collection volume 1 pcb. It contains galaga, xevious and mappy and arranged version of all three. It also plays upside down compared to 99% of all vertical pcbs and has no screen flip option. I'll either tate the aero table or invert the image using the jumpers I think. I primarily got this for the lady friend because she's a big galaga fan. I played an (upside down) test credit on the arrange version of that and xevious and am looking forward to having a proper go. The music on xevious arrange is great!

I also got a nice matrimelee MVS cart. In the parcel was a thrash rally cart too. It wasn't til it got here that I realised I already had one. I could swear I didn't.... Anyway, I'll trade that for a cart I don't have hopefully. This one takes me to 55 / 148 carts owned.