Origin of Nanao MS9 with Degauss Relay, 5-pin Molex connector

[NFG]

I picked up a spare MS9 last year and I'm just now getting to looking at it more closely, and maybe installing it somewhere.

But it's a weird one, with a VGA connector, a Molex 5-pin for power and degauss, another connector for the chassis PCB that none of my other MS9 units have, and a relay on the input panel.

The internet being what it is these days, I'm having no luck at all finding information on this. Yaton sells the same input panel with all the wires, but doesn't make any mention of where it's from. That guy with the cables on ebay has the connector and harness that match mine, but of course there's no mention of what the pinout is, what it does, or anything more useful than 'Konami' as a somewhat unhelpful clue. I asked about this on AP, and it was suggested that it might be from a Namco (Time Crisis?) machine.

So I've spent some time trying to figure it out and I am pretty sure the pinout is AC / AC / GND / DGauss / DGauss.

But what's the relay for? What's the extra connector on the chassis for? What's this monitor from?

[Sp33dFr34k]

Paging @PrincessPrinPrin

[PrincessPrinPrin]

There is an official MS9 version which automatically switches between 15khz and 25khz thanks to a PC-mount relay (and quite a bit of SMT parts on the bottom side). This looks like an aftermarket mod that does the same thing. The yellow wires go where the PC-mount relay has the coil. Here they go to the coil in the panel mount relay. The coil needs a DC voltage on one side so one of the wires will be 12V I think (depends on the relay). Not sure about degauss as the chassis already has such a circuit.

[nem]

How would it work? Can you just have it connected to Low?

[PrincessPrinPrin]

I think you need to turn on the coil with a switch. The wire with the green arrow is 12V on the chassis and the black wire must be ground.

[NFG]

There is an official MS9 version which automatically switches between 15khz and 25khz thanks to a PC-mount relay (and quite a bit of SMT parts on the bottom side). This looks like an aftermarket mod that does the same thing. The yellow wires go where the PC-mount relay has the coil. Here they go to the coil in the panel mount relay. The coil needs a DC voltage on one side so one of the wires will be 12V I think (depends on the relay). Not sure about degauss as the chassis already has such a circuit.

I have one of the auto-switchers, and yeah it plugs in where the yellow wires go, the red connector. But the relay there also covers the other connectors for selecting the resolution, this mod doesn't, it's still a manual switcher in that regard.

This is strictly a degauss circuit, as near as I can tell. Normally, as everyone knows, it's two wires into the chassis to activate the degauss circuit. This one has two wires into a relay, but one of them goes to the chassis first. The other side of that relay is the degauss activation wires.

So there's a relay, which is weird, and it would need power to activate, and... it gets that from the chassis? Or does the power come from outside the chassis and activate something there to trigger the relay?

[NFG]

I talked to the person who sold it to me, and apparently it's from a Namco Final Furlong 2.

But I can't find a Final Furlong 2 manual, just a conversion manual for FF1->2, and the FF1 manual has a schematic that doesn't match this one.

Apparently the Time Crisis 2 hardware used the same setup, but the manuals for that don't match either.

[NFG]

My current best theory is that this mechanism allows both monitors in a 2-screen setup (Final Furlong, Time Crisis 2) to be degaussed when either P1 or P2 degauss button is pressed. I can't think of any other reason they'd do this.

But it's still just a guess because the only manual I can find is a PDF that was not copied at all well, and the lines (marked in green) from the switches (from the right side) disappear into the void. So while I know one wire runs from the switch to the monitor, I still don't know what's on the other side of these switches.

namco-monitor-1.jpg

[NFG]

I heard back from the person who sold it to me. They sent a couple of photos of the wiring diagrams, and it turns out... It's just a normal switch, after all.

I have no idea why it's more complicated than normal on the monitor end.