Troubleshooting Touch Machines
Introduction
Most touchscreen arcade machines brands tend to follow a similar hardware setup as they were based on touch screen monitors meant for DOS/Windows computers. This means at the core, a touch machine is almost a regular old computer in a more rugged box.
Accordingly, most common issues are actually PC issues:
- CMOS battery being empty after 20 years.
- BIOS setup after replacing CMOS battery.
- Mechanical hard drive corruption.
- Bad connections between motherboard, RAM or PCI/ISA slots.
- Dead power supplies.
- Etc...
CMOS Battery
CMOS refers to a battery backed memory on the motherboard that stores BIOS settings. These contain critical settings like date, time, and hardware configs to ensure the computer functions properly. This memory is usually powered from a CR2032 coin cell battery, which is meant to last up to 10 years.