So, this oughta be fun. Bought 2 vanilla MT3 cabinets, only one N2 computer so one worked.
Needed a LOT of TLC. Graphics card was failing as well as the RAM, and the bios was dying as well.
Replaced the old Samsung RAM with GSkill PC3200 400hz DDR, and the old Nvidia card with some crystallized stuff on it with another Nvidia 7600GS. New BIOS as well. Cabinet works great for about 5 months until I get the opportunity to purchase MT3DX+ HDD with dongles for a good price.

Installed the MT3DX+ HDD and dongles, everything else left the same since I had the massive upgrade spree. 3DX+ boots at about 5 frames per second, after 3 minutes of the Bandai Namco, Namco, and Nvidia title screens, I go to select a car. Still 5fps. Hit test menu, see that I can't even initialize the card reader. Get behind the cabinet, turn it off, wait about 30 seconds and turn it back on again. Cabinet will not boot. "No signal" displayed in red on a blue background flashes eternally. Check the N2 and it's beeping, GPU fan is not spinning, but twitching every couple seconds. Check the board and there's a blown cap just above the RAM slots. I have a capacitor on the way for that, but after that...

Today, just got my other N2 in from Yaton out of China. Plug it into my cabinet and it works great for about 30 minutes. First run on Fukuoka is rough in the beginning, framerate was low in the first kilometer but picked up throughout. Ran a couple more races, until I landed back on Fukuoka. Countdown gets to 1, and then the game crashes. Straight to "No signal". No beeping this time, but there are a few... interesting characteristics about this N2. The power supply harness seems to be spliced in at least three places, the CPU fan isn't even attached to the board, it's just bouncing around the case, and the fan for said CPU isn't even the right fan. It's a 2-wire fan for a 3-wire plug. So before I go on a massive parts buying spree (again), I'm going to test both N2s with a VGA cable and see if it's the cabinets or the N2s.

Each HDD has their dongles and are official drives. The only thing not-official is the RAM in both (GSkill 1GB x 2), and the non-flashed bios of the GPU in the original MT3 computer. I'm wondering if there's a simple BIOS flash for the one with the blown cap and non-spinning GPU.

Any insight on what this could possibly be would be immensely appreciated. I'm so frustrated with this issue I'm about to call a specialist and pay them to fix these things.

Edit1: Connected the newer N2 to a monitor and received the message “Test good” on the monitor. Old N2 still beeps and no such message shows.

This post has been edited by vBeta on Jul 19 2019, 05:28 PM