The Haunted Arcade

The game room was made available to the trick-or-treaters this year.  Though not many actually took the time to stop in and play a game, there were a few.  There were some dad's that wanted to hang back and play a few games, and this caused a few grumpy mom's to storm off down the street.  All in all it went pretty well.  Some younger kids got to enjoy the games, and I met several guys my age that wanted to talk about the hobby. 

My neighbor, Dean, came over early and we set up a fire pit and built a nice fire.  We then sat around and handed out candy and drank ice cold Sam Adams.   Later that night Mick from the Village BBS came by along with his kids and wife Jenny.  It was a nice relaxing evening. 

I really didn't do a whole lot to the game room, just some lights and a skeleton. I hooked up a few old tv's and had them playing a horror movie, and played some old 80's music in the background.
Here are a few shots I took just after getting everything set up, before any kids came along.

The usual first steps and woodworking

Since this game was only missing the original fuse block, there was some hope that it would actually work if the fuses were replaced.  Ha! Not!

So I set about restoring the AR1 board with new caps and two new transistors.  The power brick also got a new bridge rectifier, filter capacitor, fuses and fuseblock.  Then came time to test the voltages.  Usually this is just a precaution.  I have never had a power supply or AR board fail to work properly after replacing the caps and transistors.  The AR board should provide 5V for the system board, testing mine showed over 10 volts!  Ouch.  I took a long look at the schematics and decided it had to be either the LM305 or the two or three diodes on the board.  I had a few  1N7004 diodes on hand, so I set about to replace those first.  That didn't work.  The old diodes were good, which meant the LM305 was toast.  After studying the board for a minute or two,  I noticed that one of the legs on the LM305 was missing.  Now this thing is tiny.  Using a leg from a capacitor, I soldered a bridge in place for the missing leg.  Afterwards the voltages were perfect and adjustable to 5V.  Weird, but that solved the issues with the AR1 board.

The power brick is another problem.  Sadly it seems that the transformer has gone bad, either that or I'm not taking the voltage reading properly.  I'm almost certain I am.  Still, I've been told transformers almost never go bad, unless we're talking about Decepticons.  =)

The marquee wasn't lighting up, and I wanted to make sure the black light was going to work too.  After pulling out the top section of the cabinet, and studying the florescent light fixtures, I noticed one of the small ballasts had been removed.  The black light was missing, and had been replaced with a regular tube.  How sad.  The coolest part of this game, and the owner couldn't be bothered to replace a black light.  I had both items on hand.  After replacing the missing parts, and a few damaged connectors, I had it working again in minutes.  For the first time in possibly decades, the black light artwork was glowing proudly.

The cabinet looked pretty bad setting directly on the ground.  So I wanted to get it lifted up on leg levelers again.  This is normally an easy task.  When I tipped the cabinet over to screw in the replacement leg levelers, I realized why they were missing.  The bottom was in REALLY bad shape.  It had been eaten by termites, luckily they had long since moved on, leaving me the mess to clean up.  The base of the cabinet would have to be busted out and replaced.  Quite a mess.

This really went smoothly though.  The old base was easily knocked out, since it was badly chewed up.  I guess termites don't have a taste for particle board, because everything else was fine.  Cutting and installing the new base was a pretty straight forward deal.  I found some furniture hardware to mount the leg levelers in and attached those to the new base.  Now it looks much better since it's raised up off the floor.

Asteroids Deluxe

I have never owned a game that featured a cool black light effect.  So I started thinking that I wanted an Asteroids Deluxe for this reason.  Asteroids is likely one of my favorite games, I already own both a cocktail and the upright versions.   Asteroids Deluxe was released one year (1980) after the original, and features slightly different game play.  It has a cool mirrored display, the effect is that the images appear to be floating over a nice glowing deep space asteroid scene.  The best way to find something fast is to ask for it on the Village Forum.  I was offered one by Rob from Tallahassee, or Raikus as he goes by on the forum.  Here are some first shots I took of the cabinet.  The side art looks to be in pretty good shape.  Also, all the parts seem to be intact, except for a missing fuse block, and of course the back door.

As you can see, it's sitting on the ground, because it's missing the leg levelers.  Also the control panel isn't correct.  This one looks to be a reproduction decal meant for the original Asteroids, so that will need sorted.  

All things aside, the important bits are here, Rob has a great eye for finding a project, and this game should look nice when completed.

First work on Tail Gunner 2

The first of many repairs have been completed!  I was able to source the capacitors and bridge rectifier online, including the two huge 13000MFD 50V caps.  The one case mounted 2N6055 transistor was replaced with a brand new 2N6284.  Previously the +5 voltage and +25 were both dead, now I am happy to report they are all working nicely. The 25 is a little on the high side at 28 something, but the +5 is easily adjusted from the pot at R1.

The 5v circuit board with the new caps.  

The monitor received a serious cleaning.  I finally decided to try the water hose method, as scary as it seems.  The board got a good soaking down with Simple Green, and I scrubbed it with a small toothbrush, to remove any really nasty bits.  After spraying it down with the water hose, it looks nearly spotless.  Of course I let this thing dry for almost a week before attempting to apply power.  While this was down, I replaced the 4 power transistors mounted on the two huge heat sinks to the side.  Bob Roberts supplied the two 2N3792's and two 2N3716's.  On Wednesday I hooked everything back up and gave it another test with the power supply.  I'm happy to say the monitor now has the familiar vector chatter sound, but still no picture.

Lastly, I got busy doing the artwork scans.  It took 9 scans to piece together the whole image.  Microsoft makes a free image stitching program with which I was able to join the 9 images together.  My boss, Mike Gerrish, was kind enough to clean the final image up greatly, by tracing the edges and making all of the white bits perfectly white, and all of the black, black.  It looks really good now, and is very detailed at 500dpi.  I have contacted This Old Game to see about having it printed.

Xentek Power Supply

Today I started cleaning up what I could on the Tail Gunner 2.  The cables had all been wrapped up with electrical tape, so I took that all apart, and started examining the harness. 

The manual shows the monitor, power supply, and PCB all slide out as a drawer for easy access.  This wouldn't happen on mine, the cabinet had been modified somehow, so after removing the lower plywood section I was able to pull the drawer out and get a better look at the internal bits. 

I pulled the power supply out and cleaned it up.  After looking online, I located replacements for the two 13000MFD 50VDC capacitors.  My plan right now is to track down the remaining capacitors, and replace those.  Then I'll test and maybe replace the diodes and the one 2N6055 transistor.

Arcade Boneyard Road Trip

The other day I was looking through some old posts on the KLOV forum.  I found a long rant about how a guy was trashing old games and selling off the parts.  After reading several posts I realized they were talking about The Arcade Boneyard.   I had visited the website, and seen several of his posts on Craigslist, and knew that he lived somewhere north of me, in Ocala or Gainesville.  One of the rants on KLOV was that the guy had a "kill list", really it's just a list of stuff that he plans to take apart and sell, and that certain members found that to be offensive.

Next thing you know I'm on his website, examining the "kill list".  On the list are a few odd ball games that would likely be of interest to collectors.  There was a cockpit Red Baron, and a Tail Gunner 2!!  In spite of there being a notation that he doesn't sell these as projects, I dropped him an email asking.  He responds almost immediately and explains that the cabinets are in very bad shape.  Actually the back half of each cabinet is missing, the previous owner sawed them in half to save space.  He sends me some pics, and I'm already planning on grabbing the Tail Gunner.

We work out a price, me going low, and he angles for a take-two for one price strategy.  So wow, I was totally on the fence about getting this as a project and now he wants me to take both the Tail Gunner AND the Red Baron.  Luckily I find out from Mick that a local collector had an eye on the Red Baron, and later that night confirmed that he wanted it.  I was clear to make the haul.  So with everything in place, My daughter and I set off early Saturday morning for Ocala.

Not knowing what to expect, the Arcade Boneyard was a very pleasant surprise.  The owner Rob was a super nice guy, and his place was very clean, organized, and professional.  He loaded up both games and showed us around his shop.  He has a very large collection of parts and manuals, as well as complete machines.  Many of his games had been restored and looked like new.  And there were a number of cabinets there also, ready to have parts installed, because they were just too nice to be destroyed.  I would recommend this place to anyone looking for projects or hard to find parts.

So now I have this sweet rare game, Tail Gunner 2.  It's one of the early vector games made by Cinematronics and Vectorbeam, a gem indeed.  I'll not only have to repair the game, but research and build a replica of the cabinet.  It's sure to be an epic restore, let's hope it's not an epic fail.

Gravitar board returns

As you all know, I've been waiting on my Gravitar board to return from Eldorado Games.  Today, after taking my daughter to dinner,  it was waiting at the front door.  Nice!

So, with great anticipation, I rolled out the Gravitar cabinet and installed the board.  This last weekend I went through the game and double checked all the connections and voltages, so everything would be in order.  The board came up great, and after adjusting the colors and screen size it was looking fantastic.

My first impressions of the game:  It's very hard, and very addicting.  The sound effects are awesome, with the same deep bass explosions as Space Duel.  A few of the buttons are not as responsive as they should be.  They likely need cleaned.  The picture looks almost perfect with very little flicker.  Here is a quick video made with my iPhone:

Donkey Kong Jr. finds a new home

With the Gravitar and Zaxxon waiting to be finished, I needed the space in the lineup. So when a local collector began gathering games to complete a Nintendo row, I agreed to sell. Here are a few last pics of the game.

Here is a shot of the Nintendo row, looking good. Also I got to play this sweet Pinball game, Twilight Zone.

Gravitar Coin Door Gets Rebuilt

My least favorite part of this restoration, the coin doors, finally gets tackled.  My problem with these has always been a lack of patience.  That coupled with the blandness of this item makes it a dreadful process.  So I decided to try and change all of that.  This coin door needed to look good.

The plan was to just lavish a great deal of time on these parts and hope for the best.  I started by taking the whole assembly apart.  I also removed the coin box and test switch control panel.  All of the pieces to be painted got slathered in Klean Strip.  This worked incredibly well.  The paint that was so thick and stubborn to remove with sandpaper came off in sheets.  It took several coatings to get every last bit of paint removed, but I took my time with it and let the stripping chemicals do the work.

 Afterwards I cleaned and sanded any remaining rust spots and gave each piece a good cleaning with steel wool. Finally each part got washed with very hot water and left out to dry in the sun.  Rustoleum makes a textured spray paint that a few guys on KLOV have used with great success.  So while this was all drying I made a trip out to Lowe's.

One problem I always seem to have while painting is insects.  So rather than laying out plastic and painting on the ground, I opted to set up a table and just cover the table with plastic.  This worked great, almost nothing flew into the paint, and I stood watch over it for about 10 minutes while it was drying.  I rushed the assembly job a little and have a few nicks and dings from not allowing the paint to cure, but overall it looks quite nice.  The textured paint is a very close match to the original finish.

The marquee wasn't lighting up, so I replaced the starter.  I took maybe an hour and checked all the voltages and continuity on the harness.  The AR board was putting out 5.38V so I turned it down a bit.  I'm not really certain if that was due to not having a load at the time.  Everything looks to be in order, so the board should work when it arrives.

Paper Bezel for Gravitar

Arts and crafts time here.  So I had to make a paper bezel to replace the missing one for this Gravitar.  Since the bezel for the Space Duel is in decent shape, my plan was to make a copy using card stock or poster board.  As usual I wasn't able to find a plain sheet of black poster board.  Michael's carries a thick, very hard material they call illustrator board. 

Here are a few shots of the process.  I pulled apart the Space Duel bezel and pressed it flat.  Then very carefully traced around it with pencil, making note of where the folds are to be made on the drawing.  I used a t-square to cut the straight edges, and just did the best I could with the inner curved sections.  Keeping a sharp exacto blade at all times is very important.  If I had used regular poster board this would've been much easier.  It takes several slices to get through the illustration board.  Once the two pieces are cut out, I then lightly scored the front edges, so that the outer portion would lay flat against the frame of the cabinet.  Then I lightly scored the two corners that fold in.  By "score" I mean I cut a very shallow groove with the exacto knife on the back along the angle of the fold.  Once the necessary folds were in place and it appeared to be taking the right shape, I used double sided tape to seal the two edges.  It's at this point that the magic happens, and the whole piece assumes the three dimensional shape.

Since the Space Duel and Gravitar use the exact same cabinet design, the bezel fit perfectly.  I used a few staples to hold it in place.  This one turned out nearly perfect, and even if it's not, it gets covered by a very dark tinted glass.

This leaves the coin door to be stripped down and painted.  I started on this process, and actually got alot of the paint blasted off the coin doors, but it will require more effort.  It looks as though the coin doors have been painted several times, and there is some rust too.  Hopefully I can get this done before the board arrives back from Eldorado.

Working the bugs out of Pole Position II

Over the last week I've been trying to get this troublesome game up to speed, no pun intended.  There are two reasons for my sudden motivation.

First, I'd like to be able to take this to the Gamewarp show in Orlando next year.  It's not everyday that folks can play a "working" Pole Position, and a working cockpit version is an even better treat.  So if I can get it there, I'm sure it will be fun.

Secondly, and this is really the primary reason, Fetishboy of KLOV fame has finalized his painstaking reproduction of the cockpit attract billboard.  I can't remember seeing one of these back in the day, but it did exist.  The first time I came across it, was in the manual.  It shows a large metal sign that bolted above the front plexiglass window.  A few forum members actually had these in decent enough shape to be scanned.  The artwork was vectorized by Fet and I believe it is being printed by Rich over at This Old Game.
A fabrication shop is making the steel portion and having it powder coated.  I believe they are making a first run of only 25, of which I had the fortune to shell out my hard earned cash for.

This game has a few issues to be resolved.  I first wanted to address the problem of it not booting properly each time it was turned on.  About half the time, when it starts up, I get garbage on the screen.  I'm not sure why but I decided to check the voltages on both of the ARII boards, and found that one was a little under 5V. I think it was somewhere around 4.8 something.  Anyway, turning that up and adjusting the other board to be just over 5V seemed to correct the startup issues.

My second project was to create a heat exhaust port.  It seems the game gets pretty hot, and although I had a fan installed, it wasn't cooling the board cage well enough.  Some of the folks on the KLOV forum have made ports out of paper for upright Pole Positions, so I figured it would be a good idea for the sitdown version too.  I used a large piece of heavy illustration board and just measured and cut as I went along.  I used the trusty double sided tape and it came together quite nicely, it's actually a very sturdy piece.  The board cage stays much cooler now, and I can actually feel the heat being expelled when I hold my hand in front of the fan.  Here is a shot of the exhaust port, taken with my iPhone.

When I brought this game home, one of the first things I did was a complete cap kit on the Matsushita monitor.  For some reason the colors have always just been weird.  I had finally had enough and decided to investigate.  I pulled the neck board and began adjusting the color pots.  At first I would shut the game down, adjust the pot a little, then replace the board and try to get an idea of what was changing.  During this process I realized that the slightest movement of the various potentiometers would cause the colors to go all freakishly extream.  So out of frustration, I took a few minutes and worked them back and forth through their entire range of motion.  My guess is that the contacts on the pots had a small amount of corrosion, because this exercise totally cleaned up the colors.  After this I was able to adjust down the red and turn up the blues, and it all started to look pretty much normal.  Hurray!

More Progress

So it's Labor Day weekend.  I worked from about 9 AM to 7 PM on this project, with a short break for lunch.  While it was good to stay focused for the day, I rushed some things, and that's never good.  Still it's looking much better than I had expected, and there were a few surprises along the way.

I started early by finishing up the new back door.  I found that using the Space Duel door as a template made making this one a snap.  Since they are basically the same cabinet, I traced the vent cutout with the router and it looked to be near factory quality.  I then assembled the parts to block off the view into the vent opening, just like the Atari built door, with a small 2 inch by 14 inch piece.  I made a re-printed back door sheet using a new wide carriage printer at work.  The door then got a new cam lock and a fresh coat of oil based satin black.  While the satin dried a little too glossy for me, It will just have to do for now.

The front of the cabinet was still orange and all of that surface needed cleaned up and prep for painting black.  When I started sanding I noticed that the paint really wasn't sanding down, it was gunking up and peeling.  So after a closer inspection, I could see that the underlying surface was laminate.   I tried cleaning a little off with acetone and after a few minutes decided to try a gel based paint stripper I had on hand.  It worked perfectly, and within about 20-30 minutes I had the orange paint removed and the laminate was in great shape.  I had to use a little elbow grease and some Pledge to restore it, but in the end it was much better than painting.  In fact it was looking great.

With that problem out of the way, I had plenty of time to focus on sanding down the Bondo from the front corner repairs and prepping the cabinet for painting.  The fiber board was somewhat brittle all around the edges of the cabinet, so I tried a new product.  It was a wood hardener and it appears to have worked well.  I spread it all around the exposed edges and down into the t-molding groove.  After letting it dry, the surface seemed to be much harder and more stable.  I then sanded the remaining Bondo down and began masking off the side art.  This was a bit tedious, and took maybe an hour.  I wanted to get it just right, as I was likely too lazy to do it again if there were any mistakes.

After a few coats of white it was looking pretty nice.  I used the new Rustoleum gloss white in the newly designed "any angle" cans.  Not sure if that helped but the finish was pretty nice, not perfect but good enough.  Had I done this again I would've started with a sandable primer.  Now with bright white sides the artwork really jumps out.

I think this is where I called it a day on Sunday.  I was actually exhausted by this time.  The next day I repaired and painted the lower back section of the cabinet, the day before I had peeled off what appeared to be vinyl.  I then Bondoed the bottom edge after using more of that wood hardener.  I needed to scrub the top half of the cabinet with a Magic Eraser and Simple Green to remove all of the orange over spray.  After that the top was looking good too. 

The marquee brackets were rusty and missing bolts, so those got sanded down and cleaned up.  I used 60 grit sandpaper to clean up any large spots of rust, then some steel wool to get them smooth.  After that, they got a light coat of Rustoleum hammer texture spray followed by a light coat of satin black.  There was some weather stripping material on both brackets where they contacted the glass marquee, and I had some on hand, so that got replaced.  I cleaned the marquee front and back with Simple Green, seems the backs are always yellow, looks like from cigarette smoke.  I had some nice clean black bolts to put it all back together with.

As always, I was impatient to get the t-molding on.  I had ordered some red t-molding earlier in the week from Twisted Quarter.  I didn't want to go with the original black, seemed a waste, I thought the red would give it a little flash.  I had to use a silicon glue on several areas to get the t-molding to hold good.  So at the end of the day it was really starting to look nice.