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!
No comments:
Post a Comment