Mappy gets a makeover

[Spyridon]

Added my 20th cab to the arcade...Mappy

It's a good thing that giant marquee folds down.  Makes for easy transport in the Land Rover:


The first thing that jumps out is the yellow marquee box.  It should be white


Let's look at what we have awaiting us on this restore:

Game plays blind but nothing going on with the monitor.  I used a monitor extension cable (thanks Bob Roberts) and plugged it into my Pac-man to see what it looked liked

It's a bit odd playing a game on one cab and looking over at another to play but it works.  (boy this is a fun game)

Looking at the monitor, it's a G07 with severe marble madness burn.  It's also missing several caps (I found one in the bottom of the cab) and a fuse.  It can be fixed, but not sure it's worth it with the severe burn


I'll throw in the G07 I pulled from Centipede for now.

PCB looks to be just hanging on by one bolt and not installed correctly



Serial number is #1277



Let's keep looking.

Bezel is in horrible shape.  Art work is peeling off in multiple places


I've already located a pretty good condition replacement and it is being shipped to me.  


Marquee is very faded and the lights don't work.

and here is how it is supposed to look:

The red seems to be faded on most of these.  Phoenix arcade did a marquee repro a few years ago but is out of stock.  I've been in contact with Darin and he is considering doing another run of these.  In the mean time, I picked up one on eBay for only $32 shipped.  Still faded but at least this one has some red and yellow


Both of the rear wheels are missing (see photo above in the car).  I found one of them in the coin bucket.

Looks like quite a bit of damage where the wheel was pulled off.  Any recommendations on the best way to fix that?  I did locate a site selling a set of these wheels.

Coin door isn't too pretty.  Lots of stuff just hanging on the inside


The front kick plate is missing the Goro character.
 
Luckily Rich at ThisOldGame has reproduced these (and I already have my set)


Rich did a great tutorial on installing these decals.

Side artwork looks good from a distance but up close there are a lot of problems (I'll add pictures later for this).  The previous owner tried to fix it up by using colored markers to fill in the missing parts.  Not a bad job but not good enough for me.  The decision on keeping the side art or scraping it will be determined by This Old Game.  He has the artwork and will probably be doing a run of solvent ink jet reproductions.  
I just need to get confirmation on this before pulling off the old art.

Another creative move on the part of the previous owner.  To fix the cracked and peeling area around the front bend on the control panel overlay, he cut and removed the area around the bend and hand painted it red.  
The overlay is now in two pieces.  Again, not a bad job for a budget restore, but why do that when there are high quality silk screened overlay available?  Order placed and CPO is in hand.

There were two different CPO's out there, one with white lettering for the open/close and one with yellow.  The repro is the yellow which is different from my original

The contraption that hold the marquee in place and allows it to fold down is rusty and missing a few bolts


Back door is not original, probably another attempt by the previous owner to fix this up.  Not a bad job, but I wonder if it should have some vent holes?  Also, check this out in place of the proper lock:

[Spyridon]

First thing to do is get the marquee going


I learned the hard way to not just go throwing in new light bulbs before checking to make sure the ballasts are good.  I picked up two new bulbs for about $7 each and fired up the game.  A quick flash from the bulbs and then nothing.  Game was dead.  I checked the main fuse and it was blown...along with both new bulbs.  I checked the ballasts with an ohm meter and found that they were both bad (if good, they should register about 26 ohms).

I replaced the ballasts, the fuse and the bulbs and it fired up nicely. 

Also, after wasting $14 in bulbs I decided to order some online at a cheaper price.  I ordered a case from eLightbulbs.  With a flat shipping charge of $7.99 for a case of 30, along with a 10% off code (retailmenot10), that works out to $1.76 per bulb.

[Spyridon]

Just found out that the red t-molding on my cab is not correct.  It originally came with 1/2" orange t-molding which is not available from any retailers.

[Spyridon]

Just took a picture of the monitor that was in the cab



Pretty ugly

[TheShanMan]

Sweet. I love my mappy. It's in a little nicer shape than this overall, but the marquee has the typical fade and a part of the side art is peeled/torn off. Got my CPO just waiting for me to have time to install it. And I too am hoping for another marquee run, though it'll depend on price. Mine's nice other than faded red.

I'll try to remember to check my back door tonight. Want a pic? Anything else you might want me to check?

[SirPeale]

That G07 will fix up nicely.  One tube swap later and you'll have practically a new monitor once you rebuild it.

[Spyridon]

I'll try to remember to check my back door tonight. Want a pic? Anything else you might want me to check?

Yeah, a pic of the back door would be great.

[Spyridon]

That G07 will fix up nicely.  One tube swap later and you'll have practically a new monitor once you rebuild it.

Yeah, I need to read up on tube swaps and figure out where to get the tubes.

[Spyridon]

I love games that save high scores, but unfortunately, Mappy does not.  Don't worry, JROK has come to the rescue with a high score hack.

It involves swapping two ROM chips


and replacing one RAM chip with a NVRAM (I used a M48Z02)


I did this but when I powered it up, I got a RAM 3 message on the monitor.  Checking the power at one of the chips on the PCB, I found it was only getting 4.4V.  I'm suprised the game even ran at that level.  I adjusted the voltage and now the game is working again and high scores are being saved!

[SirPeale]

That G07 will fix up nicely.  One tube swap later and you'll have practically a new monitor once you rebuild it.

Yeah, I need to read up on tube swaps and figure out where to get the tubes.

You can buy them brand-new, but I personally like getting them from old TVs.  Ask on Craigs List and Freecycle if anyone has any woodgrain color 19" TVs.  You will probably get a couple of them that aren't the right size or pin # - it happens.  But those old tubes have a ton of life in them.

[JeepMonkey]

20th cab?  Where do you put them all?  You may need to join a support group.

Congrats.  I have never played MAPPY, but I hear many people like it.

[TheShanMan]

Here's the back door. If you want a better pic and/or a pic of the other side, I'll pull it off and do so.

[Spyridon]

Here's the back door. If you want a better pic and/or a pic of the other side, I'll pull it off and do so.

Thanks, that works for what I need right now.

[Spyridon]

20th cab?  Where do you put them all?  You may need to join a support group.

That's what large basements are for




(time to update the pictures with all the games)

[IG-88]

(time to update the pictures with all the games)

Can you do a vid of your basement? That looks pretty cool.

[Spyridon]

Can you do a vid of your basement? That looks pretty cool.

I was planning on doing one but now it has to wait.  I've got Mappy in the center of the room and 3 other games with the control panels off and stripped down.

[Spyridon]

Started working on the control panel


The rusted joystick shaft should clean up nicely, but what can I do about the cigarette burns on the ball top?


The new overlay is well done and of  high quality.  Here you can see the difference in the text color

Also, Mappy's ear is not colored on my version but on the repro it is pink (as it should be)


And if anyone is wondering if the repro was done wrong, I did find a picture of someone that had both control panels


To remove the old overlay, I used a heat gun and a scraper

It comes off really easy with the heat gun


One design flaw on these Bally control panels is the way the handled the joystick connection.  The posts were put in from the top instead of welding the posts to the bottom.  To compensate for this, Bally used a thick black adhesive under the CPO to cover the indentations.  Over time, the control panel would show the indention's and start to crack (mine did).  


I covered this adhesive with some Citristrip and letting it sit for 48 hours

and then it scrapes right off with no effort



Next up is to remove any rust that may be on the panel and coat with a white primer.

[IG-88]

Can you grind those posts off andbraze/weld them from underneath?

Also, how deep are those burns? Can you just polish them out?

[HaRuMaN]

Who lays a cigarette on a balltop?   

My MK has some cigarette burns, but where you would expect them.

[Spyridon]

Can you grind those posts off andbraze/weld them from underneath?

Probably, but I'm just going to bondo the top to fill in the gap.

[Spyridon]

Who lays a cigarette on a balltop?   

My MK has some cigarette burns, but where you would expect them.

I'm assuming it's cigarette burns as it looks like it is melted.

[TheShanMan]

I can also confirm on the 2 versions of the CPO. My original has yellow letters and pink ear.

Did you steal my heat gun?

[Spyridon]

Did you steal my heat gun?

No, I was wondering who took mine?  I couldn't find it so I had to go to Harbor Freight and pick up a new one.  Good thing they are cheap.

[orion]

I've been wanting to see a mappy restore, but I figured I wouldn't ever see some one take on a full resto based on the lack of repo art work. Leave it to you to tackle such a task!

[Level42]

I want to become the importer of Citristrip for Europe. I am BEWILDERED why an environmental friendly product like that is not available here.

[Spyridon]

I've been wanting to see a mappy restore, but I figured I wouldn't ever see some one take on a full resto based on the lack of repo art work. Leave it to you to tackle such a task!

Everything but the side art is available and there is a good chance that TOG will have this soon (because I will keep bugging him  )

Edit: still no good options for the t-molding

[Spyridon]

I want to become the importer of Citristrip for Europe. I am BEWILDERED why an environmental friendly product like that is not available here.

It's great stuff and it smells good.  No problems with using it inside.  I'll ship you 10 cases, you mark it up 10x and we'll split the profits 

Of course we'll need a preorder first 

[slasherman]

I'm seeing things...

[Spyridon]

Good news.  Rich at ThisOldGame has confirmed that he will be running the side art.  It will probably be available next month.  Now if I can only dig out of the 2 ft of snow we got here today and have the weather warm up a bit so I can paint!

[Spyridon]

Now that the weather is getting better it's time to get back to work. Pulled out the Mappy to work on it.  I removed the old legs and added in new nylon legs to make the cab easy to move around.  While I was doing that, I got a good look at the bottom of the cab.  It's in very bad shape.  I think I will need to replace the whole bottom.  Not sure how I'm going to do that.  Sides also are not in good shape.  I just found a wood shop near me that has high end cnc machines and a lazer system that can automatically size and render an object.  I'm going to talk to them about what it would cost to cut a new cab for me.  Not sure if it's feasable, but worth looking into.

I've always been told that Mappy used 1/2" orange t-molding and that is hasn't been reproduced by anyone.  I decided to measure and my cab is exactly 3/4".  I pulled some left over orange t-molding from my pac-man restore and tried it out.  Perfect fit.

[Spyridon]

Okay, been a while since an update.  I used Naptha to clean off the remaining adhesive on the panel.  First time I've used that stuff and it worked great.  Definitely keeping that one in my arsenal.

Once the panel was cleaned up, I applies some bondo to the recessed areas on the top of the panel.  This is where most of the original overlays tend to tear over time.




Control panel was then painted with a white primer.  I used white because a black paint would darken the lighter overlay too much.


It's now ready for the new overlay to be applied.

[opt2not]

I like that you paint your CPs before you apply the overlay. Good for longevity!