A Gallag to Galaga cabinet resto-mod. (new title)

[HHaase]

Well, luck has dropped my first arcade cabinet on me for the princely sum of $40.  Turns out that what I thought was a Galaga with a bad color scheme is actually a genuine Gallag board and a bootleg cabinet as well.  That makes it time to sign up for a new forum, and all that good stuff.

It was 90% functional right from the start.  The 2 player button is dead, as were all the lights.  A couple bulbs, a new starter and ballast for the marquee, and all the lighting is up and running again already.  The screen needed a good cleaning, looks like it had a thick layer of dark black dust on it, possibly some overspray?  

The Board already had the color corrections and logo corrections done on it, to display a Midway Galaga logo and copyright.  The work on the board looks like good quality, but the wiring work inside the cab makes me want to cry.

Anyway, on to the photos and info,  just follow the link.

www.siegecraft.us/galaga.htm

[Spyridon]

We're lazy here and don't like to click on external links.  Post your pictures in this thread.

[HHaase]

And here's what I'm dealing with.  It sure does look like a Galaga cabinet at first glance, but in reality it isn't.  No wheels, no metal kickpanel was ever on there, the whole thing is laminated this orange color.  I have no idea who made this coin door,  which needs a bucket.  I can't see any evidence that it was ever any other color,  which makes sense as I can't contemplate who would WANT to make it this shade of Brady Bunch decorating.  I'm half tempted to make it look like a factory Bosconian converted cab, with the white sides.  I also really like the white-front / black side version you see on the old sales flyers, with the Galaxian styled marquee.  If I go that direction, of course i'll need to replace the whole front panel and coin door with a proper style. 

This guy has some photos of a very similar bootleg ms. pacman cabinet.  Mine's got some slight differences from this one, such as the coin door, but it's very very close otherwise.
http://www.mylstar.com/mspacuprights.html

The overlay is only half-there, with a silly green patterned piece for the bottom half, and an acrylic cover to the top half.  The control panel looks to have been hacked up a decent number of times, judging by the extra holes and un-used wiring, plus the a wico 4-way stick set up as a 2-way.  This is going to get replaced with a proper 2-way stick and galaga/galaxian panel when I can find one cheap enough to restore.  No rush though, as I want to take care of the wiring problems first.  I'm pretty short of free-time lately with a 1 year old daughters, so I don't expect this to be a quick job.

The guy I bought if from said he has "somebody" who used to do the repair work for him at $75 a visit.  Looking at the quality of the wiring modifications, it's almost criminal to have charged real money for this work. Some connections have these telephone crimps on them, some are just twist and tape jobs, a few are soldered but left exposed.  For some reason there's a lot of 3" or so pigtails added in for no visibile reason.  Solder quality on the switches is poor.  I'm guessing though that the board was sent out for repair, as the work on it is much better from what I can see.  It's already been modified for the color and logo corrections, which is why I didn't spot the Gallag board right away when play testing.

[WunderCade]

So was that a former Pacman or Galaxian cab?

[HHaase]

So was that a former Pacman or Galaxian cab?

None of the above.  The cab is a bootleg too as far as I can tell.  I'm going to try and snap some photos of the backside tomorrow to show what I mean.  I'm still keeping a close eye though to see if I'm wrong,  that will make a difference in what direction I take with it.

[Spyridon]

Definitely shaped like a Pac-man or Galaxian.  Clearly not a Galaga or Ms. Pac.  (Pac cabs by the way did not have wheels)

[HHaase]

Well, now that my week of midnight shifts is over, I finally got a chance to pull the back cover off and really start digging around inside.  I found 2 nerf darts, 3 quarters, and a blue plastic Easter egg inside.  As well as some more atrocious wiring work.  I'm also downgrading my opinion of the quality of work done on the board.  I can see one chip that was soldered in with half the legs almost sitting on top of the board instead of in their holes. Eventually I'll want to repair that, but I'm nervous that I'll just cause more problems.  Oddly enough, I don't see any dip switches like other Gallag boards have on them.  Perhaps it's some other bootleg type?    It's also been upgraded to a modern switching power supply, with a 2007 date stamp on it.  I'm building up a parts list for cleaning this up.  The 4 foot power cord, with 3 tape repairs, has also got to go.

One of the things that make me think this isn't a genuine cab are the rear handles handles.  Instead of the nice Midway molded types, this one just has some mesh screen and another small chop of wood as an inner backing.  The pictures don't do justice to how cheap they are.  There's also a second set of "handles" on the top, one of which has the power switch mounted inside.  The orange laminate is flaking off pretty badly (Thankfully?),  and there was never any other paint color or laminate that I can see.  Where it's lifting off, I can even see some of the original pencil lines on the wood from when it was assembled, so it's never been sanded down either.  No evidence of any previous artwork on any of the cab, nor a serial number.  The only markings I've found were some measurements on the inside of the top panel, and a few pencil lines for assembly layout.

Of course, I forgot to take a shot of the overall cab with the back panel off..... next time.





This is my favorite example of the wiring mess.  This is the connection between the video board and the monitor.  All twist/solder/tape connections, except for the two nearly identically colored power connections that have pins soldered on and are just jammed into the monitor connector (Sure, these can't easily get mixed up. Sigh).   All of this is also hanging unsupported.  I can only imagine what kind of trouble I would have gotten into back in my Army days if I had ever done workmanship this badly. It's a real shame too, as the original wiring harness looks fairly well done but hacked to pieces over the years.
 

[SirPeale]

One of the things that make me think this isn't a genuine cab are the rear handles handles.  Instead of the nice Midway molded types, this one just has some mesh screen and another small chop of wood as an inner backing. 

Pac-Man and Galaxian cabs have this.

[HHaase]

One of the things that make me think this isn't a genuine cab are the rear handles handles.  Instead of the nice Midway molded types, this one just has some mesh screen and another small chop of wood as an inner backing.  

Pac-Man and Galaxian cabs have this.

Wasn't it pairs on the back panel though, instead of singles?

It's definitely confusing me, since all the stuff you guys are pointing out makes sense for a Pac or Galaxian cabinet, but I can't find any evidence yet that there was ever any artwork on it.  When I pull all the laminate off in the spring (too cold right now),  I might find some additional writing on it.  Have you ever seen anything with the handles cut into the top panel like that?  

Edit:  Well, there is some additional pac-man type evidence to it.  The screen has some serious Pac-Man burn in to it.  Never looked to close at it before today, since it's working properly.  Hmmm.

I'm also getting seriously annoyed that all the electronics shops around here are gone.  I can't go anywhere to buy .093 molex pins anymore without having to order them.  Blah.

[SirPeale]

Have you ever seen anything with the handles cut into the top panel like that?  

Both Pac-Man and Galaxian have them.  This cabinet looks just like one, with the exception of the coin door.

[HHaase]

Have you ever seen anything with the handles cut into the top panel like that?  

Both Pac-Man and Galaxian have them.  This cabinet looks just like one, with the exception of the coin door.

Hmmm,  that is pretty interesting to hear actually.  It's very hard to find photos of the back and top of the cabinets online, and I hadn't seen any with the same style.

Still makes me curious though why the plain orange laminate on the sides, which appears to be original. Either that or somebody did a lot of work to put on a very hideous color.  The back and inside are painted black, but not a drop of any other color anywhere that I can see.  Nor any obvious areas where a sticker or other type of artwork had been removed.   Just plain orange. 

I've got a feeling that figuring out the coin door will answer all.  Then again, I get false hopes pretty often.

[Spyridon]

Here is the top / back area of my pac-man for comparison

[SirPeale]

Why the orange laminate?  Ops will routinely go the "cheap" route of converting cabinets.  The guy that owned "Sazma Music" (which was sold to the guy I used to work for) would go to the hardware store and buy all their "seconds" paint - colors that didn't turn out right.  At one point I was told that he got a five gallon bucket of this blue-ish paint because there were like a brazillion cabs in that color.

My guess?  The laminate was either cheaper than painting, or the time/energy/effort ratio leaned toward laminating it since it's pretty much a "do it and get it back on route" kind of deal.

As for the coin door, the old one may have been damaged somehow and this was lying around, and the cab modified to accommodate it.  The coin door on my Q-Bert bootleg definitely does not belong on it.

Let's see more photos of the interior, particularly the monitor mounting area, and perhaps underneath the bezel.

[HHaase]

I'll try to snap some photos for you tonight of those spots for you.  I also decided that the orange was just too hideous, so I grabbed hold of a loose edge and pulled.  The entire side came off in one piece,  the other side put up only a slightly tougher fight.     Under the orange is just bare wood, with some layout pencil marks from during assembly. Top and front I haven't gotten around to yet. Still no sign of identifying marks anywhere, and I'm running out of places to look. So either the orange laminate was original, or it had laminate on it previously, which was stripped off and replaced.  Were Pac's and Galaxians originally painted, or laminated? 

I'm going over the pinout for the 44pin board connector, to get the 2p button working (never even connected), that looks simple enough but I would prefer a proper circuit diagram for the harness.   I also want to connect the test circuit, but I can't tell yet how to connect that one up.  Do I need to ground that connection, or supply power to it?  If choice #2, does it need +5v or +12v.   Gut instinct is telling me to just ground it out to test it.    There's another connection on the pinout that I'm looking at called "table",  what does that one mean?  Is it for a tilt sensor? Or a safety interlock for the door on a cocktail table?  Then I'm going to want to add the dip switches to the board, this one just has a couple jumper wires over the empty holes in the board.

[SirPeale]

Pac-Man was painted (stencils) and Galaxian had silkscreened vinyl.

[HHaase]

Actually, I was more curious about the base colors put onto the bare wood, not the graphics.  I.E. the yellow for Pac and the white for Galaxian.

[WunderCade]

What does the coin box area look like. There is a wooden box on Pac-man to hold the coin trough, and usually you'll find yellow overspray in that area and under the control panel area.

I'd assume that given the space for the unusually large coin door, there is no wood coin box mounted in the cab?

[RayB]

Why's it so hard to believe that people made knock off cabinets? ;-)

PS: Disneyland used to put colored laminate on a lot of their machines.

[Level42]

yup, this is neither an original Pac, Galaga, Ms.Pac or Galaxian.

Although it looks _more_ like Pac/Galaxian, the top is just not right.

Looks bootleg to me.

[SirPeale]

Although it looks _more_ like Pac/Galaxian, the top is just not right.

Looks bootleg to me.

Agreed, now that I take another look at it.  It's too square.

[HHaase]

Kinda refreshing that it's not a genuine cabinet.  It gives me a bit more wiggle room, and less need to be original with everything. 

But I really need to get the wiring situation sorted out first.  Anybody have an idea what the "table" pin on the PCB connector is supposed to do?  Is this something that I might want to connect at all, or just another feature that's less important at home than it would be in an arcade.

[HHaase]

Ugh, the closer I look, the more the wiring needs work.  Just ordered all new connectors for the PCB and monitor harnesses,  a big pile of .093 pins and a few other goodies.  The board connectors are particularly bad.

Unfortunately, when I was checking what the connectors were in order to get my order list together,  I also screwed something up.  Now I get is an all-white screen when I power it up.  Sounds, buttons and everything else works fine.  It almost looks like there's something going on, but the white is overpowering it.   I'm assuming I probably mis-seated a connector somewhere, so I'm not too worried yet.  But I wanted to take a photo of a small graphical glitch that's been bothering me where it shows what level you're on,  which I can't do until I get the screen working again.

-Hans

[HHaase]

Ok, all better now.

 I got my box-o-connectors from Bob Roberts yesterday, and rebuilt the monitor to video board harness this morning.  I'm glad to have that spaghetti monster out of my cabinet, that's for sure, looks so much nicer on the inside.  The monitor fires up just fine again,  I either had something seated wrong or the header on the video board is getting wonky on me.  In fact, the picture looks fantastic now, other than that little glitch that I'll upload some photos of tonight.  The quick description is that there's red lines extending out of the bottom of the level counter chevrons. 

Eventually I'll want to do a tube swap, but that's definitely going to be breaking new ground for me.  The current monitor is a Wells Gardner 19K4606, with some serious Pac and Galaga burn in's on it.  I have a line on a few fairly recent 19" TV's with good picture quality.  What do I need to look for to make sure it's compatible? My google-fu is failing me on this topic.

-Hans

[SirPeale]

As long as the tubes are compatible with a B&K adapter #23, you should be good to go.  That's for the tube.

Sometimes you can get away with using the yoke that's already on the tube, sometimes you have to use the yoke from the original tube.  You have to meter the yoke to see if they're close. 

There are many docs on this on the 'net, Google it to find out more.

As for having a brighter picture and whatnot after fixing the connector, that makes perfect sense!  It's hard to have a good picture with bad signal.

Read this regarding my experiences with poor connection: http://www.pealefamily.net/tech/arcade/?p=378

[ckong]

nice project, but drop the watermarks on your pics. They look silly and they distract 

[HHaase]

Watermarks have got to stay because of issues IP theft that I've had in the past, particularly with my scale model stuff.  Since I do work on commission, I've got to be a bit protective. 

[HHaase]

Another oddball question.... what's the width of an original Galaga control panel?  Mine is 22.5" and I see that most Marquee repro's are advertised at 23".

Won't be too fun to plug all the holes in this one, nor to trim down a new CPO.

-Hans


Edit:  Well, this is going to be a really annoying problem to deal with.  It looks like the thing was built 1/2" too narrow.    Bezel and marquee won't be too much of a problem I don't think,  but the control panel will be.  This one doesn't have enough meat on it for a proper refinishing, so I'm either going to have to chop 1/4" off both sides of an original panel or have a custom one made up.  Fun Fun Fun.

[HHaase]

Great.  Now it's freezing occasionally during play.  Everything just stops moving, except the starfield.   Time to get around to wiring up a new 44pin and get the test lead connected.

-Hans

[HHaase]

Well, I got that new 44-pin onto the wiring harness today, and pulled out another 3 or 4 feet of unconnected or way too long wiring. The  2p button is now hooked up and working,  but silly me I forgot to verify that the self-test switch was wired up correctly before sliding the cab back into its hole..... and of course the switch it does nothing.   Looks like the pinout at Mikes Arcade is incorrect for my board in a few areas.  I just don't have time to pull it out again right now to deal with it.   I'll take care of that when I get the new dip-switch banks to install on the board.  


-Hans

Edit:  Found out that I had the test switch connected right, but when I pulled the board out I found one of the traces to be burnt out pretty badly.  Thankfully only 3 of the 8 are actually used.  Moving the ground for the switch to a good trace and it now works.

Still getting the occasional freeze during play, and the bottom row of graphics on the display is still all wonky, but at least it's 100% functional now.

[HHaase]

OK.... Time to get serious, as the parts have started arriving.   Original coin door and control panel have arrived, as did the first of a new design I talked Emdkay into making.  So, the cat's out of the bag about the surprise I had for you guys.  I just loved the look of the the Galaga machine in the old sales flyer with the white front and this style marquee. 

Here's what it all looks like after a sheet of nice 3/4" plywood also met the table saw. The wife's job has a pretty good metal shop, they trimmed the control panel to fit the odd dimensions of the bootleg cabinet.  The new (to me) joystick took a trip in the beadblaster, and I'm just waiting for a couple new sheets of tempered glass to come back from the shop for the marquee and main glass. I haven't done anything yet with the coin door, not that it needs much.  I went with the older gold emblem, as I feel it would be more appropriate with this marquee.

[HHaase]

And, after a nice long cure time, the joystick is back together.

I've also got the control panel stripped and painted.  Silly me, I DIDN'T wait for it to cure before assembling it, so it had to come apart again and get a fresh coat. 
More updates on that when it's closer to done.

I've also got some fresh media on the way for my brass tumbler, I didn't want to use the same stuff I've been using to polish my .30-'06 brass for the arcade/pinball stuff. 
I'll be throwing the hardware in there from now on before assembling, hand polishing with a scotch-brite works but is rough on my hands.

[HHaase]

Stripped down the coin door today, and have all the little bits and pieces waiting for a trip in the polisher..... once my polish media arrives.  ARGH, I hate waiting.  I lucked out on this coin door, the slots themselves were held on with 6-32 carriage bolts and not the usual rivets.  This will make life much easier when re-assembling later on.

[SirPeale]

The slots are usually held on with bolts.

[HHaase]

The slots are usually held on with bolts.

From some of the other threads, I was thinking they were held on with the same snap/rivet things that you were searching high and low to find.  Unless that only applies to the logo plate? 

[ArcadeClassix]

Yeah, the rivets are just on the name/logo plate. I have 6 Midway coin doors and all of the coin slots are secured with carriage bolts. Drill the rivets on the logo plate off from the back making sure not to drill all the way through them, save them, and reuse them if you are as anal about accuracy as I am lol. That is if you are replacing the logo plate.

[HHaase]

Was there ever a resolution to the rivets for the name plate?  Marco Specialties looks like they have what MIGHT be the right part.  They list a 3/32x7/64 rivet, which according to the old KLOV thread, should be the correct size.  Anybody tried these yet?  It's only $0.25 each, so I'll just tack them onto my next order with them when I need some parts for my Black Knight.

I should have some photos ready in the next couple of days.  The bead blasting of the coin door went fantastic.  Whatever they used for the texturing, the beadblaster didn't phase it in the least.... but blasting it ripped right through the top color coat.  No need to worry about matching the texture at all, since it all got retained even after painting. 

Polishing of all the other little parts went well too, everything cleaned up great, though not as shiny shiny as I would have liked.  If I were to do it again, I'd spring for some other polishing media instead of just walnut shells for the really rough stuff.

[SirPeale]

I never followed up with getting more samples.  After the fiasco of asking them for samples multiple times, getting wrong data and having wrong samples shipped to me because of this, I never called back.

Its been months now; I should.  And I will.  One of these days.

[csa3d]

I never followed up with getting more samples.  After the fiasco of asking them for samples multiple times, getting wrong data and having wrong samples shipped to me because of this, I never called back.

Its been months now; I should.  And I will.  One of these days.

I am now on like three rivet mailing lists which I can't get off of when I was emailing different places to resolve this issue as well.  I ended up just gluing mine on and saying to heck with it.

-csa

[HHaase]

Well, it's back together and playing again.  Holy crap was the game room full of people during the BBQ on Monday.   I had a 4 player game running on Black Knight and 2 player on Galaga at the same time.  People just go crazy for these things!

And I did promise some photos, didn't I?  I haven't finished up the wiring work on the coin door yet, but I was in a rush to get it re-assembled in time for the BBQ.  I still have to wire up the slam switch and add in a service switch.  Lights need some kind of brackets to attach them too, I have a burned out bulb and a missing coin mech  (parts for that are still in the tumbler, and need some bead blasting).  I'm also REALLY happy with how well the Emdkay marquee looks when lit up.  Not much I can do about the wood structure behind it giving the shadow, but man is it lit up smooth and evenly.

Oh, and yeah, the screen looks naked without a bezel around it.  This is with the new smoked tempered glass in place.   I love the clarity, but it really needs the bezel added in.

[HHaase]

I tried those rivets from Marco Specialties, and believe it or not they are a perfect fit, with no alterations needed.

Part number 07-6688-2 which is a 3/32"x7/64" semi-tubular brass rivet.  25 cents each.   Just get a few extras, as if the end of them gets dinged up even a little bit you might not be able to fit them in the hole, they are a snug fit as far as hole size is. Depth is perfect. 

I'm still trying to find a cheap and easy way to actually install them, without having to buy a rivet press.  I think I've got it figured out, so once I'm sure I'll do a quick how-to as well.

-Hans