Arcade Collecting > Restorations & repair
Robotron Cabaret
opt2not:
So after a long drive back from middle Washington, I finally got the cabinet home. :)
The seller seemed really sad to let this baby go, but said he was happy that it's going to a good home. Indeed it is!
The drive was long, and most of it was through a mountainous area.
Beatiful view, what an awesome drive there. But on the way back it rained really hard, and was pretty scary driving down.
The cabinet dimensions are about 5'3" tall, and 2'x2' wide/deep. When we picked it up, my wife couldn't refrain from saying "it's so cute!". :lol It packed up pretty snug in the SUV. Yay 60/40 split!
Here are couple shots of it in it's new home. I turned it on to see how it ran, with the lights on and off to see how clear and bright the monitor was. It's awesome! No burn in, and nice and sharp!
(Hard to tell, but on the right is a dreamcast sitting on top of a 1084s monitor, rotate on it's side for some Under Defeat monitor testing ;) )
The cabinet condition isn't terrible, though the sides are pretty roughed up, and foot base wood will need to be restored. My fear for the need of a repaint is true, so I'll have to see if I can get the paint matched, as well as copy the artwork and stencil it out. :(
A close-up shot of the top corner:
The CP has a nasty cigarette burn on the right, and will probably have to be replaced. The bezel, and marquee are in pretty good shape, could use a cleaning is all. The t-molding will have to go. The buttons are dirty but have no damage.
From my earlier assumptions, the coin doors are in awesome condition, they're just dirty, and are missing the proper cam-locks. The backdoor is missing a lock as well.
I'll take more pictures tomorrow, my camera battery died after taking a few shots so I need to let it charge.
Played it a little bit after getting it home. The joysticks are a bit loose for my liking, especially the shooting side, but I'm assuming the grommets are just a bit worn down. I was able to strike a deal with a fellow BYOAC'r for some replacement wico assemblies, I'm going to see what i can use to get the feeling a bit more tight in these. They should be arriving soon.
As for the game, after roughly 5 mins of playing the game crashes and resets. I did the initial rom checks, and diagnostics and it all turned out fine. No errors, except for an error 31 - CMOS write error. This makes sense because I didn't have any AA alkaline batteries to put in for the high-score saves. But this shouldn't be making the game crash...
I've read somewhere that it could perhaps be the power supply failing? Does anyone have any experience with their Williams games randomly crashing and resetting to a diagnostic test?
*Edit*: Looks like I can reproduce the crash 100% when it goes to the brain levels, aka Wave 5's. eeek! :(
Epyx:
Grats Opt2not!
One of my favourite cabs/games of all time. Should be a beauty of a project!
I love the shots below of your drive and know them well...just before hitting Bellingham with a lake on your left if my memory is correct! ;)
To get your wife to say "it's so cute" is pure win as well! :cheers:
Spyridon:
--- Quote from: opt2not on April 06, 2010, 03:12:00 am ---
My fear for the need of a repaint is true, so I'll have to see if I can get the paint matched, as well as copy the artwork and stencil it out. :(
A close-up shot of the top corner:
--- End quote ---
If you want to save yourself some hassle, the stencils are avaialble from gamestencils.com. And $65 is a good price.
opt2not:
--- Quote from: Epyx on April 06, 2010, 12:41:49 pm ---Grats Opt2not!
One of my favourite cabs/games of all time. Should be a beauty of a project!
I love the shots below of your drive and know them well...just before hitting Bellingham with a lake on your left if my memory is correct! ;)
--- End quote ---
Thanks Epyx, I'm definitely going to take the time and effort into putting the love into this cabinet. The road pictures are actually on the southern side of Baker, traveling east from Seattle. Close guess! There's only two freeways going out in that direction, through the park reserve, and this one was a curvy one. Kind of reminded me of the Sea-to-Sky highway, but worst because of the speed! Americans do drive fast, which I like because it gave me an excuse to do so too! :)
--- Quote from: Spyridon on April 06, 2010, 03:30:39 pm ---If you want to save yourself some hassle, the stencils are avaialble from gamestencils.com. And $65 is a good price.
--- End quote ---
Nice, that is a value price! It's also cool they have the paint code on there, including the metallic top-coat silver. Thanks!
Ok, onto the slew of pictures as promised.
First, the cabinet damage
The right side seemed a bit more beat-up than the left, but they both have their problems:
There's a lot of small chipping around the edges.
The side art paint has a long big scratch down the side! AND a gouge right down to the wood! Yikes! :( In addition, you can see the paint is cracking from age...so, a re-paint is definitely eminent.
There's a bunch of shoddy re-paint patchwork that was put onto this thing, as well, someone decided to hammer nails into the side to secure the monitor mount a bit more. I'm not entirely sure what I should do with these nails...
The front panel has a bunch of paint separation, and base is chipped, but not too badly. Easy fix.
The back of the cabinet needs a good sanding and re-paint. All the stickers were torn off and removed. Oh well, I'm not too concerned with that.
opt2not:
Control Panel, etc.
Like I said earlier, the control panel has a nasty burnt spot, as well as some growing mold happening underneath! The Joysticks are just a bit dirty, and the shafts could use some rust removal and a buffing.
The buttons are just dirty.
Thankfully, the bezel is good condition. There are only a few small scratches on it, but it's not really noticeable. Also, you can see that there is next to no burn-in on the monitor. :applaud:
The only thing wrong with the Marquee is that it has a crack down the right side. I'm not sure if it merits an entire marquee swap, we'll see when it's lit up whether it's annoying or not.
It's nice that there's a latch that allows the CP to swing out to be worked on. It's pretty clean underneath, just a bit of dust and rust here and there.
Original Wico's lookin' good.
Here are the lamps that are supposed to light up the player buttons. It's no wonder they were always "dimly lit".
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