Yet Another Street Fighter II restoration

[ControlledBurn]

Picked up this cabinet last weekend for $50. It appears to have started it's life as a Robocop cabinet, though I only intend to restore it as the SFII cab it became.

The cabinet had been owned for the last 12 or so years by one person who took pretty good care of it. No water damage, minimal scratches probably from moving and life in an arcade somewhere before he acquired it. The game played just fine but some of the controls weren't working he said. The controls issue turned out to be one broken joystick washer, and the kick harness being plugged into the board wrong which resulted in no ground for the P2 kick buttons. After adjusting harness connections properly and some clever use of RJ45 boots we had a fully working cabinet.

When I opened the cab up after getting it into my basement I was surprised to find not only the manuals for the board and the coin mech, but another board floating around in there. Despite all the tilting and bumps to get it out of the former owner's condo, into a truck, and then into my basement workshop it appeared to have survived. I plugged it in and it's a working version of SFII' Hyper Fighting

New Sanwa sticks and push buttons arrived this morning, so this weekend I'll be sanding/painting exposed metal portion of the control panel and enlarging the holes to fit the 30mm buttons.

The monitor, a WG 19K7602, looks pretty good. No burn in as far as I can see, and only a slight red bias which I hope will be fixed with just a cap kit.


http://controlledburn.imgur.com/sfii_restoration#CU9FU

[amendonz]

wow good score, the 2nd pcb is worth more than what you paid alone, looks like its in good nick too, jamma connector looks bairly used!

also whats up with P1 buttons lol, interesting layout, will you be correcting that or making do? cool either way, just looks funky to play on

 

[ControlledBurn]

wow good score, the 2nd pcb is worth more than what you paid alone, looks like its in good nick too, jamma connector looks bairly used!

also whats up with P1 buttons lol, interesting layout, will you be correcting that or making do? cool either way, just looks funky to play on

 

The only thing I can figure is whoever converted the cab from Robocop to SFII tried to make use of the original button holes and then screwed the pooch lining up the new buttons. Going to try and correct what I can, but not sure how far bondo will go for filling the holes since the metal panel isn't terribly thick.

[ControlledBurn]

Took the control panel off the cabinet this weekend and sanded it down to bare metal and then JB Welded some electrical plates on the back side of the panel to cover the holes. Hoping I have time to mix up some Bondo tonight and fill everything in.

[ControlledBurn]

Made some good progress this weekend.

Filled the holes with Bondo and sanded them flush:


Last coat of paint applied and drying:


Also got my Visio diagram for the control panel layout done so I can cut some holes Tuesday night (Waiting 48 hours for the paint to fully dry)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23939344/SFII%20CP.vsd

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23939344/SFII%20CP%20mk2.vsd

[Spyridon]

What are you going to use to cut the holes out?  Looks like it will be tricky to do with all that bondo.  Should you have waited to paint it until after the holes were cut?

[ControlledBurn]

What are you going to use to cut the holes out?  Looks like it will be tricky to do with all that bondo.  Should you have waited to paint it until after the holes were cut?

Using a 1-3/16"hole saw, the Bondo shouldn't be an issue as there's metal plates I welded behind the panel to reinforce the panel. Cutting it post-paint shouldn't be an issue either as the paint has had plenty of time to cure