My home page on firefox is a search on Craigslist for "arcade," but I didn't have any room for a second cabinet so I rarely pay much attention to the cabinets for sale. On the other hand, when I happen to want to check something on the internet and find upon opening firefox that somebody has listed a FREE cabinet a mere 20 minutes earlier it's worth a closer look.
Fairly standard type of cabinet listing, "Free Mr. Do, had it too long, almost worked once, works even less now, don't have room or time, come and get it." While I have 1 generic dynamo cabinet I've always thought that something with some nice art would be cool to have too, so when I saw these pictures I had to email the poster. Clearly the "Mr. Do" in the description was refering to the board, the cabinet is covered with much cooler (at least in my opinion) "Magical Spot" artwork.
About an hour later I recieved a phone call from the poster (very nice guy, made it a point to contact the first response to the listing first.) I arranged to pick up the cabinet the next afternoon. I suppose I should arrange a vehicle for transport now, eh?
I get the story and the cab from the guy the next day. "Got it free about 10/15 years ago, it played blind, my son (must have been about 5 at the time, full-grown-cabinet-loading-helper now) played with the wires inside it making a "space ship" and it hasn't made any sounds or showed signs of life since."
Get it home and vacuum out the inside and give it a once over, in spite of being aged and the cabinet having a few dings it looks good, the monitor under the bezel hasn't been exposed to dust since the conversion bezel went in, but the boards inside are dusty and there's a few webs. I check all the connections, plug it in and then do what I think is the step the previous owner had been missing... pull out the kill switch on for the back panel. To my surprise, the monitor comes on with a bunch of lines running vertically but no picture or sounds. I turn up the volume, press a few buttons, and switches and hope for some sign of life from the board but get nothing. Oh well, I can trouble shoot it later, right. Finally I move the cabinet inside (well, finally may be an exaggeration, it was only listed on CL about 22 hours earlier and I already had it home, dusted, and preliminarily tested.
Today I come home from work with a borrowed multi-meter so I can check the PS and whatever else I decide to poke at, plug the cabinet in, flip the switch and hear a few beeps and a hum, my wife was sleeping in the next room so I quickly unplugged the speaker and gave a look at the monitor, "hey, is that the game hidden behind all those jumbled waves and lines?" Twist knob A, turn screw B, yada, yada, yada, working "Mr. Do" board in a cool looking cabinet with a working monitor... FREE.
Here's some more pictures:
This is the view with the back panels removed
Here's the underside of the CP, my first leaf switches and I think I like them.
The game board... is this "Universal" harness different from a Jamma, are there adapters if it is?
The monitor neck and board, anybody know where the Vertical Size adjustment is, I can only find "vert hold, horiz hold, bright, vert pos, horiz pos" my image is too tall and goes off of the screen on both the top and bottom.
And the artwork that made me want the cabinet in the first place... does it get much more retro than that? And it's got nearly naked ladies. That's just cool.
I am not sure what I am going to do with this cab. I am not too interested in a dedicated cab, and it's already a conversion so I am thinking of making it a "vertical classics" emulation cabinet. I'd keep the original sideart, maybe try to replace the marquees, but more likely try to design something complimentary, and do up a new bezel that goes better with the rest of the art. I think for controls I'd keep the leafswitch stuff but probably in a new CP, maybe with one more button and a TB, or spinner (I'd have to see if one was more appropriate for vertical games than the other). Then I'd set it up to run ArcadeOS or something else lightweight on my old Athlon 900 hooked to the original monitor, filter the game list and be good to go.
What's everybody think, good find, good luck, nice art, crap story telling, crap game, crap carpet, crap plans? Go ahead let it rip, I can probably take it.
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Topic: My Magical Spot/ Mr. Do Craigslist find... what to do? (Read 8471 times)
