X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion

[opt2not]

Restoration complete! How it looks now:











=============================

Won this in an auction for cheap recently, and I'm planning on restoring, it but I'm not really sure what I want to do with it yet and converting this to an X-men.



One of the ideas is to follow Mike A's lead and make it a multi-PCB cabinet for 4-player games. I already have a Simpsons, X-men, and Bucky O' Hare...and one of these days I'll pick up a TMNT. 
Another idea is just to restore it, but the caveat is that this wasn't originally a Simpsons. Malenko has pointed out to me that this was originally a TMNT machine defined by the single speaker grill.

The first order of business is (after picking it up from the auction house) to get this cleaned-up, missing pieces sourced, monitor tuned etc.
After the heavy workload is done, I'll decide what to do with it.  The plan is to get this fixed up and working before my birthday, mid-December so I can have it ready for a party we're throwing.  It'll be aggressive but I'm sure I can get it at least playable, if not fully arted up.

Details and images to follow... stay tuned.

[opt2not]

During my lunch break I went over to the Auction house to pick up the cabinet.

3 warehouses filled with stock of classic 80's and 90's cabinets. Newer LCD-based games, Redemption machines, pinball, jukes...kiddy rides... it's just packed!









These will all clear out of here in the next week or so, and I'm told they have some sort of deal with Namco that ends up dumping off a lot of cabinets on their doorstep.  Just this last auction they sold 19 Time Crisis 3 cabinets, going for around $300 each. One bidder ended up buying 16 of those 19!!  I don't know what you'd do with that many Time Crisis 3's.



Anyway, the cabinet is in definite need of repair, but it's not too bad. The one corner on the bottom right side is completely broken off, and the entire base is a bit chipped up all around the bottom. But these issues are easily repaired.

The current side art is so ghetto. It's decals of Simpsons art, taped with packing tape to the badly painted sides. I'll be stripping this cabinet down to the wood and fill and repainting for sure.



I thought the cabinet didn't have the glass, but I was wrong, it was sitting inside at the bottom. I'll show that later since it's got a lot of gunk on it.
But also, sitting at the bottom were 2x Simpsons PCB's!!



I don't know if they work yet, I'll test them tonight, but still this is a great score!

There is also a bunch of other parts just sitting in the cabinet, including some coin reject buttons.  I'll sort through it all and post my finds. I didn't have a lot of time during lunch to really take a deep dive into it.

More to come...

[opt2not]

Tested the PCB's, and I'm happy to report one of them is working, while the other has major display issues.

Board 1

RAM/ROM test checks out fine.


Good video.
Good audio.

This board is 100%!




Board 2
RAM/ROM test checks out fine. But with lines being drawn onscreen.


Sprite drawing issues across the board.




Audio is good.

So having 1 working board from this cabinet is still a really good scoop.  I can put the faulty board on the workbench and see about it later on, but for now I got a cabinet to work on.

[opt2not]

Did some cabinet investigations and a bit of clean-up.

The base of the cabinet was pretty filthy, but I cleaned and vacuumed up all the debris and trash that was left at the bottom. Aside from the 2 boards and the monitor glass, this is what was sitting at the bottom of the cabinet:


Bunch of random cabinet bits and tokens!

Still a little grimey, looks like someone spilled soda in this cabinet at some point, but it's a lot more manageable than before. I'm going to put a respirator on and give the base a run with my mouse sander:


The power supply block will probably need to be rebuilt. The fuse holders are damaged and breaking off, the switching power supply looks to have been pried open at the corner -- i don't trust it -- but the transformer and perhaps the EMI filter is salvageable. Those things rarely go bad:


I've built these things before, they're not difficult at all:


Someone did a shoddy job at splicing the power cord to make it extend longer, this one's an easy fix:


Here's an example of how the side art was applied:


Literally just print-outs held on by packing tape! I'm going to strip the sides down to the bare wood with citristrip, fill any blemishes and sand and paint.

The control panel. 2 weird pieces of plexi, shoddily screwed onto the CP top (also in the pic is the yellowed Simpsons marquee):


I can't stand plexi on CP's, for prolonged play your hands get sweaty and stick to the plexi. I rather put that tough textured polylaminate CP material on it than have plexi installed.

Yup, soda or death was spilled onto this thing:


So the CP top is really rough. There's a crack down the middle, held together by that horizontal piece of wood. A few random holes for no good reason, and the back edge doesn't have a clean angle like it should. Also one of the corners is falling apart!


The box it's on is still good. No damage from what I can tell, but I'm going to have to re-cut a new CP top.
I've got some experience working reproducing this CP, from working on El Diablo Mechanico, so it should be a trivial task (I re-cut and wired this panel in a weekend):


The coin doors were vultured pretty badly. I'll show that in my next post, along with the beginnings of stripping this bad boy down.
I've got just under a month to get this cleaned up and playable, it's going to be an aggressive schedule...

[Arroyo]

Jesus man, you've been on a tear in the last 24 hours, and is that last post from 2:30am I see?

Did someone just buy a house and finally have the space to unleash years worth of pent up Arcade itches....hhmmmm?

[Mike A]

Don't shine a black light on any of his walls.

[opt2not]

Jesus man, you've been on a tear in the last 24 hours, and is that last post from 2:30am I see?

Did someone just buy a house and finally have the space to unleash years worth of pent up Arcade itches....hhmmmm?

Heh, 2:30am is usually the average time I sleep (up at 7am). I don’t sleep long hours unless I’ve been drinking. But you’re right though, someone let the tiger out of the cage!

[Arroyo]

Heh, 2:30am is usually the average time I sleep (up at 7am).

Holy ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---, I thought I didn't sleep much.  4.5hours?  Got me beat buddy, certainly means we get more done though eh?

Don't shine a black light on any of his walls.

[Mike A]

If you notice, I have every kind of light in my arcade room except a black light.

[arfink]

Where is this magical wonderland of cabs? I've also just got a house and am getting a little itchy...

[opt2not]

Did some shopping today:


Pretty happy I got a Trim Router w/ bit set, and a second-hand shop vac. Arroyo recommended another Trim Router that had a Tilt Base for angled routing, but I was able to find this Bosch router that also has a Tilt Base attachment that I'll order online for cheap.  I've always liked Bosch tools.

Started working on the cabinet stripping phase. Did I mention how happy I am now that I have a work space again? 

For posterity, this is what I'm starting with:


Removed everything except the monitor frame, because getting it out is a ---smurfette--- if you don't have a long shaft socket driver. It's easier to just unscrew the 4 accessible front bolts and remove the tube by itself.


Upon removing the coin doors, I found this fun surprise:


Yup, it's a crack! Full through. Someone must have tried to kick in this front panel, probably out of some failed attempt at theft. Maybe that's why it's called a Kick Panel...
Whoever worked on this cabinet ended up just bolting a support beam to the back and called it a day:


Putting pressure on it does reveal some bend to the broken area , as if it wouldn't take much to crack it through and take the support beam with it. 

Now i gotta decide if I want to pull this kick panel out, trace it out with my new Trim Router, and re-install it. That's a hefty task that I might take on after my party in a month, but for now I'm going to just fill it and paint over it like it's not there.

The bottom corners have damage:


This could be repairable with bondo alone, I'll try that first, but if that fails I bought the dowel rods and have some spare wood to attach a shaped piece as a transplant.

The other front corner isn't too bad for repair:


Standard frayed bottom edges you see on a lot of older cabinets that have been on-route, bondo will fix this right up:


Gonna order some new leg levelers too.


I started the citristrip process to get the paint and gunk off the sides:


I'm going for a 24 hours soak and have found covering the citristrip with plastic helps let it work more efficiently.


I'll let that marinate till tomorrow, then I'll remove it and the rest of the paint, see what I get underneath -- probably whatever vinyl side art was originally under there.  If there is vinyl I'll just take a heat gun to it and remove it down to the bare particle board.

Just for fun, here's another shot at this amazing side art installation:


It's such pain in the dick because the packing tape's adhesive has gotten really strong over the years, so ripping the tape off isn't so easy. I have to use Goo Gone to get it off, and that's a arduous effort that I wasn't really planning. Oh well, I'm still confident I can get this presentable and playable in < month.

[pbj]

Soak a rag in lighter fluid and lay it down on that packing tape.  It'll lift right off when you get back to it in a few hours.

[opt2not]

Good tip. Thanks man 

[opt2not]

Late night (early morning) update.  I mentioned earlier this is going to be an aggressive schedule.  It doesn't help that I don't have a lot of time during the week due to work and dad life -- this is why I'm a night owl, I get time to myself starting at 10:30pm till whenever I'm tired. Isolated me-time is vital to my mental health!

Tonight I only started me-time at 11pm because of some house chores I needed to handle first. But this train is moving, and it can't be stopped!

Having let the citristrip marinate for 24 hours, I proceeded to remove the plastic from the cabinet.

This is why I love the plastic cover wrap technique, a good bulk of the paint comes off with the plastic when you remove it, saving you a chunk of clean-up time:






This is just from pulling the plastic:


What's the deal with this cabinet??  It looks like it was an original Simpsons cab, despite what the homie Malenko said about single speaker grill cabinets being TMNT's. But what I can't wrap my head around is that the original side-art was painted over, then these shoddy decal cut-outs of Simpsons side art was package taped on top. What was the point of that? Strange...

Anyway, next I busted out my heat gun and started removing the beat-up original side-art:





For those who haven't gone through a restoration like this, the reason you have to remove the paint first, instead of just heat-gunning the side-art trying to peel off the paint and vinyl at the same time is because the heat gun will absolutely burn the paint a lot sooner than the vinyl. It also could be many layers of paint, rendering it difficult to remove the vinyl underneath.  So make sure you clear the paint before attempting to remove vinyl side-art!

After getting all the original side-art off, I attacked this side with my orbital sander and some 80 grit sandpaper to take off as much of the leftovers as possible:


Now it's a lot more clear of what I need to bondo/wood fill.

There's still some remaining paint near the monitor area, but I'll deal with that after I treat the other side.

Continuing on, the citri-wrap-marinade is in full effect:


I'll let this sit for another 24 hours, or close to, then do the same treatment as the first side.

I'm still trying to decide what to ultimately do to this cab. Do I restore it to a Simpsons? Do I convert it to another Konami 4-player game? Or make it a multi beat-em-up cabinet?

In my PCB collection I currently have 4-player versions of Simpsons, X-men, and Bucky O' Hare. Simpsons is a 2-button game, and is pretty popular. X-men and Bucky are 3-button games, and while X-men is definitely a popular game, Bucky is very rare and obscure. But it's a very cool and different game.


I do have to factor in off-loading value, as anyone who's been in this hobby for a long time, you have to think about trade value and what items can lead you to what other items. Not everything in this hobby will be with you forever, and it's good to plan ahead and be self-aware that at some point in the future you may have to offload your cabinets.

Since I have multiple PCB's of The Simpsons now, one potential possibility is to trade one for a TMNT or TMNT:TiT and make this cabinet a 4-pcb Konami Beat-em-up-apolooza. I'll mull it over.
More progress tomorrow. I wanna have both sides ready for Bondo/wood filler before the weekend so I can tackle that task during the day when I can properly run power tools and not piss off the neighbours.

Time to sleep. 

[pbj]

It was probably a Simpsons, converted to something else when the board went weird, and then converted back to Simpsons with a working board later.

 

Looking good, though.

 

[opt2not]

  thanks, pbj.

Quick update. Made more progress in the last couple days.
Got this cab stripped and revealed a lot of bondo work already done to it:


Proceeded to do my own bondo'ing:




I'm about to finish up the sanding, and wanna start laying down primer on the sides tonight. Hopefully by mid-week it'll be ready for artwork (which I'm still undecided about).

More, real soon...

[opt2not]

Alright, I finished shaping all the bondo tonight and the corners turned out well:

(PS. new leg levelers are on route)

The kick base was swiss cheese from having all manner of security bars installed on it.. it took a bit of time for this area:



After one more fill and shape session, the cab was looking a lot more crispy:


It got late on me, but my scheduled goal was to have this cabinet repaired and primed by the end of this weekend, so I threw on a single coat of primer.


I'll give it another layer of primer and sanding tomorrow, but till then I figured I'd gain some ground with the CP. Took it apart and stripped it as well, the box -- I'm keeping -- but the CP top needs to be replaced. I forgot to take a picture, but its got the same cracked situation as the cab's kick base, and I cannot live with my cab knowing the CP had a crack in the middle.

Anyway the box needs some bondo work to sharpen up the edges, but also there are a few extra holes in the back that need to be filled:


I'll bondo it tomorrow...after I cut the t-molding slots in the newly attached corners.

[Mike A]

nice work. You are moving fast.

[opt2not]

Thanks Mike, I'm trying to get it all wrapped up in 3 weeks! If I can get all the construction tasks done by the end of this weekend, I'll then have a bunch of time to work on the internals. I've got a spare K7000 that I'm tuning up for this, and I'll have to build a new PSU block and make sure all my wiring is correct. I'll need at least a good solid week for that.
Not sure if I'll salvage the original JAMMA loom in there, I have to assess if it's still good, it was a rat's nest of wires when I took it out of the cab.

[opt2not]

I've come to a decision to convert this cabinet to a dedicated 4-player X-men, with possibly running a switcher in it for my other Konami beat-em-up PCB's. The reason being is that I've always loved the X-men arcade game since they first came out in the arcade. I was a big comic nerd BITD, and attribute a lot of my art influences to Jim Lee (as well as artist and game designer Akira Yasuda aka Akiman, of Street Fighter 2 fame).
Jim Lee worked on the 90's version of the X-men comic, and is responsible for one of the greatest comic book cover art of all time.

So I'll be putting in an order for a full-set of reproduction art from one of the cabinet art vendors in the next day or so. I'm still trying to decide to go with This Old Game, or Gameongrafix. 

My goal of having the cabinet's painting done by Wednesday is looking good. Tonight I finished the rest of the sanding needed, then gone ahead and set up the paint booth and started the spraying:


The cabinet, CP box, and marquee brackets all got a nice coating of Satin Black:


Much better than swiss cheese:


While the paint is drying I decided to take a look at the coin doors. They're actually in pretty good shape!  Enough that I'm not going to bother restoring them, and a quick cleaning was enough to call them good:


I'll have to order some of the missing parts; the coin reject buttons and frames, and one of the return chute frames. I found the old reject buttons at the bottom of the cabinet, but they're thrashed and have been painted over. These are cheap and available, so I might as well buy new ones.


One of the return chute frames is cracked, again probably from vandalism, so I'll have to replace that as well.


The last addition to the construction phase that I forgot to do before painting is to install a bottom brace beam for the CP to screw down into. These Konami cabs had 3 points to attach your CP to, 2 on the inside side panels, and 1 directly down into this small bracing piece of wood:


Since the cabinet was cracked right where that piece would have been, and re-enforced with a bracing beam, I'll have to attach a separate piece of wood that doesn't put pressure on the kick base panel.  That shouldn't be too bad, I'll probably tackle that on the weekend.

Tomorrow I'm going to clean-up the workspace, then start working on getting the monitor up and running.

[Mike A]

I like the decision to make the dedicated cab. 

[opt2not]

 

I’m going to throw in my order for artwork today. I've been told by multiple art vendors that the art can get out to me in less than a week! <fingers crossed>

[pbj]

I dunno, man.  I'd lean Simpsons, personally.  All I think when I see a 4 player X-men is "I miss the 6 player version."

Do what thou wilt.

[opt2not]

Gah. You don’t know how much I’m struggling with this decision.
Part of me thinks I should just go with Simpsons, since I picked it up that way, and offloading it later will be easier.
The other part is thinking about nostalgia.

 

[Mike A]

That is why I decided to contract artwork mixing both games.

[pbj]

If only opt2not knew an artist specializing in video games.  If only....


 

[Mike A]

Hey now. He has to finish my artwork before he can work on his own ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

[Arroyo]

Have you looked at Szabo’s work?  He does really good work, I even got to see the custom Tempest cabaret work that he did for the guy I bought the Asteroids cabinet off of.  It was legit:

https://www.szabosarcades.com/collections/full-art-kits/products/xmen-side-art

[opt2not]

If only opt2not knew an artist specializing in video games.  If only....

Hey now. He has to finish my artwork before he can work on his own ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

Well I'm on a time crunch for this, trying to get this done by Dec 7th. So I don't have enough time to do the restore AND custom artwork. After this week I'd like to be in electrical-mode so I can have a good amount of time to get the missing parts, wire the cabinet properly, and do some smoke testing on it.
The schedule is tight!

Have you looked at Szabo’s work?  He does really good work, I even got to see the custom Tempest cabaret work that he did for the guy I bought the Asteroids cabinet off of.  It was legit:

https://www.szabosarcades.com/collections/full-art-kits/products/xmen-side-art

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check him out. 

[pbj]

That X-men side art looks good.  Pull out your credit card and make this happen.

 

[Arroyo]

Jim Lee worked on the 90's version of the X-men comic, and is responsible for one of the greatest comic book cover art of all time.

Was always partial to Mr. McFarlane myself.

But Jim was always a close 2nd.

[pbj]

Here's some local $2,500 inspiration.

[opt2not]

That is fantastically ugly. Wow.

[opt2not]

So I decided to purchase Szabo's side art.

Reason being, it looks like Gameongrafix and ThisOldGame have a modified version of the Kick Base of the 6-player cabinet for their side-art, and not the 4-player stand up cabinet's side-art. Szabo's looks to be pretty spot on from the original 4-player art.

Here's a comparison:


Notice the original 4-player cabinet art has Storm is looking to the left, Nightcrawler is looking forward, Colossus is on the right, while Wolverine is on the left.

The versions supplied by GoG and ThisOldGame seems to have the 6-player Kick Base art, but is rearranged, and has the CPO background rather than a solid colour.

This was bugging me for a while, because it's not authentic to the 4-player cabinets!  But, their other art -- CPO, Marquee -- is on point.  I decided to go with GoG for those pieces, but not the side art.


As for cabinet updates,  I got my workspace cleaned up and now I'm working on getting the K7000 monitor working.  I'll post progress on that once I have something to show.

[pbj]

The problem with repro side art is they almost always ---fudgesicle--- it up and you can spot it a mile away.  If you’re simply going for “looks new” it’s fine, but if you’re going for “looks restored”  you’re out of luck.  You made the right choice.

[opt2not]

You know me, I'm a stickler for artwork, and this one just bugged me. I'm definitely striving for "looks restored". 
Shouts out to Arroyo for the heads-up. I'm really curious to the quality of Szabo's prints, because on his site they look pretty amazing.

For reference this is Szabo's (image taken from his site):


Due to the TMNT cabinet being a bit slimmer than an original Xmen, about an inch or so near the monitor area, I will have a bit of cut-off on the image. I'll play with the placement when I get the art in, but I'm expecting Wolvie and a bit of Dazzler to be clipped on the sides.

For reference, here's a comparison of the cabinet dimensions (image found on KLOV). 

The green is TMNT and the dark blue is Simpsons. The control panel boxes are also different heights.

[Arroyo]

Shouts out to Arroyo for the heads-up. I'm really curious to the quality of Szabo's prints, because on his site they look pretty amazing.

   If the print that I saw on the Tempest Cabaret is any indication then you are in for a treat.

[opt2not]

Since my daughter is up early, I figured I'd update this thread.

Made some major progress in the last few days.

I cut a new CP out of particle board, the same stuff the cabinet is made of, using the old CP as a loose template. I say loose, because as soon as I took apart the old CP, the thing just fell apart in half!
That crack down the middle that I mentioned before was no joke.


Using what I could, I successfully made a replica, and used the old CP's joystick recess to trace onto my new CP as a template.  Hey why not, saved me a bit of time.


I plan on using threaded inserts from below, so the recess is deep enough to give me the proper joystick height, but shallow enough to install the inserts.
As for buttons, I'm going to wait to get the CPO Artwork and use that as a guide since I don't know where the X-men buttons are placed exactly. They're different than where the Simpsons/TMNT 2-buttons per player are positioned.


Hit this thing with some light primer...


...then moved onto working on the monitor.


I had a spare K7000 w/ chassis in my stash. I knew the chassis was good because it was pulled from a working machine many years ago. It just needed new caps and a solder reflow, so I went ahead and did that along with cleaning the chassis while I was at it.
The tube was from a local arcade collector, who told me he "thinks" it's still good. Well...


At first I thought it was my chassis, that somehow I mucked it up with the cap kit and reflow. But after re-checking my work, and reading voltages, the chassis checked out fine. So the CRT was the culprit!
I own a CRT rejuvenator, so I started testing and reading the guns in the tube and tried my best to rejuv it. Unfortunately this tube was too far gone.

But after a small moment of panic, I figured I'd try the CRT that came with the cabinet. I did some readings on the rejuvenator, thinking that it might have suffered a similar fate of my spare CRT, but it checked out working!  In fact, all emissions were strong, and each gun looked healthy!

After messing with convergence for a long time (I hate convergence), I was able to dial it in to a satisfactory image:




Woo hoo!  That was one point of anxiety I had that could have made or broken this restore. I really don't have the time to be fiddling with the CRT for too long, so I'm glad this is working.

Next up is wiring up the cabinet and properly installing the power supply block into it...that's definitely something I can do while I wait for the artwork to arrive.

[yotsuya]

Not doing carriage bolts?

[Arroyo]

Which sticks?  Wico?

[opt2not]

Not doing carriage bolts?

Yep, no carriage bolts. I like CP’s with only controls visible on the surface. It’s cleaner looking.

Which sticks?  Wico?

Yeah, Wico’s. . $40 ea seems to be the best I can find for the new repro ones. Arcadeshop has ‘em with the coloured balltops I need for X-men.

This cab came with wico microswitch versions, but all black battops. If I could find just the ball top shafts I need, I could save a bit of money.

[Arroyo]

If I could find just the ball top shafts I need, I could save a bit of money.

Not sure if you already have the bases for the leafs, but here are some leaf sticks:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Wico-joysticks-for-video-arcade-game-2-NEW-OLD-STOCK-STICKS-ONLY-FREE-SHIP/333140652639?hash=item4d90baf25f:g:VX8AAOSw4QdaggPy

I’ve bought from the guy before and it was legit.  He has lots of colors and has more than 2 to sell.

If you were looking for microswitch versions then :

[opt2not]

I only got the microswitch version bases. If I can’t get compatible balltop shafts of the colours I need, I’ll bite the bullet and pickup the leafs.

[pbj]

Do not put leafs on a 90s fight and go right cabinet.




You were also nuts to route out the joystick placement before your art showed up.

[opt2not]

I totally agree to your first point. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Paradise arcade has threaded Wico shafts that I can throw any ball top on, I just gotta confirm with them that they’re compatible with the microswitch Wico bases.

As for your second point, I’m pretty sure joystick positions didn’t change for all the Konami 4P cabs, just the buttons.

[yotsuya]

Not doing carriage bolts?

Yep, no carriage bolts. I like CP’s with only controls visible on the surface. It’s cleaner looking.

[opt2not]

Decided to take a chance on these joysticks:
http://www.twistedquarter.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=190_193

They’re similar to the Wico microswitch joys, but with balltops. I’ve searched everywhere but couldn’t find balltop shafts for these Wico’s.
The Wico leaf shafts are too thick, same with Groovy Game Gear’s versa 2 shafts — at 10mm diameter.

These Wico microswitch shafts are 8mm in diameter.

[opt2not]

Well, I decided to change my order to the Competition Balltops that TwistedQuarter offers:
http://www.twistedquarter.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=190_674

I figure these are familiar in feel, and I know what I'm getting into with these rather than taking the chance on new joysticks I know nothing about.

Also, I plan on doing more pass at the cabinet sides as well, filling and sand a bit more to get the surface to be as smooth as possible.  When using vinyl art, you gotta make sure the surface is without blemishes because that will definitely show through when the vinyl is applied.

In other news, I was able to source a monitor bezel for my K7000, off a facebook member in the Arcade Repair group. He should be sending it out to me any day now, so with this and the rest of the deliveries I'm waiting on, it's looking like it's going to be cutting it really close to my Dec 7th deadline.

Controls and parts should be arriving either Friday or Saturday.  Artwork is probably going to be on Monday/Tuesday.

So that doesn't leave a lot of time to finish things off, which is why I should probably start wiring and getting the power sorted out now. I might even have to get everything hooked up before the artwork arrives, then apply the artwork as the last step. 

[wp34]

That's a good compromise for joysticks if you are not going to go full-Wico.

[Arroyo]

Call me crazy but I thought I remember TMNT and other fight and go rights had Wico leaf sticks?  I don’t remember the microswitch sound or feel

[yotsuya]

Call me crazy but I thought I remember TMNT and other fight and go rights had Wico leaf sticks?  I don’t remember the microswitch sound or feel

They did. I worked on a TMNT for a barcade and it definitely had the original leaf WICOs.

[wp34]

I always felt the Wico leafs were a bit overkill for these types of games. It especially seemed odd for games built in the 90's when everything was going microswitch.

[opt2not]

Yeah there's no way I'm putting 4x $40 Wico leafs in this thing.  Not for a 90's beat-em-up. I'd much rather reserve those Wico's for something like Robotron.

Since this is a conversion it's not completely necessary to get too OCD with the 100% accurate parts list.
 
No carriage bolts, no Wico Leafs...no problem!

[Mike A]

You keep saying "no carriage bolts" just to hurt me.

[yotsuya]

You keep saying "no carriage bolts" just to hurt me.

I no rite!

[opt2not]

Carriage bolts are just lazy...

[Mike A]

Do you really want me to start kicking puppies?

[opt2not]

Kicking puppies aside,  last night I went over the sides again with a thin layer of bondo in areas that had blemishes.

I got some primer that claims to be a 2-in-1 Sanding/Filler and Priming solution:


After sanding the bondo, and applying a single coat to the sides, it came out pretty nice!






There are still a few areas that could get smoothed out more, so I'll do another coat tonight after I do a bit of sanding, but I'm confident this will be in good shape for the side-art application.

I was also able to find a guy on Facebook that had a spare bezel for me:

[Mike A]

That's the stuff I used. It worked out well for me too.

[yotsuya]

Carriage bolts are just lazy...

Maybe so.... but they’re also authentic!

[opt2not]

Snuck out of the Thanksgiving festivities for the small task of installing the CP mounts. 

I didn't want to put any more pressure on the repaired Kick Panel so I built in a cross beam shelf to attach the CP box to.



This works for me.


Happy Thanksgiving all!

[opt2not]

Bad news. My lead on the monitor bezel fell through today. So I’m going to search for another, but in the meantime I plan on building one out of poster board or something. It sucks that some people in this hobby aren’t very reliable.

[opt2not]

Final week!  I'm shooting for Friday to be put on location (aka my living room).  That is, fully functional, lookin' and sounding good.  The wiring isn't going to be completely clean, and the coin doors aren't going to be fully functional, but that's fine, I'll do the best I can but the idea is to have this playable and looking fresh by Friday night.

After being able to peel away from the multiple family gatherings, I was able to make a bunch of progress this weekend, and hit my goal of having the cabinet fully wired with power and running the PCB on the monitor.

Did some spray painting on the CP, Power Block panel, and some bolts for mounting the marquee brackets:

I like painted undersides of a CP, as well as having the joystick holes blackened.  The marquee bracket bolts were rusted to ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- , so I threw them into the drill chuck and hit it with some fine grit sandpaper before painting them.

Power block has been rebuilt (and yes, I like my pink screwdriver):

I salvaged the old isolation transformer, and EMI filter as they rarely go bad from my experience, but the fuse blocks were cracked and falling apart so I got new ones.
Originally this PSU block had 4 fuses, 1 for the monitor, 1 for the florence lamp, and 2 for the switching PSU.  I removed the PSU fuses because with newer switcher technology today, overprotection is a lot better handled by the PSU and you don't need that extra fuses mudding up the works.

The wiring in this cabinet was pretty hacked up, but I don't have the time to recreate it from scratch, so I cleaned up the original wiring, repaired/replaced broken connectors and patched some of the frayed wires.  The JAMMA harness also needed updating to support button 3 since TMNT/Simpsons only had Buttons 1 & 2, and the JAMMA loom didn't even have those pins installed:


All installed into the cab, along with the PCB:

The wiring follows the original set-up, along with door switch and main power switch at the top of the cab.
I still got to properly install the Ground Braid, and throw some more tie-downs into the cab for cleaner organization and sturdiness when moving this thing around.

After testing it one last time with my CraftyMech TPG, I plugged in the X-men PCB and voila, it lives!


I did a bit more Convergence and Focus tuning to get it a bit more sharp. I'll probably do one more pass before the party to get the image as crisp as possible, but I'm happy that it's all properly working right now:







FINAL STRETCH!
The 5-day plan this week is as follows:

Tonight - Apply Artwork
Side Art, CPO and Marquee should be arriving this afternoon.  I plan on installing the the Sides and Marquee tonight, along with the T-molding. And yes, I'm going to do it with the CRT and PSU block in the cabinet.  I'm trying to save time here, so I'll make sure everything is fastened down securely when I lay it on it's sides.  While it's laying down I'll install the new leg levelers as well.

Tuesday - Control Panel work
Drill the holes for the buttons. Install the threaded inserts for the joys. Apply artwork, and t-molding. Repair the existing control looms, including the "Alternate Harnesses" for P3 and P4, and get all the temp controls wired up while I wait for the new joysticks and buttons to arrive.  Note: in hindsight I should have paid for quicker shipping from TwistedQuarter.  They use FedEx SmartPost for their default shipping which TAKES FOREVER to arrive.  My order shipped last Tuesday, and won't be here till this Friday -- domestic shipping! 
 

Wednesday - Monitor Plexi and Bezel/Shroud
Since I couldn't find a replacement bezel/shroud to buy from someone, I'm going to cut one out of poster board and use that as a temporary solution until I can get my hands on an original bezel.  I'm going to take queues from Centipede's shroud, since I like the look of it and it doesn't seem to difficult to create:


Also, I looked into plexiglas prices recently and holy smokes! Plexi prices have gone up over the years. For the size I need, I'd have to buy a sheet, and sheets are going for $160+ around these parts. That's too much for me to spend on this right now, and since I have some Novus laying around I'm going to try to buff out the scratches on the original monitor plexi that came with the cab.

Thursday - Coin Door assembly and install
I got all the parts I need for the "facade" of the coin door, but not for functionality. I'm going to have small pushbuttons sitting in the coin return chutes, temporarily, then after the party I'll task myself to finishing off the coin doors to be fully functional.

Friday - Controls Swap, Final touches and Smoke Test
My Twisted Quarter order should be here on Friday, so I'll just do a quick swap to get them onto the completely wired CP.  After testing the controls, I'll then do one last convergence and image tuning. Then, a final wipe down of the cabinet, light polish of the plexi pieces, before letting the game run for a few hours to see how it does for prolonged play. So far I've only run the current power set-up for about an hour, but it really needs a proper smoke test.

If all goes to plan, this should just be "finished" for Saturday's festivities. 

[pbj]

My face when you didn't paint the inside of that cabinet while you had it stripped....

[opt2not]

[pbj]

The first time someone (you) dumps an entire 60/40 rum and coke on it, you'll wish you had painted it. I speak from experience. At least do something to that control panel cross brace.

[opt2not]

I know I know. I too like to seal paint the insides.

I’ll add that task to the post-party list.

[pbj]

You have time tonight to strip it and spray bomb it. It'll be dry by tomorrow.

[opt2not]

Side Art install complete!

Both sides were prepped -- I hit the sides with 400 grit sandpaper to get them as smooth as possible.  Cleaned it off with a clean rag soaked in 1 part Isopropanol and Water:


Unrolled the prints from Szabo, man, this print is amazing.  Great quality print, on fantastic vinyl material that seems a bit thicker than what I've worked with before:




I barely had to massage air bubbles out, the vinyl went on very easy and evenly:


Trimmed and applied to the other side:


Placement could have been better, but I'm satisfied with it. It's difficult with this cabinet, due to what was mentioned before about it being thinner in the middle, so I had to be somewhat creative with placement.

While the cabinet was down, I installed the new leg levelers and plates:


Stood the cabinet up, installed the Marquee and brackets, and placed the CP as a mock-up to see how it's all coming together.  I like!




I decided to hold off on the T-molding till the end. T-molding is a great final treat to truly close off a project.

Tonight will be the CP work! 

[Mike A]

 

[pbj]

You didn't paint the edges of the cabinet black before you put the sticker on?

 

[opt2not]

You didn't paint the edges of the cabinet black before you put the sticker on?

 

Yeah I should have. But again, I have no time. When one is trying to do a full restoration in 3.5 weeks, concessions have to be made.

I tested the t-molding on it and it’s not noticeable. The t-molding is yellow.

[Arroyo]

Looks great Opt, glad to hear the artwork print came out good.  This is breakneck speed, I’m impressed.

[opt2not]

Thanks for the suggestion, Arroyo. 
Szabo's prints are fantastic. The fact that he had the proper 4p cabinet side-art just shows his commitment to authenticity over the rest. I'll definitely use him again for future prints.

Tonight I'm going to tackle the Control Panel. Hopefully I can get it completely wired up and ready for Friday's delivery of the new joysticks and buttons. Looking to do a simple swap then.

This has definitely been a breakneck project. I've been averaging 3am sleep-times every night, trying to squeeze in as many hours as I can after dad duties are complete.  I regularly start working on the cabinet between 10:30pm - 11pm, and peter-out by 3.  Plus, if I need to run power tools, I only have a 30 min window before it gets into 'noise violation' territory at night. Last thing I wanna do is piss off the neighbours being a new resident of the neighbourhood.

[Arroyo]

Last thing I wanna do is piss off the neighbours being a new resident of the neighbourhood.

I’m in the same boat, I get 30-45min a night during the week before I’m in HOA territory.

I almost always wear a respirator when working, and often I’ll open the garage to dump something on the side yard.  I’m surprised the cops haven’t been to my place already as I’m pretty sure it looks like I’m cooking meth.

[Arroyo]

Just on the local CL, apparently you can get $2,500 for that bad boy:

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/vgm/d/napa-men-4-player-arcade-machine/7031317531.html

[opt2not]

Yup, these 4-player beat-em-ups are fetching a decent dollar these days. $2000-3000 for any of the big titles: Simpsons, TMNT (1 or TiT), X-men. 

Surprised to see an X-men on the market, they're usually rarer these days.  I've seen plenty of Simpsons and TMNT's though.

[opt2not]

So the arcade gods smote me yesterday trying to find threaded inserts at my local hardware stores. I went to 3 Home Depots, and 1 Lowes and couldn't find enough for all 4 joysticks. Threaded Inserts seem to only be sold in 2's! what the hell??  I was able to find some big ones, but I couldn't get enough of the size of screw I need for the joysticks.   
So after being denied from these hardware stores I conceded to having carriage bolts visible from the top of the CP.   I'm convinced Yots and Mike did some kind of voodoo hex on me. 

Well, it's happening:


I drilled out the button holes too. Didn't take a photo of it, but I'm sure everyone here knows what drilled holes look like. Then I proceeded to do another smoothing pass on the CP, then again cleaned-up with my 1-part Isopropanol + 1-part water rag and installed the art:




I only had one slip of my forsner bit on Player 4's Jump button, which resulted in slightly closer button spacing:

The buttons still fit, along with the nuts, but it's just a bit more cramped.  Oh well, one day I'll get a drill press and do these things a bit more meticulously. For now this'll have to do.

I didn't get to complete the wiring last night, which I'm kicking myself for. By around 2am I started to really slow down...after this many consecutive late nights it was bound to catch up to me.

Anyway, I started on the clean-up and repair of the "sub harnesses" for Player 3 and 4:

They're in decent shape, just a couple wires were torn and frayed. I cleaned them up and repaired the ripped wires, then added Button-3 pins to the connectors.  Tonight I'll have to get the rest of the wiring done using the old joys and buttons, then take on buffing out the scratches from the monitor plexi, and building the shroud out of poster board.

Side note, digging through my stash, I didn't realize I have a bag of Cherry switches laying around. I do tend to keep things when I do these restores, so I guess they just accumulated over the years. These will come in handy:

[yotsuya]

So the arcade gods smote me yesterday trying to find threaded inserts at my local hardware stores. I went to 3 Home Depots, and 1 Lowes and couldn't find enough for all 4 joysticks. Threaded Inserts seem to only be sold in 2's! what the hell??  I was able to find some big ones, but I couldn't get enough of the size of screw I need for the joysticks.   

So after being denied from these hardware stores I conceded to having carriage bolts visible from the top of the CP.   I'm convinced Yots and Mike did some kind of voodoo hex on me. 

Yaaaaaaaaaassssssssss.....

[Mike A]

---fudgesicle--- yeah.

[opt2not]

So I lied, I was going to hold off till the end to apply the t-molding, but I just couldn't wait. I needed something to show me the light at the end of the tunnel:

Love how bright t-molding makes a cabinet pop!

I decided to pause the wiring effort and get some more of the aesthetics done, so I worked on creating a bezel for this thing.

First, the cardboard prototyping:


This was a loooong process measuring every angle and dimensions, by the end of the prototype I had a bezel that actually looked like one.
I then split it apart...



And traced each piece onto posterboard, and made sure I cleaned up some of the lines with my hobby knife.


All 4 parts and assembled using some tape to hold it together:




The yellow brightens up the look, and gives the cabinet a more retro vibe. I dig it!



Once the CP is done, with the t-molding around it, this cab is going to look fresh. 2 more days!  Go go go!

[Mike A]

Nice work on that bezel. Everyone always tries to hide them. That is a bold choice.

[yotsuya]

Nice work on that bezel. Everyone always tries to hide them. That is a bold choice.

Opt is a bold, bold man...

[Mike A]

Yeah. I know. He tried to mount his joysticks without carriage bolts. Fate intervened and saved him.

[pbj]

I like the threaded inserts, but a part of me always worries that I'm going to push a joystick too hard and they'll rip out.  The bright side is that if that happens, you just go back to carriage bolts.  For a multiplayer cabinet that people are going to pound on, you're better off with carriage bolts from the get go.

Yellow bezel looks great, I wouldn't bother replacing that in the future.

You need to color coordinate your carriage bolts.

 

[Arroyo]

Lookin good Opt.  Please excuse the crude mockup (I only got MS Paint at work) but would a two tone bezel sticking with the colors of the side art and t-molding work?



Too much?

[pbj]

Oooh sessy.  You need to do that, Opt.  I made a bezel out of layered card stock once, and it looked fine under the glass.

[opt2not]

Nice work on that bezel. Everyone always tries to hide them. That is a bold choice.

Thanks man, I wanted to brighten up the cabinet a bit more than the frontal black that the konami cabs have.

I like the threaded inserts, but a part of me always worries that I'm going to push a joystick too hard and they'll rip out.  The bright side is that if that happens, you just go back to carriage bolts.  For a multiplayer cabinet that people are going to pound on, you're better off with carriage bolts from the get go.

Yellow bezel looks great, I wouldn't bother replacing that in the future.

You need to color coordinate your carriage bolts.

 

You're not wrong on all counts.  Though I think I'll hold off on the carriage bolt colouring

But I think I'm not going to bother replacing this now since the bezel came out so well.

Lookin good Opt.  Please excuse the crude mockup (I only got MS Paint at work) but would a two tone bezel sticking with the colors of the side art and t-molding work?

Too much?

Good suggestion!
I think I'll take a look into this after the party deadline, amongst a few more changes/updates I'm looking into.

Good news, the ambiguously long shipping of Twisted Quarter's FedEx Smart Shart Ship of my control parts came in today! 


I also picked up CP hinges, and Corner protectors. (also got a Chamma to JAMMA adapter from Mike's Arcade, for a Pandora's Box I'm planning on putting into one of my other cabinets during the party).

So I can fully finish off the CP tonight!  Stay tuned...

[opt2not]

Opinions needed.

Should I put Yellow or Black T-molding along the CP box trim?

[pbj]

Yellow.

[Arroyo]

I’d go black to match the panel with the Marquee.  Keep the yellow lines to the sides and the bezel, keeps things vertical yellow, and black horizontal

[yotsuya]

I’d go black to match the panel with the Marquee.  Keep the yellow lines to the sides and the bezel, keeps things vertical yellow, and black horizontal

^^^ this

[pbj]

Tmolding needs to match or it's going to look stupid.  Don't mess with the neon * A E S T H E T I C *

[opt2not]

Restoration complete!

I'll go into more details of the finishing tasks and shortcuts I took to get here, but for now I've just achieved my goal of getting this presentable and playable for my party that starts this evening. 

I've brought it into the house (along with the other cabs) and it's been running smooth 5hrs straight!

Here's some money shots:










*PS, I ran out of yellow T-molding, so the CP box is going commando.  I'm going to take pbj's advice and stick to the yellow.   

[pbj]

Beautiful work.  Hard to believe that’s the same cabinet you started with.

[Mike A]

Excellent work. It looks great.

[yotsuya]

Those carriage bolts look beautiful!

[Arroyo]

Nice work Opt!  Clever coin buttons.  Tell us tomorrow how the party went down!

[opt2not]

Thanks guys, the party was a hit.  Everyone loved our cabinets, and I even had a couple extra set-ups for Nintendo Switch on the big TV for Mario Kart, my Vectrex near the dessert table, and an NES playing Mega Man 2 on my 14" PVM.

My friends and their kids really loved the X-men cabinet, and it was in constant play over the evening. Halfway through the night I swapped the board out to Simpsons and that was also a big hit.

I didn't get to snap many photos, being the man of the hour and having to run around doing host duties, but I got a few shots of the kids and friends playing:





As for finishing this off, the last few tasks were to wire up the CP, complete the coin doors, and add the corner protectors. I still have to go back and clean-up some of the shortcuts I took.

First, the CP wiring is crap!  I just took the existing harnesses and fixed some wires and pins, and slapped it in there. It was the quickest way to get up and running:

I want to completely re-wire this panel for cleaner organization.

Also added the CP latches, now I just reach up from the coin door entry and un-latch the panel to open it up.


btw, the joysticks are just a tad too short. It's playable, and no one really noticed it, especially the kids and their small hands, but it bugs me. I need to route out maybe another 1/8th inch of wood out of the joystick recesses to get it to a more comfortable height:

When I initially routed this out, I was being conservative to account for the threaded inserts. But since the carriage bolts are through, it doesn't make sense to have that extra thickness in the joystick recesses.

Here's the corner protectors installed. I figured why not, the corners are made of bondo now, so I want to try to protect them as much as possible.


And here's what I did for the coin buttons:

They're the small 24mm japanese style buttons I had laying around from another project. I was lucky that they're translucent red, and matches the coin return buttons. I just stuffed them into the coin chute door and they're being held in place by being wedged in there with the chute flap.

So the next steps to fully completing this are:

1. Re-wire CP for better organization
2. Route out more wood in the CP recesses for more joystick height
3. Get the coin doors functional - I'll need to find out what parts I'm missing. Right now it's just a facade of the coin doors, there's no mechs or switches in there.
4. Re-install the shut-off diode on the K7000 monitor chassis.  I took this out when I was troubleshooting the chassis, but forgot to re-install it. It's fine to run without it for a short time, but you never want to have the shut-down circuit disabled long-term.
5. Tie down all wiring in the cabinet. Right now wires are just hanging around, untethered. For long-term it's best to have these all secured.
6. The marquee lamp buzzes like bee hive. The transformer on it makes a lot of noise, and can be heard as soon as you turn on the cabinet. I'm going to swap this out with either a new fluorescent lamp, or replace with LED lights.
7. Install a JAMMA switcher for swapping boards. During the party I just reached into the cabinet and swapped the connectors on the X-men to Simpsons, but you never really want to have to access the internals if you don't need to. I'm going to get a switcher to change games without dealing with the internals.
8. Install the missing T-molding on the CP Box.

That should be it. Once these above tasks are complete, this thing could be put to rest.

[Titchgamer]

Looking good opt.

Its great having a load of people around to enjoy your machines.

I held a games night for my sisters birthday a few months ago (her request) and it went down really well with all my cabs and consoles getting some over due love!