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Author Topic: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion  (Read 21941 times)

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opt2not

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X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« on: November 11, 2019, 03:36:27 pm »
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.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2019, 12:07:56 am by opt2not »

opt2not

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2019, 06:41:54 pm »
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...
« Last Edit: November 13, 2019, 12:17:39 am by opt2not »

opt2not

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2019, 04:44:07 am »
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

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2019, 05:24:16 am »
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

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2019, 11:11:37 am »
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

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2019, 11:14:45 am »
Don't shine a black light on any of his walls.

opt2not

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #6 on: November 12, 2019, 11:42:59 am »
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! ;)

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #7 on: November 12, 2019, 11:44:35 am »
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.
:laugh2:
« Last Edit: November 12, 2019, 11:59:46 am by Arroyo »

Mike A

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #8 on: November 12, 2019, 11:49:32 am »
If you notice, I have every kind of light in my arcade room except a black light.


arfink

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #9 on: November 13, 2019, 05:08:26 am »
Where is this magical wonderland of cabs? I've also just got a house and am getting a little itchy...

opt2not

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #10 on: November 14, 2019, 05:12:46 am »
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?  :gobama

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... :lol
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 :banghead:, 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

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #11 on: November 14, 2019, 09:23:22 am »
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.


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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #12 on: November 14, 2019, 01:37:29 pm »
Good tip. Thanks man  :cheers:

opt2not

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #13 on: November 15, 2019, 07:27:37 am »
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.  :o

pbj

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #14 on: November 15, 2019, 09:59:47 am »
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.

 :dunno

Looking good, though.

 :cheers:

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #15 on: November 18, 2019, 02:42:29 am »
 :cheers: 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...

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #16 on: November 18, 2019, 06:50:27 am »
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.

« Last Edit: November 18, 2019, 07:01:38 am by opt2not »

Mike A

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #17 on: November 18, 2019, 07:13:14 am »
nice work. You are moving fast.

opt2not

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #18 on: November 18, 2019, 03:00:45 pm »
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.

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Re: Konami 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #19 on: November 20, 2019, 06:17:42 am »
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.
« Last Edit: November 20, 2019, 06:44:45 am by opt2not »

Mike A

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #20 on: November 20, 2019, 06:23:10 am »
I like the decision to make the dedicated cab.  :applaud:

opt2not

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #21 on: November 20, 2019, 11:46:37 am »
 :cheers:

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>
« Last Edit: November 20, 2019, 03:27:01 pm by opt2not »

pbj

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #22 on: November 20, 2019, 12:26:26 pm »
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.


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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #23 on: November 20, 2019, 01:31:22 pm »
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.

 :banghead:

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #24 on: November 20, 2019, 01:32:51 pm »
That is why I decided to contract artwork mixing both games. ;)

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #25 on: November 20, 2019, 01:47:41 pm »
If only opt2not knew an artist specializing in video games.  If only....


 :dunno

Mike A

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #26 on: November 20, 2019, 01:54:07 pm »
Hey now. He has to finish my artwork before he can work on his own ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #27 on: November 20, 2019, 02:32:26 pm »
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

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #28 on: November 20, 2019, 03:02:12 pm »
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.  :cheers:

pbj

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #29 on: November 20, 2019, 04:07:47 pm »
That X-men side art looks good.  Pull out your credit card and make this happen.

 :cheers:

Arroyo

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #30 on: November 20, 2019, 05:47:01 pm »
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

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #31 on: November 21, 2019, 10:55:32 am »
Here's some local $2,500 inspiration.


opt2not

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #32 on: November 21, 2019, 12:15:15 pm »
That is fantastically ugly. Wow.

opt2not

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #33 on: November 21, 2019, 03:18:30 pm »
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

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #34 on: November 21, 2019, 06:36:38 pm »
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

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #35 on: November 21, 2019, 09:56:59 pm »
You know me, I'm a stickler for artwork, and this one just bugged me. I'm definitely striving for "looks restored".  :cheers:
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). 
Quote
The green is TMNT and the dark blue is Simpsons. The control panel boxes are also different heights.

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #36 on: November 22, 2019, 12:23:55 am »
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.

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

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #37 on: November 24, 2019, 08:33:53 am »
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.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2019, 08:37:16 am by opt2not »

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #38 on: November 24, 2019, 11:43:48 am »
Not doing carriage bolts?
***Build what you dig, bro. Build what you dig.***

Arroyo

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Re: X-men 4-player cabinet Restoration/Conversion
« Reply #39 on: November 24, 2019, 11:45:11 am »
Which sticks?  Wico?