A Joust restoration.. this is going to take a while

Arcade Collecting > Restorations & repair

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Arroyo:

HannibalAnthrope:
Finding this thread has inspired me.... to abandon my dreams of building or restoring one myself someday! LOL Sweet jeebus but that looks like a lotta work! And you are obviously not skipping any details!

I can't help but wonder about the last owner.... what kinda person covers up a Joust ostrich with a picture of Jar-Jar Binks?!!?!?!!
(yes, I know, but my first reaction was the above because in my memory it looked a bit more realistic back then lol)

bperkins01:

--- Quote from: HannibalAnthrope on August 27, 2020, 09:45:12 am ---Finding this thread has inspired me.... to abandon my dreams of building or restoring one myself someday! LOL Sweet jeebus but that looks like a lotta work! And you are obviously not skipping any details!

I can't help but wonder about the last owner.... what kinda person covers up a Joust ostrich with a picture of Jar-Jar Binks?!!?!?!!
(yes, I know, but my first reaction was the above because in my memory it looked a bit more realistic back then lol)

--- End quote ---

Thanks - if this was some crappy game like GoldenTee - it would have stayed dead.. But this Joust should be restored. At least I have (almost) all the parts.
If I was restoring it for a living.. It wouldn't be viable.. too many hours..

Howard_Casto:
Looking good man. Remember, we don't do it for the money.

bperkins01:

While sitting on endless Zoom sessions - I decided I'd polish up the coin eject buttons. I found a good wet sandpaper selection on Amazon. I started with 1000G to get a uniform scratch pattern. Once you do that, sand through all the grits (1000, 1200, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 5000). I finished with some Novus compound. It took 15-20 minutes to do both of them. Before/after pic above.

Coin door back together. Looks exacly like a 40 year old door again. Except not all bent and hacked up.

The wiring harness had lots of black electrical tape on it. There was no reason for it that I could see and online photos of the harness have no tape - as well as the cocktail had no tape.. So off with all the sticky tape. The prior owner had put two full arcade systems in a single cabinet (what a hack job).. Two harnesses, two power supplies, PCB's, swap-able control panels and he moved the video and speaker cables back and forth. I'm guessing all the tape had something to do with that...

Joust upright - horizontal on the bench. When I picked it up - I was told it worked.. It does. I'll change the IDC connectors that carry the power to Molex connectors as a start. The really do not stand the test of time.

Williams has a braided ground strap that is stapled around the entire inside of the cabinet. I had removed all of it to replace the bottom sections. It sat as a ball of braid for the past few months. Pictures of the inside before I took it apart gave me enough information to restring it around the cab and get it stapled back in place as it was. It was a bit of a puzzle at first.

Joust has two wiring harnesses - the power harness and the 'data' harness' as I call it. The transformer and power harness are put back in place here. Got all of the clips and screws back in their original spots.

Got the cashbox door in place and the marquee lighting set up. However - it didn't work. I checked connections, used the meter to test voltages, blew a couple of (new) bulbs before learning all about florescent lighting.

Here is the ballast - looks like a transformer - but its an inductor. It limits current to the tube (as I understand it) Turns out they die - my Defender cabinet has the exact same one and it had failed also - making diagnostics tricky since they were both reading 14 ohms .. Not a dead short.. but enough to fry tubes.

Found the exact replacement on Amazon. The replacement reads 32 ohms. Problem solved. Picked up a second one for Defender since I know its dead too.

Fast forward a few hours - got the power regulator, sound board and system board in place with the wiring harness back in its original spot. Look close - LED reads '0' a joy in any Williams owners eyes. I'm using lithium AA batteries on the board. They are designed not to leak. So no board damage in this machines future.

Coin door and coin door switches going into position. These are not traditional interlock switches that power down the cabinet - they are part of the "Service Switch" circuits. One is on the door and one you get to from the cash box. Normally there is a 3 button panel to do this stuff - but this setup is different. It appears Joust didn't have the service panel buttons - even though the manual shows them.

The speaker panel is a disaster. The original plastic mesh was busted up so they added a metal speaker grill. It also has an oval 8 ohm 10w speaker. Glad I checked, the original has a 4 ohm (round) speaker. Replacement on order.

Staples and bolts hacked up the opening. I'm filling with epoxy filler here. If I leave the bolt holes - the marquee lighting will show through. Have to wait for the new speaker anyway.. I also noticed they used a black stain on this board. It shows black under the marquee bracket, its long since faded to brown. Once this is all smoothed out I'll re-stain it black.

Cabinet is cabled up, marquee working and I'm using the LCD temporarily until I get the CRT that it came with straightened out. I'll post an update on that once I get to it. Next will be getting the control panel back together as much as I can. Eventually I'll be waiting on the CPO and side art stencils before I can make further progress.

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