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Ms. Pac conversion
MYX:
Hey all,
I finished with my conversion. I bought a Ms. Pac machine off e-bay for $52. he stated that the monitor had issues but I took it all the same. When I got it, it was crusty and a haven for spiders of all types. It was a QIX cabinet with the QIX bezel and a cheesy outer space CPO. It looked like whomever also used the same material to cover the marquee as well. When I plugged in in at the guys place it had a serious roll. I got it home and tried to adjust it but no luck, although i did get it to stop rolling. It was like the image was smeared into 3 sections. I sent a quarter through it and I had the one up sound. I gulped and hit player one and the Ms. Pac tune started playing. I tried to play the game the best I could trying to sum together the 3 parts up in my mind. The joystick worked great, although my interpretation of what the screen didn't. I did a $7 cap kit on it and a couple of hours later I had a beautiful picture. Wohoo! I had a Ms. Pac. It was the ugliest Ms. Pac anyone had ever seen though. So, I decided to use it as a training ground for my future cabinet. The first thing I did was to strip off the vinyl off the marquee. It had a beautiful QIX marquee. A few scratches but nothing major. I then tapped it up, sanded, primed and repainted the cabinet and coin door. I then did the CPO and low and behold the QIX was still there. I actually found myself having a hurt heart when it came time to remove the QIX overlay. I felt like I was desecrating the thing. (QIX was one of my favorites when I was younger. Still is). After lots of Goof off I finally got all the CPO glue off. I sanded the CPO clean and followed Brian's Classic Arcade Restoration technique for filling in the Fast / Slow Draw button holes from QIX as I would not need them in Ms. Pac.( http://www.rgvac.com/restoration.asp?projid=19 ). I made a custom CPO in Photoshop as the original Ms. Pac CPO would not work due to where the joystick and player one and two buttons were located. I found the marquee at the Arcade Art Library. I resized it to the right size for the QIX cab. (I had actually purchased a Ms. Pac marquee from QuarterArcade.com but found out the hard way that it would not fit.) I had these printed by MAME Marquees. Scott did a Kick @$$ job on these. I won the Bezel on e-bay. I am embarrassed to say that the Bezel cost more than the game it's self. I had to dremil off nearly a quarter inch off the bottom of the bezel and about an the same on the sides to make it fit the cab. I got some hot pink t-molding from Dream Arcades. Then is was just finding the time to work on it. I found myself late to work a few times. But now it is done. I have a pretty darn nice Ms. Pac cab. Not original but I am happy.
MYX:
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sorry this set were uploaded out of order.
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