Hello!

[Malacus]

Hello to everyone on the BYOAC Forums, I've been cruising the site for about a year now but, aside from reading the forums, never posted anything before, because, at the time, I didn't have anything to post about!

But all that changed about a week ago when I won a converted Atari cabinet for $15 on Ebay. (and found $1.46 inside of it) The arcade number is 07438 if anyone happens to know what this (now painted an ugly shade of blue) cabinet used to be.

The ad stated it was a non-working game that appeared to have all the parts, so what the hey? I went for it. And, after closer inspection, I saw that the fuse was blown and that it was missing the power switch. Replace both of those and, VIOLA! a working 1989 Championship Bowling by Romstar. Unfortunately the 3" Wico trackball has seen better days and even after cleaning up the rollers/bearings and giving them some oil, they just dont roll that easily and the Idler doesnt roll at all.

I've submited most of the information to KLOV that I have on it, still need to scan in the Manual I found under the coin-box and take a few pics of the PCB, and then I'll put the Marquee, PCB and Trackball up for sale, need to pay for the joys and buttons somehow

The only things I'm having trouble with are the lights - I got a replacement bulb for the marquee light and some lights that at least FIT the coin reject lights, but none of them will come on. It just seemed weird to me that EVERYTHING works except for the lighting (and a coin mech is missing) the cord IS missing the 'ground' prong.

Thanks for reading,
I'm glad to be a part of BYOAC!
-Malacus

[HaRuMaN]

Holy crap, sweet find!!!! 

Oh, and welcome to BYOAC! 

[GGKoul]

 

[cdbrown]

more pics.... more pics

 
-cdbrown

[Fozzy The Bear]

But all that changed about a week ago when I won a converted Atari cabinet for $15 on Ebay. (and found $1.46 inside of it) The arcade number is 07438 if anyone happens to know what this (now painted an ugly shade of blue) cabinet used to be.

Itd' be a heck of a lot easier to tell you what it was originally if you showed us a picture of the cabinet instead of the game screen from what is currently in it.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[RayB]

Replace that power cord. You can order one from Bob Roberts. While there, you could also order new bearings and rollers for that trackball.

[Malacus]

Thanks for all the replies - i've got more pics here.

Thats wiggles, our adopted kitten he's crazy, but he loves his new arcade game.

[RayB]

You have what used to be Centipede.

If the trackball is a 3", you don't even have the original trackball anymore. I'd say MAME away, or keep it as this bowling game. Would cost you a fortune to try and restore it to Centipede.

[Malacus]

Thanks RayB, I can see now in my Control Panel where the Player Start buttons used to be, they look like they would line up with where the Centipede start buttons would have been. And there are some remnants of a blueish bezel. I'm uploading some shots of the PCB now, I want to document all I can about this game before I sell it, especially since theres next to no info at either KLOV or GGDB and the info they DO have is wrong.

[markrvp]

Centipede artwork is beautiful.  You might see if you can strip away the blue paint and uncover the original artwork.  MAME the cabinet, but keep the Centipede art on the sides.

[krick]

Championship Bowling by Romstar is reportedly somewhat rare.

Supposedly, there were only 200 made.  I don't know what the source of that figure is but since it wasn't dumped and added to MAME until MAME 92 roughly a year ago, it might be true.

There was a guy here on the BYOAC boards that had an all original Championship Bowling cabinet with board, marquee, control panel, side art, etc... in decent condition.  We were trying desperately to talk him out of MAME-ing it but I think he did it anyway.

I happened to notice that it was on the MAME most-wanted list and tried to get him to send the board in to be dumped.  He never did, but luckily one of the MAME guys ended up snagging one off of ebay later anyway.