Blasteroids Spinner

[albrigsr]

I purchased an original Blasteroids game
( http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=7146 )
and the spinners do not spin very well.  The spinners are a self contained unit and I am having trouble determining if I can find a replacement.  I would prefer to replace with an aftermarket spinner but am unsure whether that would work.  I saw an earlier post that the Opti-wiz was compatible but isn't tht just the Optical board?  Any help is appreciated.  Thanks!

[horseboy]

No, the Optiwiz converts the signal from the optics to the computer. You can kind of think of it as a fancy mouse hack. I guess you could disconnect the spinner and opto assembly and drop in a replacement such as a slick stick spinner, although I personally have never seen anyone do it. You may want to stick with all your original stuff, though, if you can. Take it apart and clean and lube the bearings. If you have to you can probably put in some replacement optic boards as well. There are some really good ones in the BST forum.

[RayB]

Usually all you need are new bearings, some cleaning and you're good to go.

[Kremmit]

You could replace with an aftermarket spinner, as long as you attached the existing Atari optic boards to the new spinner.  (or other compatible optics, like the ones in B/S/T)  But (IMO) it would be a shame to lose the original spinners an their Atari-logo'd knobs on a nice dedicated machine.  Sadly, Blasteroids knobs fit a different size shaft than pretty much any other spinner out there, so you can't just swap the knobs onto a new spinner, either.

I would advise dis-assembly, cleaning, and lubrication to see if that gets performance up to par, first.  But if you do decide to replace them, you probably won't have any trouble selling the old ones in B/S/T here.