Star Wars Cockpit......SHE LIVES !!!!!

[Level42]

Went to my beloved SW cockpit to remove the top plexi's. Darthnuno asked me to get a price for replacements as his bend piece is broken.

I went to my local Perspex dealer (where I already got the bezel perspex for my Galaxian and SW monitor from), Stout Perspex (www.stoutperspex.nl) with both the bend and flat piece and asked if they could recreate them. That was no problem at all. They have computer controlled machines to work the materials so the bends were no problem at all. He also told me they could do the holes. I asked if I couldn't do them myself, he said sure, but it was a bit risky because of the holes being close to the edge.

I figured I wouldn't want to ruin the brand new plexi's, so I asked for a price per set completely done with bends and holes, and it was €98,- per set. I think that's a reasonable price.

The only difference will be the color. The bronze color is not available anymore, but we (Darthnuno and I) don't care because we wanted it grey ("no color") anyway. We think that will look MUCH better than the browny looking original.....

[Level42]

The perspex repro's are in and MAN are my hands itchy to rip those protective layers off.

But I won't.


One set is for Bruno and I want to get it to his place totaly mint of course.

The other set is for my own cab, but I won't install it untill it's safely in my still-to-be-build gameroom (which hopefully starts soon).

Anyway, here are some teaser shots:







To get an idea of the difference in looks: here's the same stuff:

[HoopstarsGarage]

Any chance of getting the angles of the canopy..??


Hoops

[Level42]

Uhmmm...yeah I think I can do that.....let me find my "geodriehoek"....

The one with long part is 70 degrees.
The one with the short part is 45 degrees.

Here's some shots:

[HoopstarsGarage]

..and while I am being cheeky asking for things.. the lengths between each of those angles..

cheers


Hoops

[Level42]

46,2 cm.

Measured at the center point of the bends.

That's about 18.188976 inches for those living in the minority of the world that still uses imperial sizes 



All measurements without any guarantees

[HoopstarsGarage]

Thanks for the angles and measurement..

I actually was wondering if you could have supplied them all Level42..??  Looking forward to getting back into the scratch build SWC project and this is just the stuff I need..





Thanks..   

[WunderCade]

Nice canopies...I like the darker tinted one in your comparison. I think it'll make the cockpit look very sweet.

[Level42]

Thanks for the angles and measurement..

I actually was wondering if you could have supplied them all Level42..??  Looking forward to getting back into the scratch build SWC project and this is just the stuff I need..





Thanks..   

Sure:

A=27,7 cm.
B=46,2 cm.
C=8,8 cm.

Amazing car your Holden, great work !! Holden is General Motors right ? It kinda reminds me of some Opel cars here in Europe which are also GM.

[Level42]

By the way, I bet you forgot to ask measurement D......

[WunderCade]

In the US cm=centimeter and m=meter, Level42. So your measurement A=27,7cm is A=27.7 centimeters?

[Level42]

Yeah sorry. You guys use a comma where we use a period and the other way around.

cm = cm = 1/100 of a meter....

[Darth Nuno]

Wooow.... It looks so greeeattt 

I can't wait to see my cockpit with this *brand* new/repro plexi 

Have a look at the current plexi top :





(all the pictures on this post)

Now you can easily understand why I'm so happy about this 

You rock André 

[RayB]

Ooo I just noticed the tmolding on that sucker. I would assume there's no replacement for that style, huh?

[Level42]

Man, that's one of my "grails" in parts. I've been looking and searching ever since I got the SW.
No it's not available anymore. There's something from Outwater plastics that is simular but not the same. I've actually placed an order for it once, but it was TOTALY ignored. No mail, no confirmation nothing. Luckily no CC credited either.

The T-molding on my cockpit is coming loose and they tried to fix it with all kinds of stuff. It's probably the worst part on my cockpit.

[patrickl]

A client of mine is Enitor in the north of the Netherlands. They make T-molding there (and other plastic extrusions). Not sure if I'm allowed to say who their clients are, but some very large scale furniture manufacturers buy their stuff there. I got a tour of the factory and it's a pretty impressive plant. I immediately had to think of our hobby. They can make any t-molding you like, but you'd need to have a mold made (which of course would cost a fortune).

Actually I saw that RAM controls has "Star Wars Cockpit Wide T-molding" as one of his "Miscellaneous Projects:" projects 

[HoopstarsGarage]

Amazing car your Holden, great work !! Holden is General Motors right ? It kinda reminds me of some Opel cars here in Europe which are also GM.

Thanks 42 - it's another nice toy but realistically probably a little too quick for the street.. 

You are correct.. Holden is GM owned.. 


Once again, thanks for the measurements..!!  This is one area of my cabinet that I didn't have my information on and this will certainly help me calculate the inner "hoops". 

I ordered some of the wide T-molding from Outcast and  it looks very very nice but obviously is not even close to 100% original, which is what we all want.  As for RAM controls bringing out a repro of it..  I believe it when I see the Yoke controls have been finished.  Unfortunately RAM seem to have too many ideas and not enough focus on current projects and the cost of tooling the extrusion die would be many thousands of dollars, so it might end up costing many hundreds to install "new" t-molding..  I think the Outcast stuff cost me about $50-ish including freight to Australia..


On the T-molding side - does anyone have a source for the "flat" t-molding used on the majority of the cabinet?  Places like t-moding.com only sell the stuff that  is a little more rounded..

anyway - enough thread hijacking from me


Hoops

[Level42]

Did you get a lot of the T-molding, as I remember that they had some minimum quantity ?

I'd still prefer that Outwater stuff over keeping my original. And that while normally I'd keep it original if it weren't too bad but this is a lost case.

I thought the other T-molding was the regular black T-molding ? I didn't look too closely though. Maybe the Irish cab has the regular and the US different style ?

[HoopstarsGarage]

I bought the minimum order from Outwater which was 12' (approx 4 metres) which worked out to about $9US.  The kicker was the postage to Australia cost me over $50US when the actual postage printed on the USPS label was only something like $12US.. I was not happy when I have had a full size coin door freighted from the US for less.. 

As for the T-molding on the rest of the cabinet, it appears a lot flatter that most other cabinets/t-molding.  Having looked through the Outwater catoluge, I found that their
"Flat Face Bumper Molding" seems like a good match - but I am not that keen on paying another $50+ to get it here, so if I can find another supplier that don't rip their customers off with postage, would be keen to get some..




Hoops

[HoopstarsGarage]

double post 

[Level42]

Yiha !

The Star Wars/ESB kit has arrived today and I installed it. Pretty easy, NO soldering at all

To my utter regret I can't test it tonight however. I'd loved to play ESB on my Amplifone....

[Level42]

Yeah, tried it today and it works great ! Youtube video tomorrow.

[Level42]

I delivered the new plexi's for Darthnuno's cockpit at the collectors fair, so expect picture from him installing them soon !

[patrickl]

Cool 

[Level42]

In the paper for the first time Together with my Belgian friend Luc. (On the right of the SW upright).

Ok, not my Star Wars, but I did restore it to "as good as new" condition electronically :

[patrickl]

I hope that with your newfound celebrity status you will still stay a regular guy. Do people recognize you on the street already? 

[Mauzy]

hey... they spelled "news" wrong... 

Thats pretty cool. I hope I can hit it big in the papers someday.

[Level42]

I hope that with your newfound celebrity status you will still stay a regular guy. Do people recognize you on the street already? 

Excuse me, do I know you ?



 

[RayB]

Q: Is an ESB kit worth it?

[ChadTower]

I'd say so.  I keep all my PCBs in ElectroStatic Bags.

 

[Level42]

Q: Is an ESB kit worth it?

Depends on what you expect of it.

Generally SW is regarded as the better game of the two. However, it's always cool to have more games on one cab (as long as it's original).

The single most asked question I get from people who don't know about classic arcade games is: So, what other games does it play ?..........

The one thing that ESB misses compared to SW is something like the Death Star exploding. There seems to be no "end" goal. Also, some people don't like the "Asteroids" level as they can't be shot (only dodged).
I thought it was a good addition to my cab. I like ESB too. The walkers level is the best of the game. And it's still cool to see the Darth Vader screen.

Anyway, I had always wanted to add this. It wasn't on the top of my priority list, but I got this as a favor back for repairing Luc's SW cabs (and installing two of these kits on his machines ).

[ChadTower]

IMO, it's worth it.  I'm going that route with mine when I get it running.  Not sure if it will be VectorMAME or actual PCB based (I have nonworking PCBs and the kit already) but definitely both games.

[Level42]

Please keep it original my friend

There's probably other options for you, but Andreas from www.andysarcade.de just repaired Luc's Cockpit PCB set. He also worked on his own SW and ESB (original Atari upgraded) PCB sets.
He's amazing at IC level repairs. Would require shipping to Germany but I'm sure he can also give a lot of info/help about repairing yours if you're going to try somethings yourself.

What issue's do your boards have ?

You can swap boards freely between each-other to see on what board the problem is.

[Spyridon]

Nice video you posted.  Makes we want to find a Star Wars for my gameroom!

[ChadTower]

Please keep it original my friend

There's probably other options for you, but Andreas from www.andysarcade.de just repaired Luc's Cockpit PCB set. He also worked on his own SW and ESB (original Atari upgraded) PCB sets.
He's amazing at IC level repairs. Would require shipping to Germany but I'm sure he can also give a lot of info/help about repairing yours if you're going to try somethings yourself.

What issue's do your boards have ?

You can swap boards freely between each-other to see on what board the problem is.

I intend to make it original eventually but the VectorMAME approach is the faster and more reliable short term method.  There are a couple top shelf game board repair guys local to me so I shouldn't have to ship off to Germany.  I haven't taken a hard look at these PCBs yet and definitely havent' tried to power them up.  The major effort is going to be the cabinet - major water damage to the back and top.

[Level42]

2600 requested a picture of the new kit. The old one had a number of seperate TTL IC's and the board is a bit larger because of that.

The new one has all that circuits integrated into a single chip.

I planned to do a full set of pictures of the complete installation, but got carried away and forgot to take pictures of all the steps.

I still have to install one kit for my friend Luc's SW cockpit and will take pictures of the installation on that one.

At least here's some pics:

The main board:



The Sound board:


The board for the AVG is similar but only holds a single EPROM that replaces all the original EPROMs.

The wires connecting the boards are pre-installed. The only thing to solder is a momentary switch button to switch between the games.

[RayB]

Is it by Clay Cowgill or is someone else making ESB kits now?

[Level42]

Is it by Clay Cowgill or is someone else making ESB kits now?

No this one is Mark Spaeth's. Clay was in the process of developing a new kit (at least he was investigating interest about possible options for it on the KLOV forum). Clay said he might be able to include some longer speech fragments in SW that were left out to save memory space. That would be very interesting, but we didn't want to wait. I haven't seen any news about Clay's new kit recently.

[Level42]

I e-mailed Jed Margolin some time ago to ask if he would know the answer to two questions that have been bugging me for quite some time about the Star Wars cockpits:

1)
Q:Were any Star Wars cockpits manufactured with 19" monitors instead of
the usual 25" Amplifones ?
.
I think that Atari never made any cockpits with 19" CRT's. The service
manual doesn't mention any 19" options. IMHO any 19" in a cockpit is a
retro-fit.

A:
I don't think there were any Star Wars cockpit games built with a 19"
monitor, but sometimes things were done in Manufacturing that I didn't know about.

For example, towards the end of the BattleZone run they made some without
the periscope-type bezel. The monitor was mounted in front of the player. (I
never liked the bezel because it made it difficult for onlookers to see the
game.) I didn't find out about the open-face BattleZones it until years
later.

If Atari had run out of 25" monitors for Star Wars cockpit games they could
have used 19" monitors. The deflection board and HV supply were the same for both CRT sizes.

But I agree with you that it is more likely that Star Wars cockpits with 19"
monitors are games that have been restored, and they didn't have a 25" CRT.


2)
Q: Why did Atari decide to use the blue color on the cockpit side-art,
instead of the black like on the upright machine ?

The only reason for the blue I can think of might
be that a mostly black cockpit machine could be overlooked by people in a
(dark) arcade and people could walk into them or something like that.

A:
I never even noticed it. I think your explanation is a good one.


Regards,

Jed


So no definite answers regretfully, but still some nice info IMHO.

[Level42]

Mmmmm, so if a PC sound card can create a demo like this:



Could I use this instead of a scope ?

http://www.lasersandlights.com/red-laser-pocket-projector-p-17.html

And thus hack it to play SW ?