Ms. Pac-man Restoration

[WunderCade]

I scored this Ms. Pac-man cabinet off craigslist.org. Ms. Pac-man No. 8952 (formerly of Chuck E. Cheese in Sunnyvale, CA). Non-working.

The guy said that it worked fine until his son and him moved it to his shop and then the monitor simply wouldn't come on or power-up. He plugged it in to show me that the marquee lit up but that was it. I asked if he'd take 50.00 for it since the monitor didn't work and he shook his head and looked at me sideways like I was a Martian, so I quickly handed over the cash and loaded it up before he could think about how absurd my attempt at haggling was.

Got it home and took some pics for the "BEFORE" documentation. The marquee is mint and the body is in very good structural condition and everything is there. Not bad for 100.00.

Anyways here are the photos as I opened it up for the first time. WARNING: I got just a little picture happy.






















So my mission is to restore this. I have another monitor to throw in it to see if that is really the issue. I suspect that the metal bracket laying across the power could have shorted something out.

I hope to work with a vendor here to possibly get some vinyl stencils cut. I do not want to put stickers on this - I refuse. I will stencil it piece by piece if I have to. But hopefully I can work something out for a vinyl set. If I go that route, I will post the entire stenciling process step by step. I'm not afraid of taking too many pics as you can tell. LOL

What do you guys think?

[javeryh]

Wow - very nice.  $100 is a steal for something like that.  I'll be following this project - I'm curious to see how you clean up the side art.

[shardian]

Did it play blind?

Cool score BTW.

[Jeff AMN]

I'll be working on my own Ms. Pac-Man restoration later this month. I might just have to use stickers, since the painting idea scares the living daylights out of me. Good luck!

[WunderCade]

Did it play blind?

Cool score BTW.

No sound...no hum....nothing. No way to know except I haven't had a chance yet to check board power, etc. Will do that when I get home from work.

[CheffoJeffo]

Nice score!

[WunderCade]

Thanks, Cheffo. 

[WunderCade]

Alright. So, the guy was wrong about the monitor. I suppose that is the good news.

The bad news is that when I put my Pac-man board from my working Pac cab into the Ms.Pac machine (the board is modified to play Ms. Pac) the game didn't come up normal but the monitor was working and had a solid screen of random letters and numbers like you see for Rom errors. So that means it is probably the board the board that's bad.

I swapped and put the Ms. Pac board that came in the Ms. Pac cab into my Pac-man cab. Nothing. No picture at all. So it appears the issue is with Ms. Pac board.

Sidenote: I'm still scratching my head at why my working Pac-man board (altered to Ms.Pac) works just fine in my Pac-man cab, but comes up with screen errors plugged into my Ms. Pac-man cab?? I'm not very knowledgeable on boards but I thought Ms.Pac and Pac boards were interchangeable.  Guess I was wrong. Maybe it's a wiring harness incompatibility, dunno?

Since the board seems to be the problem I started looking at it for anything obvious. Again, I know squat about the electronics involved but in looking at the board I found one area on it that may be the problem, see photo below with arrows.




In looking at my identical Pac board in my Pac cab. That red terminal has a top over it with a red "reset" button on it. On the (pictured) MS. Pac board that came in the cab - that it is obviously missing.

So my questions are:

1. Could that incomplete terminal cause the board not to operate?

2. If yes, then how do I go about getting that piece replaced?

The missing piece didn't fall off onto the bottom of the cab, I checked there.

3. That red terminal appears to have four posts, can I just jumper them together? Would that work?

Thanks,
Donnie.

[blueznl]

Perhaps power issues? If they boards are interchangable, you could change the boards the other way around to test them...

[shardian]

Today I went to Home Depot and purchased the paint according to Apollo's paint codes. I just noticed that it is interior latex paint - satin finish.

Apollo's restoration used latex enamel, is there a difference? Would it behoove me to go with an enamel?

I purchased some Rustoleum Verathane to coat and protect it after I'm done painting.

Added to expenses: 49.00 (paint supplies, paint, primer, and sealer)

   

As long as you seal it good after you paint, it won't be too much of a problem. The enamel is WAY more durable than the satin. I painted my office with satin and regret it every day - you touch the stuff, and your fingerprint is there forever. Try to wipe it with a wet cloth and it just gets worse.

[ChadTower]

Satin sucks, definitely, don't use it.  It won't look good and it won't perform well.

Dude - if you get stencils cut, I will pay you for a set.  I think a lot of people will.  There has always been demand for Ms Pac stencils but no one has ever produced a decent set.

[Level42]

How's this project going ?

Shame I didn't notice it any sooner (=hooray for the Restoration section )

That reset switch could have been the cause. If you keep resetting the game a screen like you described will occur. Much like my Centipede that was in constant reset because of a bad IC in the reset circuit.

However, a reset button is always closing contacts, not opening them and since the top was off, I guess it was constantly open already.

60 bucks is a very nice price for a board repair !

BTW, congrats a steal indeed, Ms.Pac's seem to be around all-over the US but not here.....
And nice to see I'm not the only one to take pics of cab AND kid

[Lutus]

I am interested in the stencil progress myself.

[WunderCade]

Wow...it has been forever since I updated this thread.

The PCB was the problem. It has long been fixed (by Pete Hingston) and working perfectly now. Everything is working but the cab has been gutted. Stencils have been acquired from JoyMonkey and restoration process begun last week.

And www.rotheblog.com is featuring my Ms. Pac Restoration stencil process starting today actually.

I'm working with Jeff Rothe to simultaneously put this restoration into a tutorial format.

[Witchboard]

Haha.. good deal.  I'm restoring a Ms. Pac as well.  I'll follow the topic over at rotheblog and make use of any tips.  I'm not stenciling though.  I'm using the sticker.  Before I get castrated, I've had them for a while and already invested the money before the stencils were available.  At least your marquee looks usable.  Mine was so terribly faded, well anyway, enough with the derailing.  I'll be watching your restoration thread and rotheblog for updates. 

[GAJoe]

I love the coin meter.  That Ms. Pac-Man earned about 53,000 dollars in its lifetime.

[JoyMonkey]

I'm not sure if anyone else has actually used the stencils I put together, it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Thanks for putting together the tutorial too; I'm hoping to get to restoring my own cabinet sometime this summer.

A word of warning about the stencils (I think I stressed this before, but figured it won't hurt to remind you); the first stencil layer (yellow) has registration marks in it that you will need to use to line up the other layers. Be mindful not to remove these marks after painting the yellow layer and peeling off the stencil, otherwise it'll be very difficult to line-up the pink and black layers. If you look about two minutes into the video I did of the original black test layer, you'll see how I carefully cut out the backing-paper behind the reg marks and used that as a 'window' to align it over the reg marks from the yellow layer.


I should also mention that I'm not selling these stencils, so please don't ask. The stencil artwork is available on LocalArcade.com for anyone that wants to have a set of stencils produced by a local sign shop.

[WunderCade]

Nice job JM...thanks for stepping up to the task. I know it took way more man hours to do it than you had anticipated and it is greatly..GREATLY appreciated!

I'll make sure to pay close attention and leave the Yellow Layer reg marks on the cab during the process.

Honestly, though...when it comes to how to use the stencils, your vids are way better than any photo tutorial. I think that black layer vid rounds out the set, right?

You've now documented the application of all three layers. The result looked phenomenal. Hopefully you can capture your restoration process too...showing an entire cab stencilling on video is the ultimate tutorial.

Thanks again.

[rotheblog]

Wasn't sure how many of you saw this already or not, but here is the third part of the tutorial to Stenciling your own Ms. Pac-man arcade cabinet using Wundercade's Ms. Pac-man.

http://www.rotheblog.com/?p=1884

[AnthonyB]

I'm not sure if anyone else has actually used the stencils I put together, it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Thanks for putting together the tutorial too; I'm hoping to get to restoring my own cabinet sometime this summer.

A word of warning about the stencils (I think I stressed this before, but figured it won't hurt to remind you); the first stencil layer (yellow) has registration marks in it that you will need to use to line up the other layers. Be mindful not to remove these marks after painting the yellow layer and peeling off the stencil, otherwise it'll be very difficult to line-up the pink and black layers. If you look about two minutes into the video I did of the original black test layer, you'll see how I carefully cut out the backing-paper behind the reg marks and used that as a 'window' to align it over the reg marks from the yellow layer.


I should also mention that I'm not selling these stencils, so please don't ask. The stencil artwork is available on LocalArcade.com for anyone that wants to have a set of stencils produced by a local sign shop.

holy crap your good!