I need rehab.......I just bought this....Missile Command Cabaret

[Level42]

Not working. And picking it up will be a 15 hour round-trip.         I didn't expect to win it really.......
I think if I would sell the cone buttons only I would get about the money that I paid for the machine

But I LOVE MC. I played a very cabaret like that when I picked up my Meteor. It's a very nice little machine


O, and no I will NOT paint the coindoor black. This is an Irish built cab.

TO BE DONE:

(was said to be completely dead. Monitor worked right away though)
- repair AR-2 problem, replaced R30 (burnt), TIP32 and 2N2055 It runs !
-replace edge connector, don't want to risk another burn-out....
-clean it completely
-get a new piece of perspex for the monitor
- fix or make a new cardboard beze No need, invisible when under plexi.
- paint inside of monitor area black again
- touch up the CP
- get new bolts for CP
-order parts with good ol' Bob
-replace Big Blue
-cap-kit AR-2
-cap-kit Sanyo monitor
-replace bearings, rollers and trackball
-find and replace the vinyl
-repair the TL light (balast ?)
-replace the right hand coin mech bulb with a 7V (now has 12V)

[Q*Bert_OP]

You don't need rehab...yet. Not until you've spent $30,000 US Dollars on pinball machines, including $4000 to fix up a machine you spent $2500 on. (That would be my Twilight Zone pin, new cabinet art, new ramp, NOS playfield, NOS plastics, a ton of other parts and pinball rebuilding supplies, etc.)

[Level42]

 

Rehab is meant for people who _could_ get back to being normal. You my friend, are a lost case 

[JeepMonkey]

15 hours away  .  You must really like that game.

How much will this cost you in gas?  How many countries to you travel through?

[shardian]

Damn dude, you do need help. I wouldn't drive an hour for that if it was free!

[Mauzy]

I wish I had the patience to travel that long for a cab. There have been several 200 miles away that were games that I love, but I didnt want the drive...


Also wish I could afford that trip. My Cherokee loaded down isn't the most fuel efficient Jeep out there...


The marquee below the monitor always freaks me out of that style of cab...

[Level42]

15 hours away  .  You must really like that game.

How much will this cost you in gas?  How many countries to you travel through?

Well it's 7,5 hours away, will have to return home again too. I guess we may make it "a weekend out"

Will drive through two counties only, Holland and Germany. Germany is a pretty big country (for Euro standards ).

Gas cost won't be much. (Check out the thread about all that in Everything else). In short: I have a company car. I can drive for "free" in it for private use. It's like a extra salary. Thus I also have to pay tax over it. But gas that I get in Holland is "free" for me. And since I've got a Diesel, I can fill it up on the Dutch border, and (if I drive a bit steady, which is hard because Germany doesn't have a speed limit on the motorways ) I should be able to drive about 900 km's on a tank of 50 liters. My car is very fuel efficient. That will almost take me to the place where it is and back to the border.....so no it won't cost me a lot of gas.

Of course this is an insane trip and normally I wouldn't do it if I had to pay the gas (would be a lot more than the cab cost: €101,-)

Shardian: remember the Euro situation. I've never seen an upright MC around here. Never. This is the third cabaret I've seen in Germany within a couple of months. One was already sold (the one I played when I picked up the Meteor). One I missed on E-bay. That one was fully working and went for €153,- and was just across the border (about 2 hours drive one way). I was really  that I missed that one.

Anyway, we can't be too picky. Also, I didn't have a cabaret in my collection yet

Missile Command is one of the games I absolutely loved on the Atari 8-bit series. I've learned that the original arcade versions are always a LOT better than the home versions (although I think the 8-bit is almost 1:1)

The cabaret will fit easily in my stationcar. I've transported full size cabs in it without much problems (only the SI required me to leave the backdoor open partly).

Also, I'm used to do plenty of driving. Sometimes I drive to three customers on one day and travel for a total of 6/7 hours on a day (although those days are exceptional).

I always had the idea Americans are used to travel for long distances ?

[RayB]

Nice Level42, I bought one of those a couple weeks ago. I need rehab too. Money is tight and yet I keep picking up caberets.    I had to sell my cocktail pinball and a jamma board to fund them. (The other one is a Turbo mini)

As much as I love the artwork on full uprights, I just can't pass up minis. I can transport them into the basement without help or busting my back! 

[Wade]

Damn dude, you do need help. I wouldn't drive an hour for that if it was free!

Dude, you know that's a lie!!!   Who wouldn't drive a few hours for a "must have" game that's cheap!

Wade

[shardian]

Damn dude, you do need help. I wouldn't drive an hour for that if it was free!

Dude, you know that's a lie!!!   Who wouldn't drive a few hours for a "must have" game that's cheap!

Wade

I might drive a bit for a 'must have' game if it was in awesome shape, and was super cheap. My beater range is firmly planted in my immediate vicinity.

[Wade]

I wouldn't call that game a beater just based on the picture and the fact that it doesn't work.  It might be in really good condition except for the chips on the front laminate.

But as you know, I've driven 6 hours and and put some work in, just to get a beater game.   So I'm more from the same school of thought as Level42.

Wade

[shardian]

I wouldn't call that game a beater just based on the picture and the fact that it doesn't work.  It might be in really good condition except for the chips on the front laminate.

But as you know, I've driven 6 hours and and put some work in, just to get a beater game.   So I'm more from the same school of thought as Level42.

Wade

Oh there is no question you need help. This picture says it all: hehe

[Level42]

Pfff, some new vinyl and the chips are gone.

This is sold by an (old?) lady, so who knows, this might be the "fuse replaced, game works 100%" cab that I have yet to come across. Besides, what's the challenge in a working cab....

Gonna buy my wife a nice bunch of flowers and then break the news to her tomorrow

[Wade]

Pfff, some new vinyl and the chips are gone.

This is sold by an (old?) lady, so who knows, this might be the "fuse replaced, game works 100%" cab that I have yet to come across. Besides, what's the challenge in a working cab....

Gonna buy my wife a nice bunch of flowers and then break the news to her tomorrow

Good luck!

Those "needs a fuse" games really do happen sometimes.  The Centipede I picked up (from a game guy, even) was "dead" and he said all he did was turn it on and it did nothing.  He did no other troubleshooting.  Turns out all that was wrong was a connector had come loose from the power supply, and the monitor needed adjusted.  That's it, it works 100% otherwise!  The guy I got it from is actually honest, though.

Wade

[Wade]

Oh there is no question you need help. This picture says it all: hehe

Shoot, you show that picture like it means something.  What kind of person doesn't have a 4 player racing game in his basement?

Wade

[Level42]

Don't worry, my friend Luc has a whole range of 2 player seated racing games. Plus 50 pins. That's only the working one's.
The other 50 still need to be cleaned/fixed..........









Not to mention some nice arcade cabs:



And believe me that's not all by far.....

And I still think Luc is quite sane really

[Singapura]

Aha, now I see why you weren't interested in the Gauntlet cab on Marktplaats. I seriously have to consider remigration 

[Level42]

Well, Luc lives in Belgium and it's a one and a half hour drive (one way) to him, so it's not like I'm there every day... I've repaired the upright SW for him and now work on the cockpit's WG6100...

[Singapura]

Looks like it's a trip worth making, seeing all those cabs. Too bad I'm not in The Netherlands yet or I would have come with you.

[Level42]

Check out www.gameroom.be

That's Luc's site/forum. I think we can arrange something. let me know what dates you're here, I will be on holiday in August too, but I will stay in Holland, not far from home. We will arrange something nice anyway

[Singapura]

Cool, I'll PM you.

[Level42]

So, I bought a REALLY nice bunch of flowers and it worked out pretty nicely

She was glad it wasn't a full size cab. She wasn't very pleased about the distance...but hey, things lightened up when I said we could make this a weekend to Munich

[Mauzy]

Glad to see youre still alive!

[ChadTower]

I've used the "let's make a weekend getaway out of it" excuse more than once.  It does work.   

Nice find.  Looking forward to see that one restored.

[Level42]

Glad to see youre still alive!

Thanks Chad and good to see your posting

[ChadTower]

Thanks Chad and good to see your posting

I just pop back now and again to check out the restorations and the pseudoclassic custom jobs.   

[Level42]

Finaly !

Next weekend I will be picking this baby up. We'll visit Munich and the best part of all, my fellow Vector game lover Andreas. Check out his excellent site about (mostly) vector games. Some really good and unique info there:

www.andysarcade.de

Andreas offered to have a look at my Meteor PCB so that is great too, hope he can fix it

Expect pics from this road-trip next week......

[patrickl]

Cool.  Guess it's going to be nice weather for a trip.

Andreas has a nice collection too.

[Level42]

Yeah, I hope the traffic will not be too crazy (that's why we leave friday, saturday is a "black" saturday....

I hope to be able to play Asteroids and Battlezone on the real hardware for the first time since......the early 80's !!!!
For some reason I didn't play Asteroids at Funspot and I can't remember seeing a BZ there (I was SO overwhelmed by all the games there !!)

Also Star Hawk ....a game I never knew about until getting into this hobby.

I do think I tried Tempest at Funspot, but there was something wrong with it, can't remember really....

....anyway, enough to look forward too and meeting a fellow arcade fan is always a joy !

[SirPeale]

For some reason I didn't play Asteroids at Funspot and I can't remember seeing a BZ there (I was SO overwhelmed by all the games there !!)

There's usually one there, but if it was broken it may have been in the shop for repair.

[Level42]

Just a very quick message:

The machine is home safely. It was a nice but very long trip (as we knew already).

Pics, story etc. later.

Diagnosis so far: monitor works. +5V on PCB is about 2,3 V. This MAY be an easy fix.......more later !

[SirPeale]

Sounds like PS needs work plus connectors need tweaking.  You may get lucky!

[Level42]

Just removed the ARII from the cab and there's a burnt-out R30....

[Level42]

Some first pics...

Cab loaded in Augsburg, Germany. As expected still enough room for the luggage....



And even my son could still sit comfortably next to it...

The sides look pretty good. Top left side has some sticker residue which comes off easily. The lower corner seem to have some paint or something.

Here it is after unloading it after the 850 km trip....












Sorry for the fuzzy picture of the monitor (took it "blind"). There's a Sanyo label on the CRT and the frame reminds me of the 20EZ so this could very wel be a Sanyo monitor in there.


The front black vinyl is already very loose. No problem, will replace it anyway. Of course the trackball needs a rebuild. The CP is actually pretty nice, only some dirt-like stuff on the right side and some minor small scratches. The buttons need a bit of cleaning. The Player 1 & 3 button LEDS work (but were very dim, because of the 2,3 V of course).

R30 shows a value in the mega ohms, so I have some hope the PCB did not get fried by the AR2.

I didn't recall that the "marquee's" on these had backlighting, but there's a tube and starter for sure....(not working though).The "marquee" looks very nice...

I'll put up more pics later.

[Mauzy]

Cool! That looks to be in a lot better condition than I had expected. Nice find!

[extendedplayarcade]

Nice cabinet size.  Does the marquee in the middle light up?  That would be cool if it did.

Got me thinking it would be great if it had a hinge on it to for a keyboard if someone wanted to build a mame cabinet like that.

Looks like it would be a lot easier to make something like that then others mame cabinets out there.

Thanks for the photos.  Can't wait to see more.
Brent
www.extendedplayarcade.com

[Level42]

Nice cabinet size.  Does the marquee in the middle light up?  That would be cool if it did.

Maybe scroll back a bit and read the text

Got me thinking it would be great if it had a hinge on it to for a keyboard if someone wanted to build a mame cabinet like that.

Looks like it would be a lot easier to make something like that then others mame cabinets out there.

Brent, my friend, because you've got just 13 posts here I'll give you a break and let you get away with it, but whay you're talking about here in my thread is like cursing in a sunday morning church !

Thanks for the photos.  Can't wait to see more.
Brent
www.extendedplayarcade.com

You're welcome and I hope I didn't sound too nasty There'll be more pics definitly !

[Level42]

...or maybe I just misunderstood and you meant people _building_ a MAME cab like that. So, not converting a classic into a Mame machine. If so I apologize

[Spaced Ace]

Hey Level, don't know if this was asked already, but are you going to stip out the old controles and go a little main stream or are you going to restore back to factory?

[Level42]

Hey Level, don't know if this was asked already, but are you going to stip out the old controles and go a little main stream or are you going to restore back to factory?

What do you mean ? What else would it need ?


Anyway, some first close-ups:
Marquee: near mint I'd say. Only some very minor scratches. You can also see the CP's condition a bit on this pic....



....and yes it should light up nicely like this:



...but I'm cheating because that's my "walking TL light" I put behind it. The tube is not working currently. I soon found out why:



Now I wanted to install back that wire, and there was only 1 open spot on the terminal block near the ballast. So I connected it, but it's still dead. The tube is dead, the starter is OK (Tested both on my MB cab).

I checked the schematics but the Atari schematics I checked (MC, Centipede) don't seem to include the lighting set-up strangely.

Just checked out good old Bob Roberts, and surely it has a nice diagram of how it should be hooked up. Will need to look into it further.

But first the game itself.

Here's the toasted R30:


R25 doesn't look healty, but it's value is fine. I've seen the same thing happen more, the ceramic seems to get old or something.


And what happened to the 2N3055 case ? big dent !


I checked all the power levels on the AR-2 without the game PCB connected. Everything seems OK. But I didn't check the +5V.  So what should be my next step ? I checked the PCB connector and it looks not too bad. There's no burn marks on the PCB edge either. Maybe I should mod the AR-II for just testing it now ? Of course I'll replace R30 anyway. Of coure it'll need a cap-kit, but I want to isolate the problem now first....

[RayB]

Just shot gun it.

- New Big blue
- Good fuses
- corrosion-free fuse clips
- AR-II "repair kit"
- clean connectors and edges.

Total cost: $20

Then you're good to go and will either have a working game or board problems left to diagnose.

[Mauzy]

Anyone know why thats referred to as shot gunning?

[Level42]

Well I don't know a lot about weapons, but a shotgun fires a shot of all tiny bullets that spread a (relatively) large area. So, you don't have to aim exactly to hit something.
That compared to a regular gun with a single bullet that requires good aiming to hit the target.

So, shotgunning is "blindly" replacing all or most suspect components at once without searching for the actual problem.

[SirPeale]

Clean the edge connector and harness extra well.  It gets tarnished/dirty, which is why the voltage goes up.  Once it's cleaned your voltages should be okay.

[RayB]

The idea of "shot-gun" is that you don't find the exact problem, but by replacing many parts at once, your odds are you fix the problem with the added bonus of now having lots of new reliable parts installed.

Capacitors are cheap, and easy to install, so it's a great approach for newbies and ensures your board lasts a long time before failing again. For example, I fixed a "dead" monitor by installing a cap-kit. I have no idea what was wrong with it, but now it works.

Otherwise, you need the skills to diagnose electronics, probably even need an oscilloscope, etc, etc. BIG FAT WASTE OF TIME. 

[Mauzy]

hmm. sounds like ive shot gunned everything ive ever repaired then 

[Level42]

Haven't got the kit and Big Blue around so I'm not yet shotgunning.....

I've temporarily modified the sense circuit and I've removed the burnt R30. If I run the AR2 without load it puts out 5,6V. However when I have the board connected it drops down to the 2,3V. I also noticed that I can't regulate the voltage at all, the pot has no influence (is that normal when it's modded ?).

Now would that be some short on the PCB dragging the voltage down or would it be the AR-II not able to put out the power required by the board ?

O and yes, I've worked on the AR2's before (SW, Centi) so I know about the cleaning of the connectors etc. They were not that dirty but I cleaned them. I also measured on the pins, and it's definitly not the connector causing the voltage drop. There's also nothing burnt around the edge connector.

[AnthonyB]

good luck on this, MC is awesome!

[Darth Nuno]

Nice cab, nice roadtrip 

Holy Jesus... StarHawk  One of my favorite vector games 

I use to play it on my Vectrex...I have the control panel, but still not the cab 

[Level42]

BINGO !!!!!



OK, I cheated a bit. I took the AR-2 out of my Centipede. While I was at it, I measured between the +5V pin and the GND on the Centipede PCB, just for reference. Well it showed only 180 Ohms (and it works like a charm), so I figured the MC PCB would be fine (on the +5V part) with it's 230 Ohms.....

So I took a gamble, plugged in the Centi AR-2 in the cabaret, fired it up and:






YES !!!!

Of course I kept a keen eye on R30 and the +5V values. It was a bit low at 4,85 V (Does MC eat more power than Centi ? bit weird....) but it ran happily. The sense on the AR-2 read 4,87 V I think that's acceptable. I'll do some more measuring on the contact resistance tomorrow to make sure it will keep running once the AR-2 is re-built....

[Level42]

DAMN this is one freaking HARD game !!!!

The speed increased very rapidly. I've never played the arcade version before and all I remember is the Atari 8-bit version. Lacking the three fire buttons they only put up one missile launcing tower for you. So my strategy when things got rough on that version was to defend only the remaining 1 city and the tower. But now I HAVE to defend the three towers, else you simply don't have enough missiles to stay alive.....

It's amazing how that Atari 8-bit version sounded exactly like the original

And apart from the 3 towers, the rest of the game was an excellent conversion too Not too hard with this simple graphics......

O and did I mention it passes the tests in the set-up/test mode without a problem !

And the PCB has the revision -01 game ROMs (yes ROMs, not EPROMs). Anyone knows what changed in the -02 revision (don't tell me they made it easier ...... )

[SirPeale]

Nice job.

I wouldn't worry about that voltage too much.  As long as the contacts are clean and a good connection is being made it shouldn't jack up things to compensate.  It's clearly playing and playing well.  Rebuild the AR2 and have fun!

[Level42]

O I'm sure I can regulate it to a nice +5.00 V, but it's regulated for the Centipede now, so I'll let it as it is.....

I'm going to need to order kits from Bob, plus lots of other stuff

[Level42]

More pics....






So what do you do when you smoke while playing a game of MC  :



That's ready for the trash.    Will replace it with a new one, in grey look. (I hate the bronze !)

Lot of dust on the monitor:



Will need to fix the damaged black parts. Easy enough.

[Level42]

CP inside:


Mmm, all the buttons are directly wired (not one single connector for all of them) bit clumsy to get the panel off. [Edit: Of course this wasn't true. I should have known better with Atari. The plug was just a bit further down than I'd expected......duh !]

Trackball....sturdy, but clumsy metal trackball....as expected the rollers are still the original and really worn out. The bearings are actually not too bad, but I'll replace them anyway of course...I assume they are identical to the Centipede rollers and bearings. Was the trackball originally off-white or did it just become (more) yellow over the years ?




The vinyl is in bad shape and is letting loose on all corners. The good news, the cab seems to be plywood
Need to get some new vinyl though...





Worst part of the sides:


OK, why, please tell me why people do this:


Not surprising, Irish built:


The speaker is on the back/topside.

[Level42]

Repaired the AR-2:
I first replaced the R30 and tried it again, with the same result, still 2,3 V under load. Then I replaced both the 2N3055 and TIP32 and bingo, it works like a charm. Could regulate the +5V on the game PCB to an exact 5,00 V without any problems. It's sometimes weird how you can't measure problems with transistors. I had tested both with my Fluke in diode test, they looked OK, but clearly one of them were not....

Now it just needs the usual Big Blue, AR-2 cap-kit, Sanyo monitor cap-kit and cab restoration....

[Mauzy]

More pics....


So what do you do when you smoke while playing a game of MC  :



That's ready for the trash.    Will replace it with a new one, in grey look. (I hate the bronze !)

The reason I don't smoke? Not for health reasons, but because it ruins your stuff...

Gald to see it was an easy fix!

[RayB]

OK, why, please tell me why people do this:

Ashtray.

[Level42]

On both sides ? And at the back ? ....weird ...

Anyway, first things first:

Not the most sexy thing to work on, but very essential:

[CheffoJeffo]

 

[Level42]

Removed the monitor today to investigate it and compare it with the Sanyo in the Mario Bros.

I can confirm the main PCB's are the same. Of course the Atari has the inverter electronics on board that the "MB" one is missing. There are also some minor changes on the PCB.

Some of them are different cap value's. If your interested about the check this out:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=83761.0

Here's some pics...



That needs either to be made black again or replaced with some nice new cardboard....

[Level42]

Main PCB and control PCB (that's different on the 20" too).





The 14" and the 20" next to eachother:

[Level42]

Back in it's place and cleaned.


Together with the new Perspex for Bruno and my SW cockpits I ordered this:




Installed: The flash spoils all the fun. It's nice and dark in reality. Even the cardboard bezel looks fine (you don't see anything of it ) in real life. Needs a bit of cleaning, the perspex if very static when you remove the protective films.


Finaly I can see my scores for the first time thanks to the new C306. No more fold-over


It looks a LOT better for real. Something like this:


In reality the colors are much better. I can't say how much I prefer the gray (not colored) perspex over the original bronze color. The bronze color tones the colors of the game which I don't like. Now green is crispy green instead of a sluggish washed out green. And that goes for all colors of course.

Also, the new perspex of course doesn't have the usual hair scratches. Apart from the cigarette burns (which are outside of the screen area and were not very noticable when it was in the game, a cabaret is very dark in the screen area) those tiny scratches spoil then fun. You can see it on the comparing picture. Notice the reflection of the flash in the new perpspex and in the old......

Those scratches probably are caused by cleaning with paper towel (and probably some spray cleaner). Don't use paper towel, as it contains wood particles and thus causes those scratches !

My friend Andreas (from www.andysarcade.de) will come and visit me next week and will bring some brand new vinyl for the kickplate area ! (And of course the Meteor PCB ). I bet that will make it look a whole lot different !

[patrickl]

Coming along nicely. I'm always impressed with your dedication and attention to detail in restoring these cabs. 

Those scratches probably are caused by cleaning with paper towel (and probably some spray cleaner). Don't use paper towel, as it contains wood particles and thus causes those scratches !

Indeed I once cleaned my dashboard with a napkin and it really ruined it by creating a lot of scratches. Luckily there was a problem with it under warranty and they replaced the whole thing 

[Level42]

Can somebody please tell me how to get these "rivets" on the "marquee" loose ?



I'm removing the old vinyl with a heat-gun and I gotta remove it. Don't want to ruin (melt) it !

[RayB]

Low speed drilling until the rivet top "pops off". Remove marquee. Then you have to yank out the remaining rivet "bodies". You'll end up with the holes a little enlarged and best solution is using carriage bolts instead of rivets.

[Level42]

Mmm, would prefer to keep it original.... I managed to get all the vinyl off without removing the marquee. However, I will have to sand the wood panel to be able to neatly apply the new vinyl (looked more like laminate to me).

Anyway, I will have to work around it...

Pics of work in progress....

The "vinyl" is really stiff. It looks a whole lot more like laminate to me.... I could get it off this far without any tools...


From that point I needed to use the heat-gun and a flat knife...


CP close-ups. Not sure what to do yet. It's all painted directly on the metal. I guess I will have to live with it's current condition. Maybe a few touch-ups of the black paint....




Ha ! The panel is mounted to the wood with the same bolts as the one's on top of the CP.
The one's inside survived a lot better of course so I'll swap them



Weird ! Looks like the wire harness was manufactured in Germany. That sure is no Irish

[EDIT, that company still exists today: http://www.kromberg-schubert.com   Looks like it's main clients are car factories.....]

The coindoor looks pretty good. Needs some cleaning and the black coin return inserts need a bit of paint. The doorframe needs some new paint (esp. on the hing) too.


The inside stuff looks very good. The left counter is for 5DM, the right one for 1DM. Not too many games played on this, it was privately owned for quite some time.


Mechs need some attention as the included 5DM coin doesn't work...nothing serious.

[ChadTower]

You can always pop the rivets and then just replace it with the same size rivets.  A rivet presser is pretty cheap if you can find it.

[WunderCade]

You can always pop the rivets and then just replace it with the same size rivets.  A rivet presser is pretty cheap if you can find it.

Harbor Fright sells a variety of the hand pressers and rivets cheap, if those will work. 

[ChadTower]

Probably not so cheap to ship to the Netherlands, though.   

[RayB]

Tape up your marquee so you don't accidentally scratch it with tools.

[Level42]

Yup, that's the plan I settled for

I really need to sand the wood before I can apply the new stuff. Glad it's not a very big area, one of the nice things of a cabaret (Like the 14" monitor....a pleasure to handle and work on

[Wade]

Most Ataris of that period had laminate on the front, esp when the wood was real plywood.  And those pictures look definitely like laminate.

That gold metal of your trackball housing?  It's probably cigarette tar.  That metal is aluminum I believe.  Some Wesley's Bleche-Wite (if you have that over there) will melt all that away in a few minutes.  Same goes for the monitor chassis.

Wade

[Level42]

I though the gold-metal was just that color.....I think I've seen others like that (but maybe smoked too  ?)

Anyway, my friend Andreas from Germany was here last wednesday night and brought the laminate with him. Regretfully, he had cut out what he'd thought what would be plenty to fit on the cabaret, but alas it was not long enough 

I was completely amazed, because the stuff he brought was EXACTLY the same as the original, right down to the backside structure ! Andreas thinks he can still use this piece on his BZ. I hope he has some more so that he can send it, but in all the excitement I forgot to ask.

There was another bummer that night, as we went to my SW so he (and the entire family ! could have a play on it. And then of course happens what never happens when you're alone: one of the other vector RAMs had died rendered the game unplayable. The attract did run, but with all crazy vectors etc.

Well at least he saw the MC and MB. I'm sure they'll be back someday when my gameroom is finished

The great news was that he of course brought back the Meteor PCB which I'm going to test today and of course will let know in that thread.

[Level42]

Since the marquee lighting was dead on this cab (probably the ballast, as I tried to exchange everything else) I renewed it, but this time a bit differently.

Instead of my usual tl fixture that I have to modify heavily, I went for a bit more elegant and unbelievably CHEAP solution:

Was at the Ikea the other day and they sell what we call "energy saving lamps" too. You know, the one's that fit in a normal bulb fixture. They were 3 for €3,-  so €1 each....

Also picked up a simple regular fixture that has an angled mounting €1,60) so I could align it like the original fluorescent bulb.

Rewired the lighting wiring, tapped into the 230VAC right after the mains switch in the cab.

When I first lit it up, the bottom side of the marquee was not lit properly. I'm pretty sure the same thing applied with the original bulb, guess Atari just accepted that as a fact. I decided to move the fixture up. This way it's nicely lighting the entire marquee. The only bad thing about this is that now the light also comes out of all the CP holes, trackball etc. but I will fix that with an extra piece of wood to block the light.

Anyway, this is by far the cheapest solution I've used so far at only €2,60
Another advantage is that the bulb is only 11 Watts. The larger tubes I normally use are 18W and sometimes make the marquee just a bit too bright for my taste.

A small note about this solution: it works nicely on a cabaret because of the smaller size of the marquee. I guess with a regular upright cab, you will see that the light is too much centered, compared to the more even spread of light from a long tube.

Pics:

[polaris]

ive been waiting to see someone use one of these bulbs, glad to see it work.
bit of info for the uk, my local morrisons are selling these bulbs for 10p each, worth looking out for (e-on brand bulbs)

[patrickl]

Don't you have problems with the colors? I used a couple of these cheap fluorescent bulbs to make a ghetto potography ligthing kit. I noticed that the pictrues I took using these lights suffered from the restricted color spectrum of these lamps (not just the color temperature, but the whole spectrum is uneven).

[Level42]

But that's the same with any other (TL as we call it Patrick) fluorescent light. So there's no difference between those in colors.
The marquee looks really nice.

[patrickl]

Well I thought it might be especially bad with the cheaper bulbs. For instance, not every TL has "bad" light. But yeah I guess they never used full spectrum lamps for marquees either (if those even existed back then).

Never mind 

[Level42]

Most original tubes I've seen so far are the cheapest cool-white color. The marquee do a good job of "hiding" the cool color. I prefer my marquees not to be too bright. Currently the one on my Mario Bros. is too bright for my taste. Already tried putting some smoked plexi scrap part I had around. Worked really well, but none of the scrap parts was large enough to cover the entire marquee area, which gives very bright spots around it which looks ugly.

[Level42]

[Level42]

That video showed the (planned) replacement of the PCB edge connector on my Missile Command.

The machine is running now and there are two things I noticed after replacing it:

1) The colors on the screen are MUCH brighter ! Really, this was a difference between needing a less dark plexi or not !  I am absolutely amazed by it myself. I kinda noticed it right away but thought I was kidding myself, but even my wife said it improved a lot.

2) The power supply was humming really loudly before. That hum has gone away by about 75% now. Maybe I'm just imagining this one. It could also be just that the cab moved a bit or something like that.

Anyway, it shows that bad contacts create "resistors", hurting the signals.

I gotta get out my DVM to check if the 5V is not too high now because of the lower resistance in the power lines.......

Anyway, this is the first time I replaced a PCB edge connector, but it was definitely worth it. If your connector pops off as easily as this one, I strongly suggest replacing it. It's a tedious job, but definitely worth it.

[Level42]

Today I received a pretty big "envelope" from Germany:









This is not some kind of "look-a-like" stuff, it is THE SAME stuff as the original. Notice the structure on the back. The color is darker on the original scrap piece because of the glue !!!!!








A BIG  and  to my friend Andreas !!!

It's kind of funny to know that this vinyl comes from a place pretty close to where I picked up the actual machine

Andreas warned me that cutting it is really tough. So I will have to be REALLY careful when making the holes for the coindoor and "marquee". He suggested cutting a model in wood first......anyone ever worked with this stuff before. It's not vinyl but laminate I think. It's really stiff.

[zorg]

router is a good tool for that, make a template, stick it on the elaminate, sitck another piece of wood on top of them, clamp everything firmly.

Drill a hole where's your coind door will be.

use a copy tool on the routeur and here you are

[Level42]

Yikes. Was afraid of that. Everybody knows about my cab building skills....... (non existant). I'll ask my brother, he's good with this kind of work. I definitely do _not_ want to screw this up....

[Level42]

Received a set of imperial sized tools to be able to work on the trackball (great to have a good contact with the guy that orders our tools for work ).

So:







Working on it, you gotta admire the construction of this thing. Looks like it would have been sturdy enough for NASA requirements......must have cost a lot to produce.

O by the way, one of those inbus bolts were even the wrong size for my tool-set. I guess it was the 128/4096 size (DAMN  !) Luckily those bolts have those "grip" marks on the side of the head and I was able to remove them with pliers.

[RayB]

Do you get vibration now?
Btw, I love Atari engineering. You can adjust the position of the "corner" bearing post so that as the rollers wear down, you move the post to shrink the gap that gets inevitably created as the ball "sinks" down into the roller wear groove. However, i found after reassambling my trackballs, I just couldn't get them to roll without vibration. 

[Level42]

Uh, no not at all. This is the second trackball I did. The first was the plastic housed 2.25" on the Centi.
Didn't notice that it was able to adjust that.

The real problem is that I seem to have misplaced the bolts to fix it to the CP so I can't give it a proper test-drive. Not that I have much time for that.....need to go back to work on the gameroom

[Level42]

Hah ! Today I was cleaning out the gameroom to start painting and I cleaned a lot of my tools that were in a box. Guess what was at the very bottom of the box ? The bolts

Installed the trackball and it works like a charm.

[Level42]

I decided to sell this machine.

I've got a reservation on it.

[Level42]

Sold. It will be going to a very good place indeed, the arcade museum in Denmark !

http://www.playright.info/museum.php