Arcade Collecting > Restorations & repair
CHICKEN RESTORE LIKE A ROBOT (Berzerk) *IT LIVES*
hatrick:
Right on! I love Berzerk. I completely suck at it, but I Love playing mine. The taunting from the robots really makes the game. Damn you Evil Otto!
ChadTower:
Okay, back to this. Now there is substantial progress. :)
I never could get the colors right on that k7000. The best I could get was back to where the original chassis was to begin with. Probably spent 3 hours just on color adjustment. I couldn't even get a pure white without a video signal - it never got closer than a grey/blue.
I even tried swapping out the game's color board. Berzerk isn't actually generated in color, it passes the game signal through a small PCB that adds color before it gets to the monitor. It was originally intended to be a black and white game but they correctly recognized that with color games hitting the market they better get Berzerk in color too or nobody would buy it, speech or not. The change in color board didn't change a thing.
At this point I decided if the problem isn't in the color board... and it's consistent across two chassis... gotta be in the tube. I put forth some effort to find a full replacement monitor but although I would usually get several responses to WTB ads nobody would ever actually set up a time for me to show up with cash in hand. Got fed up with that, too, and I don't ever plan on having many raster vids...
So I decided to check out the scan converter sold here. Some forum searching turned up one solid positive review and a lot of posts asking if anyone had bought one. I bought one.
ChadTower:
The converter came in about ten days, well packed, drop shipped from Canada despite clearly being a Chinese product. It came with cables for power and a couple of different types of video in. Connectors attached for the converter and nothing on the other end so you can easily attach your own connectors.
I had a spare 5v-2A wall wart so I used that for power.
<pic placeholder for power>
Snagged a late model 19" VGA monitor off Freecycle (people are just dying to give away their VGA CRTs). Made a quick adapter to get video from the Berzerk harness and fired it up.
<pic placeholder for adapter/video line>
Took a little menu tweaking to get the video perfect but the firmware in the converter is good - once you find how to change the language from Chinese to English. The game displays perfectly. Colors are crisp, black is true black (and that is important in Berzerk), I'm very happy with it.
ChadTower:
So next issue here is mounting this VGA monitor in the cabinet. I thought this was going to be difficult but it turned out to be very simple.
I wanted it to be as close to original as possible so I used the original plywood frame. In Berzerk this has bolts through the side of the cabinet so I wanted to keep it that way.
PLEASE NOTE THAT MY SON IS WORKING THE CAMERA FOR PROJECTS NOW AND HE'S VERY ENTHUSIASTIC
The only real challenge here is that this little lip of metal stuck out too far to fit onto that frame. Take note of the adjustment PCB hanging off there - that's going to be a small issue in a minute.
We found a quick solution to that.
Gone!
ChadTower:
With that piece of metal we were free to get this baby mounted to the frame.
Ryan attaches the corner brackets to the frame. These are standard 90 degree brackets we picked out at Lowe's after trying and deciding against 3-4 other potential solutions. These are attached via bolts in through-holes with washers on both sides for support. I did all the measuring and drilling - Ryan did the securing.
Fully mounted from the backside (couldn't find a way to type that without snickering).
From the front. My intention was to run that adjustment PCB wire through that little opening and mount it on the protruding piece on the front. As you can see I forgot about that when I mounted the monitor. I had to take it back off and do it again. :P
I was a little bit nervous that those CRT tabs were not designed to bear weight and would either be shaky or snap off when I tried to put the monitor in the cab. I was wrong. They held up great and I had no issues.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version