Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Arcade Collecting => Restorations & repair => Topic started by: jspicher on June 05, 2011, 09:01:58 pm
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Hey there guys,
I recently purchased a Centipede cabaret that l'm going to be touching up a bit and l wanted to add a backlight to the marquee area. As many of you may know the marquee on the mini's is not lit, but has a hole cut out for it and everything, they must'a made a last minute decision to not go with a back light to reduce cost.
Anyway l wanted to know if anyone could give me a little info about what wires/where l could splice into to power a small strip of either LEDs or a Florentia lamp behind it. Any ideas?
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It's crossed my mind to do on mine, but I never bothered. Using LEDs, you'd want to tap into the 12v, but I would worry about it affecting the game board.
You could use a florescent tube style light, hooked into the AC, but then you could be looking at heat issues which I suspect was the real reason not to include them. Previous cabaret games from Atari had the marquees lit (eg: Missile Command).
Now that I think about it some more, maybe the same voltage lines that illuminate the coin slots could illuminate some lights in that area.
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I'm not sure about the centipede cabaret specifics, but a general hands-off approach to add additional lighting without splicing would be to just buy plug-in lighting and a smart strip power surge protector. Pull the power cord from the cabinet inside and replace it with the power cable from the smart strip.
Then just plug your independent lighting and cabinet power cables into the power strip on the inside of your cabinet. Once the cabinet is closed, nobody will see the difference. Plus you cabinet has surge protection and you didn't do any splicing. Since it is a smart strip, the lights will automatically turn off when you power down your cabinet.
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Way to think outside the box... nice idea!
I'm not sure about the centipede cabaret specifics, but a general hands-off approach to add additional lighting without splicing would be to just buy plug-in lighting and a smart strip power surge protector. Pull the power cord from the cabinet inside and replace it with the power cable from the smart strip.
Then just plug your independent lighting and cabinet power cables into the power strip on the inside of your cabinet. Once the cabinet is closed, nobody will see the difference. Plus you cabinet has surge protection and you didn't do any splicing. Since it is a smart strip, the lights will automatically turn off when you power down your cabinet.
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I just put this in my MAME cabinet. It's independently plugged into the surge protector. No splicing Indeed.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IV5PCY (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IV5PCY)
The individual LEDS showed up as isolated dots of light so I had to move the bar back, about 4-5 inches, from the Marquee before they went away and there was good wash of light. They create minimal amounts of heat and I've heard of people installing two of these to make them even brighter. I was happy with the amount of light it gave but ymmv. See pics below of on and off with some ambient daytime light.
(http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t195/heyyoumillionaires/Arcade%20Machine/DSC_4123.jpg)
(http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t195/heyyoumillionaires/Arcade%20Machine/DSC_4125.jpg)
There are smaller ones available too in case the 21" is too long. That's what she said... :laugh2: (sorry)