OMG What have I gotten myself into -- 10 MORE CABS!

[Jasonmm]

Can I bring 1 cab and 2 monitors for you to look at real quick ? Inbetween slices .... J

[VanillaGorilla]

I'm in if we can agree on a date, hopefully on a Friday or Saturday? I can also offer an empty seat on the ride up if anyone needs one.

Can I bring 1 cab and 2 monitors for you to look at real quick ? Inbetween slices .... J

So are we having a fix em' up or an arcade party? I have a couple of chassis that could use some lovin too

[smalltownguy]

No offense to you all, but I just brought 9 cabs back from the dead (or dying) in 6 weeks. If it's all the same to you all, I'd rather take some time to enjoy PLAYING the fruits of my labor at this point.

I'll be more than happy to help out a fellow BYOAC'er in need...but just PM me and I'll see what I can do.

[smalltownguy]

So it snows here last Friday, and in my haste to get the garage re-organized and cabs moved to the basement, I quickly make the space I need to park the car in the garage.

And then I got screwed.

Literally.



That, my friends, is exactly what it looks like. Screws. More spefically, screws that have the heads worn off. How? By riding around in my cars tires for a couple hundred miles. Guess that's my punishment for not sweeping well enough. Oh well. At least I work at a car dealership so plugging the tires was pretty easy

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

+1 to automotive work benefits! We've do hazardous waste transportation so we've got a full diesel/machine shop.
We also shred old tires, so i've had every tire on every vehicle i drive plugged at least once after running over left over tire wire.

where are our hover cars, damnit.

[BobA]

I've had studded tires but those were definitely pointed in the wrong direction. 

[jipp]

well im a hour from pehonix in apache junction.. i guess arizona is quite popular   heh.. this time of year you are all welcome to call it home    even tho i have a bad leg so i do enjoy the summers as long as i can get out of the heat in a/c for a bit.  heh nice work on keeping the cabs alive.

safe to say when i was a kid arcades where every where.. not so much rather sad..  lots of good memories i have of arcades, ooo girls, and game s:D

chris.

[yotsuya]

Jipp-

Did you ever go to an arcade in Mesa called Starship Fantasy? I never had a chance to, but I heard it was awesome.

[JustMichael]

That, my friends, is exactly what it looks like. Screws. More spefically, screws that have the heads worn off. How? By riding around in my cars tires for a couple hundred miles. Guess that's my punishment for not sweeping well enough. Oh well. At least I work at a car dealership so plugging the tires was pretty easy

So you weren't making a set of "redneck" studded tires?

[jipp]

yotsuya -
  Hi, im afraid i hvae not heard of it.  Im a transplant moving here 10 years ago. i was in a bad accident, shattered my left leg hitting a tree on a dirt bike. had to crawl for two days with compound fracture.. drag my self a mile and half in two days sat,sun.. for help. took me two years to learn to walk.  fake knee in 2004.  died for 2 mins.. etc..   doctors told me AZ would be good for my bones.  thats the short version of how i ended up in the desert.  i bet it was a great arcade tho.. phoenix is huge!!! 

i grew up in Oregon, and went to the local .5 arcade in Portland.  you spent 5.00 for kids probably more for adults..  to get in and all the games were .5 some where two nickles..  was some great years back in the day.   great times and that arcade was open for a long long time so i guess they made a profit..

chris.

[HaRuMaN]

A good arcade to visit in Phoenix if you haven't been there yet is Castles 'n' Coasters.  2 floors of arcade goodness, and a bunch of pins.

[yotsuya]

Visit Castles N' Coasters? 

I pretty much grew up there! I take my daughter there now! Best place in town for games.

I was just in Portland this summer. My son moved there last year.

[HaRuMaN]

We've had a couple of forum meet ups there...  good times.   

[yotsuya]

I gotta get in on the next one! I'm going there for a corporate Christmas party in two weeks, but I'm actually just 5 minutes away.

[smalltownguy]

OK folks, after much deliberation, I have decided to let the Mortal Kombat cab go up for sale. I've already replaced it on location with another Mortal Kombat cab, so this one can now be sold. There was some concern as to the whole 'rebooting' issue, but I simply cannot get the problem to repeat itself outside of the pizzeria. I'm convinced it's an amperage issue. There were simply too many games running on 1 circuit at the pizzeria. At home, I ran it for 5 days straight in my garage with multiple play sessions and never even a hiccup. So, off to Craigslist it goes. I'm sure someone will get a LOT of enjoyment out of it. I know I sure had fun

http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/wsh/vgm/2077049291.html

[eds1275]

Cheesiest ad EVER! lol I like it.

[ivwshane]

I must say I really enjoyed this thread! Thanks for all the pics!

[Jdurg]

Simply amazing thread.  Thanks for the read!  My interest in building a MAME cabinet has slowly been returning for me lately.  Back in the fall of 2007 I bought my first house and the idea of building my own arcade cabinet was running high.  Had all the plans worked out, built myself a great control panel, picked up a VERY badly beaten up coin door and restored it to brand new condition, then realized one major thing;  I have absolutely no room in my house for an arcade cabinet aside from a spare room upstairs, and there is no possible way for me to get it up there without dismantling my whole house.  lol.  Ah well.  On the bright side, I still have the parts for building one and in the future, when a new house comes my way due to years and years of saving up money, or winning the lottery, I'll be building my own.

I do have to say that with the experience I gained building the control panel and restoring the coin door, I could see myself building a little "box on wheels" with the control panel and coin door built into it, and the computer and parts inside so that I could just roll it to wherever I have a TV setup and get some playing.  Or I could take the parts from the control panel and make a bunch of individual Joysticks that I could plug into my laptop and play with those.  (I can also hook my laptop up to my A/V receiver, and use the controllers to play on my 42" hi-def TV in my living room with the high quality speaker system.  Hmmmm........

Anyway, got off-topic there, but thanks for posting this thread.  Great inspiration and a great story.   

[smalltownguy]

Thanks everyone for the kind words on this thread! I never knew that keeping a record of my bumbling adventures with this project would spawn into something so huge.

Just to let everyone know, I have NOT walked away from what's left on this. There are, to date, a few things that I'm still working on:

1. Head on: I've successfully read the manual, and cleaned the main PCB. I need to test fire this machine to see if the power board works or not. Next will be to see if there's neck glow.
2. The pizza joint: I've had zero calls in the past 6 weeks. 2 weeks ago I strolled through to make sure everything was still working. All still looks good! I see that someone trumped my high score on the Ms Pac. I'll have to do something abou that.
3. Monitors, monitors everywhere: I have 3 complete monitors (G07, Disco, WG19K49xx) in various stages of 'working-ness' that need attention. I also have 4 complete chassis - 2 that work, and 2 that need work.
4. Conclusion, and moving on to Ms Pac: If and when I can ever clean out my accumulation of goodies in my shop, I will begin my Ms Pac resto. I'm hoping that someone sprung for a complete wiring harness setup for me for Christmas from Bob Roberts

That's all I've got for now. FYI, Arkanoid II is currently residing in my shop, since it has no home. I told the owner I'm keeping it safe for him.

[smalltownguy]

Wow, it's been 5 months since this thread started. There's a TON of stuff still going on with this project.

The Head On cab has been cleaned up as much as I can. The board freezes during post. I can't see throwing this cab out, though. I think I'll keep the original hardware in there, and I will grab an old PIII mobo off the shelf and do a custom linux/mame setup booting directly to Head On. I'll drop a 19" VGA monitor in there. No one will know the difference

Paradise Pizza: The free food just keeps coming...and no calls. I'm actually kind of proud about that. It means I did a good job shopping the machines.

Monitors, monitors, monitors: The G07 has been completely rebuilt. The disco is still in the 'troubleshooting' stage. The 4900 still need a cap kit done.

Ms Pac: still on the fence here. I may just plunk down some $$$ and buy a restored Ms pac from someone here in the BYOAC/KLOV community. My time is worth the ching.

On a related note: I was finally able to obtain a 19" TV with a CR-31 tube today. So the chassis from the Final Fight now finally has a home. But the horizontal width coil is frozen - the slug is stuck. I warmed up the monitor, then shut it down, lubed the tube with silicone spray, and worked the slug back and forth with my plastic tool -- no luck. Anyone have any other ideas? If I can't get this unstuck I'm going to change out the width cap to narrow the pic a bit. I suppose I should check the B+ too.

[Funnel]

Yay this thread is alive again! Did you ordered pizza for your Superbowl party? 

[DirtyDachshunds]

Sounds like your on the path to free pizza for life.

[smalltownguy]

Yes I did order pizza for the big game, but not the Superbowl. I had friends over for the Packers / Bears game, which was MUCH more important for folks around here (especially the Bears fans....)


They have a party pizza that's great - it's basically 2 extra large pizzas laid side by side (like the mastercard logo). It's HUGE.

My resurrected Wells Gardner 19K7951 needs a cap kit, and I'm not too impressed with how the TV yoke looks on the tube. Since the cap kit needs to be done anyway, I'll do that first and then see how things look. If I can't get a decent enough picture going then I'll have to swap in a used yoke I have. The convergence is JUST a bit off.

Tonight I'll get some more pretty pictures up.

[garwil]

Sorry to derail your thread but I was absolutely seething when I saw Jay Cutler's "I've Quit" face when he was sat on the sidelines. And I'm talking about before he hurt his knee. I'm still angry about it now lol!

[smalltownguy]

Heheh....this one?

 

[yotsuya]

Maybe someone should have offered Jay a slice of free pizza?

[Epyx]

Awesome work on those cabs...love the frankenstein crt transplant as well but that is way out of my comfort zone. 

[smalltownguy]

I think you need to have a post now and then mentioning how much weight you're gaining eating all this pizza

Good job on fixing these beasts!

Funny you mention that....I started a weight loss plan 2/15. I'm down 12.5 pounds since then. Dr. says my LDL's are too high. Looks like I'll be laying off the pizza for a while.

Awesome work on those cabs...love the frankenstein crt transplant as well but that is way out of my comfort zone. 

Thanks, Epyx, your Aliens cab was truly an inspiration for me to get started on my Ms Pac resto. Your attention to detail and fine work is top notch. Thanks for reading!

Sorry for the lack of updates here folks, I've sort of been stuck on my Atari Disco monitor lately (STILL troubleshooting it) as well as getting my Ms Pac restoration underway. I've been spending an inordinate amount of time over on the KLOV forums. I have a thread similar to this one over there, and I've been updating it a bit more regularly.

[smalltownguy]

Well, I've gone ahead and done it again....I've stumbled across 10 MORE CABS!

This time, it's an owner of a local IT repair shop about 8 miles north of me. The owner there, Chuck, is a really nice guy who's also into classic arcade games, but he's more into the web design/virus removal/computer sales end of things, and not so much into the PCB and monitor repair end of things -- yet.

He's got 10 cabs in various stages of functionality that he wants help with. Am I a glutton for punishment? Maybe.

1. Surf Planet - needs monitor work
2. Rampage (dedicated) - needs monitor and sound pcb work
3. Killer Instict 2 (TMNT conversion) - needs monitor work
4. Final Fight - (Taito conversion, maybe zookeeper?) - needs controls work
5. Sharpshooter - works great
6. Soul Edge (dynamo cab) - needs monitor work
7. Marvel vs Capcom (blue) - needs monitor work
8. Marvel vs Capcom (red) - needs monitor work
9. Primal Rage - currently a police trainer, needs to be 'deconverted' back to a dedicated PR
10. NBA Jam Maximum Hangtime - needs monitor work

I know, I know, pics or it didn't happen....I'll get pics by tomorrow.

This is going to be fun!
 

[BobA]

Not as much fun as Pizza but maybe he has some spare gear around.

[yotsuya]

That's awesome! How are you going to be compensated for your time?

[AlienInferno]

What's going to happen to the police trainer parts when it's deconverted back to a Primal Rage?

[ArcadeAddict77]

Again? Wow, impressed and excellent all at the same time. After reading through this thread with the last 10 I am eager to see you bringing more cabs back to their glory days 

Rock on!

[patm95]

That's awesome dude.  You are going to be a master at fixing cabs by the time you are done.

[smalltownguy]

As promised -- pics! Can anyone identify the non-dedicated cabs?

[Vigo]

Final Fight is a Taito cab, probably was an arkanoid...

Edit: Actually I take back the Arkanoid on account of the horizontal screen....but I can't think of what other taito games commonly used the white decals.....Elevator action? 

[leapinlew]

Those aren't bad conversions. Did this guy ever actually play primal rage? Blech.

[Funnel]

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! More smalltownguy threads! Awesome! Really loved your first post on this thread, it was very informative. Please keep it that way and post a lot of info for us noobies.

[Rick]

Here's my problem.  "Smalltownguy" lives in a small town (obviously) and yet, he's found more than TWENTY arcade cabinets to work on.  I live in a 'medium-sized' town, and dammit if I cannot find a single arcade game to play ANYWHERE around here!

       

 

[yotsuya]

That's why you need to finish building your own!!!