New Pac Man Project

[Q*Bert_OP]

Here is my Pac Man MAME project. I resued it fom a warehouse full of converted classics. When I bought it, it was painted black and very beaten up with Mission XX inside it.

Let me know what you think.

[Q*Bert_OP]

Here is a pic of the cab arter stripping it of mission xx parts.

[Q*Bert_OP]

I tried my hardest to save the original pac man art 

[Q*Bert_OP]

Here the cabinet is ready for some paint.

[SuperGunGuru]

Glad to see you saved a cab, especially one as classic as Pac. 

[Q*Bert_OP]

Sorry to bring up an old thread...I found more before pics

[Q*Bert_OP]

In the truck, on the way home:

[Q*Bert_OP]

What an ugly game!

[Q*Bert_OP]

A look inside. Notice the part of the pacman manual stuck to the bottom...

[AlanS17]

A look inside. Notice the part of the pacman manual stuck to the bottom...

Yup, that's what south TX humidity will do to a machine (or maybe an ice-cold Coke). I've got 4 NES consoles at home that are rusted from the inside out.

[Q*Bert_OP]

What I want to know is how and why someone managed to slip a chip bag in there.

[AlanS17]

How? Pry bar or slobbish operator. Why? Because they could.

[arcadefever]

waaaaaaaaa that really nice to bring back to life the pac man
i did the same with a galaga cabinet who was transform into 8liner game.

[SuperGunGuru]

A look inside. Notice the part of the pacman manual stuck to the bottom...

Heh reminds me of some cabs I saved from a warehouse. Two of them had manual remnants in the bottom. I can only assume a rat, racoon, or some other creature used them to make a nest in the bottom of the cabinet. 

[TurboC--]

Ohhhhh.  Ouch.  About the artwork that is.  What did you use to try to uncover it?  Can't tell for sure but looks like some massive gouges from a scraper?  I rescued my Pac-Man artwork from underneath the Horrid Blackness(tm) with a $26 heat gun, 2" metal scraper, and all the finesse, patience, and endurance I could muster.  Very far from perfect, but extremely salvageable.  I plan to repaint the large areas soon, along with lots of touch ups.  It will look sweet, and will be the true original (more or less).  One side (the second one I did) actually looks mighty fine as-is, all things considered.  Lots of black smear on the first side I did, though. 

If anyone in the Pittsburgh area has any real classic cab art they want to uncover but are too afraid to try, my heat gun and I could lend a hand.  I wouldn't mind doing another one.  I find it rewarding, like buried treasure...

[Q*Bert_OP]

Ohhhhh.

[TurboC--]

Yes, I'm not surprised.  Someone else did a similar thing to a Pac cab using goof off (2).  I was really paranoid, so I did a lot of research, and narrowed it down to heat gun or goof off.  Went for the heat gun and then stripped a small section.  It worked, but I gouged the artwork a few times and it also left black streaks from melted latex paint, so I put it on hold until I tried Goof Off.  I tried that stuff for all of about 5 seconds!  Smear, smear, smear!  I knew instantly there was no way I could get it more precisely using any kind of chemical like that.  I still bet there is SOME kind of chemical out there, that if applied properly, will make the latex just disintegrate enough to be scraped right off, but I've yet to find it.  So, I went to town with the heat gun.  It's too bad it took a whole 1 side of my cab to teach me the proper method (even after reading how other people did it.) 

Objectively, when used properly the heat gun is pretty damn amazing.  If you're careful and do it right, top latex just falls right off leaving pristine oil-based art underneath.  There's SO many things you have to keep straight all at once though.  You have to wipe off the scraper after EVERY single pass (I eventually started wiping the scraper on my pants, very quick!  ).  You have to periodically cool down the scraper since it gets flaming hot and hurts the artwork on its own (bucket of cold water).  Forget about a plastic one! (would be nice though...)  You have to scrape at the right angle (cornerwise down worked best for me) so the paint falls in front of your scraping rather than getting in the way.  You have to know just the right amount of heat to apply to loosen all of the latex without burning the artwork or softening it too much so you might scrape it away.  You have to hold the scraper at as low an angle as you can to the surface, to minimize gouging.  You have to use just the right amount of force (solid, yet not forceful) to get all of the latex but not gouge the artwork.  There's probably a ton more tips I could give, and even I don't do a perfect job yet.  Someone did a Joust this way with almost no artwork damage at all.  They must have been damn masters at it, because even after reading their tips it was NOT as easy as they made it look. 

Well, anyway, glad you restored a Pac-cab anyway.  New artwork isn't as satisfying as rescuing the original, but at least you tried. 

[Q*Bert_OP]

New artwork isn't as satisfying as rescuing the original, but at least you tried.

What Artwork

[AlanS17]

I've used Goof-Off on multiple cabs without issue.

[Q*Bert_OP]

*This thing has been giving me sooooo much trouble with it working in the past year, so I may go buy a real pac-man board set, and put an arcade monitor in it [/rant]

[AlanS17]

What's wrong with it?

[Q*Bert_OP]

What's wrong with it?

intermittenly the computer crashes and even won't start some times
Last year, the harddrive quit working , so I bought a new one.
The powersupply went out a few months ago, so I pulled one from another computer
It's driving me nucking futs

Now the computer wont work at all , and I still have the Pac man power brick

[Q*Bert_OP]

Now the graphics card is fried 

[going crazy!!!]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[/going crazy!!!]

[nullb0y]

do u leave it on?

[Q*Bert_OP]

do u leave it on?

no, it's only on for less than 3 hours a day, like a normal computer....it has more than sufficent cooling, the computer is just old?

[nullb0y]

my cab keeps having problems win xp is getting on my nerves reallly bad it hangs at the boot screen almost all th time im not shure why its doing it either

[Q*Bert_OP]

my cab keeps having problems win xp is getting on my nerves reallly bad it hangs at the boot screen almost all th time im not shure why its doing it either

Mine did that for awhile before the harddrive crashed...

[HighNoon]

I have been following this thread as I am currently restoring my first cab, also a Pac-Man.

I am planning on creating a project announcement when I get alittle further along.  However, I wanted to share what has helped me so far.

My cabinet was the victim of black paint and glued on laminate.  I had similar thoughts on what to use to remove these--- rubbing alcohol, goof-off, goof-off 2, etc.  Either they did nothing or they did way too much.

Then I tried one last option I had around the garage - odorless mineral spirits, yep, it works wonders.  It does not harm the original paint unless I stay in the same place for too long with too much pressure, even so it only makes my shop towel slightly yellow.  I'll hopefully get some pics up soon.

One word of advice on the mineral spirits, while it does work great for me it is by no means fast.  I really wanted to save the original artwork so I'm ok with the speed so far, to each his own.

Take care, and good work so far.

[nullb0y]

well this is the 2nd pc ive had in here i found out its win xp home not being sp 2 it has some issues with usb (plays back scene of win 98 crashing at debut confrence)

[RayB]

I was having crash problems this week. I took my ram cards out, blew off all the dust that had collected on them. Put them back in and have not crashed since.