1st Generation Taito upright

[JoyMonkey]

1st generation Taito cabinets are relatively rare these days, so when this one showed up on Craigslist I figured I might as well pick it up and do something with it. It's in a little worse shape than I had hoped for. Before I picked it up I was crossing my fingers for an immaculate Crazy Climber; turns out it's a Polaris cabinet that looks like it's seen plenty of action.  The cabinet itself is good and solid, and the monitor (a WG 4600) looks like it's in good shape and tested fine.

Since it would be pretty much impossible to fully restore it to a shiny Polaris machine, I'm going to trace the sideart then repaint the sides and then re-apply the Taito designs. I'll put in a basic control panel with a Jamma wiring harness and an old Dell Optiplex with a J-Pac. That way, if I ever find a Polaris PCB I can convert it back fairly easily.

[spacies]

Those cabinets are one of the coolest shapes ever.

I have 2 of those and 1 is an original Taito Defender.

They are nice and light because of the ply but are incredibly flimsy when you remove the back door.

Its a good buy.

Oh yeah, I hate those side bolts, lol.

[JoyMonkey]

I searched around but couldn't find any good images of the Taito sideart. There is a very accurate version of the 2nd generation Taito sideart in the art library, but these 1st generation cabinets are a different size, shape and the art itself is really different. So I thought I try tracing it myself and then vectorizing it so I can make a vinyl paintmask of it later. <-- Notice how the top of the cabinet is perfectly flat, unlike the 2nd generation cabinets (right) which have a slanted top, different curve, and completely different artwork. So I set about tracing the cabinets side. To start with I taped a sheet of tracing paper to the cabinets side and started to trace out each letter of the Taito text with a felt-tip pen. Once I had the T traced I checked it against the other T to make sure they matched each other. For the O I thought I'd try putting the office scanner flat against it and scan it in a few sections, then put the scans together in Photoshop. Then I started vectorizing both of them in Corel Draw. I think I'll use a different scanner for the A and the I. To trace the whole side of the cabinet I first plotted out a 2" grid on a roll of light plotter paper. I then lined up the grid with the top and back of the cabinet and traced the contours of the cabinet side with a pencil and red felt-tipped pen. I noted the positions of each letter and each element of the sideart design. Now I've got the cabinet side traced out like this, it'll make it much easier to measure when the time comes to reproduce the sideart. I'll make these files available to everyone and might also put together a cabinet plan sheet similar to Jakobuds plans, for anyone that wants to build one of these cabinets from scratch.

[JoyMonkey]

Now that I've got the documentation of the design started, I thought I'd take a break and put together a control panel. I machined a quick test panel out of 1/8" aluminum. I counter-sank the bolts for the latch clips, so the control panel surface would be nice and flat.


Once I confirmed that the panel latches were in the right position, I threw together a control panel layout with two 8-way joysticks and three buttons per stick. I used a couple of 8-way Bao-Lian sticks that were collecting dust at home, I also drilled mounting holes for the usual Happ/Wico joysticks - so if I end up hating these joysticks I can throw in another pair easily.


I'd like to get this cabinet up and running quickly so everyone at work will stop asking me when they can play it. So I'll probably wire it up during the week and it'll be playable while I work on it over the next few weeks. Next on the to-do list is wire up a new Jamma harness and hook up the PC and J-Pac.

[dweebs0r]

Darn you, JoyMonkey!!

Not only are you better at Xbox mods than me but you build better cabinets.   

That looks great. 

-D

[shardian]

I get so jealous with everyone whipping out their Taito cabinets the last week or so. I backburnered mine, but now it will come back to the forefront...but it'll probably still sit.

Anyways, nice job on stenciling the sideart. Where would this hobby be without people doing things like this?

[JoyMonkey]

Today I wired up a Jamma connector and played a few quick games of Robotron using an old PC and AdvanceMAME. The monitor seems to be in good shape, my own gripe is that the vhold seems to be a tiny bit jittery. That could also be my AdvanceMAME config settings to blame though. The Bao-Lian joysticks will take a little getting used to; the spring seems weak so they flop around a little too easily for my liking.
Tomorrow I'll try out a Windows PC and the new Soft-15KHz utility. Once I'm done testing a couple of things out it's back to tracing the sideart.

[JoyMonkey]

Today I took the coin-door apart, sanded it and primed it.

Taking it apart took a lot longer than I expected, but after about an hour I had all the old rusty nuts and bolts out and then removed the Taito logo plate with a razor blade. I used a little Grog adhesive remover on the sticky old adhesive that the logo plate left behind.

Then I sanded the living crap out of it and hit it with a coat of primer.

Before:


Sanding:

Primed:

[myclone]

hey Joy nice work,
i found this post threw goggle. i have the same cabinet. believe it or not i paid the same money.
I'm looking forward to how your making out, especially with the stencils.
anything i can do for reference?
theres a reasonable Polaris PCB on eBay now http://cgi.ebay.com/TAITO-POLARIS-GOOD-VIDEO-GAME-BOARDS-MANUALS-/270591063429?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item3f007bf585
the control panels for our machines originally looked like in the Polaris flyer
5/8's pressboard with metal on top.
i think my machine was a frog and spiders, i found a factory tag in the coin door with "frog" on it
cheers