What will I get working this weekend?

[paigeoliver]

I have vowed to get at least ONE of my projects up and running this weekend. I have gotten to the point now where I have more stuff that doesn't work than I have that does.

Here are the details.

Gottlieb Force II pinball.

Just got this one, I have done a few repairs on it already. Attract mode works, test mode works. Gameplay stops after around a half second. Definitely has two bad solenoids. Driver board is good, all other solenoids check out. All rams and roms are good.

Space Firebird Mini

Empty cabinet. Will be Mame. I have all parts to complete.

Tournament Solitaire Mini

I will take delivery of this saturday. Has keyboard error, I have already been emailed the fix information from a technician who has worked on these before.

Time Pilot cocktail.

Monitor is pulsing the HV. Recently developed problem, I suspect the flyback.

Pong Clone.

Empty cabinet, I have all parts to complete this.

Battlezone.

Empty cabinet, will be Mame, I have all parts to complete this.

All of them (I have faith in you).

Probably not going to happen. Unless this somehow becomes a 9 day weekend.

None of them, you will meet a girl friday and not get around to game fixing!

Probably not going to happen. I have had approximately 2 dates and two rejections this year, and don't even know any single girls that I haven't already asked out in the past.

[CitznFish]

how about you come to my house and help me get my Popeye running.

Markline Vending pretty much admitted they sent me a bad power supply,  so I'm going to try a switching one. if that doesn't work I'll try reflowing the solder joints then a cap kit

You're having trouble meeting women?  When there is all the Single Russian women out there. LOL


http://www.single-russian-woman.com/

[NiN^_^NiN]

HAHAHA very funny   *quckily check the web address*  

[eightbit]

So what got done?

[paigeoliver]

Ok, the answer was

Tournament Solitaire.

The cabinet might as well be fresh out of the crate. Looks brand new, with the exception of EIGHT lockbar holes. The monitor has a great picture, and the coin door has a nice working bill acceptor on it. The coin door also has a slot for quarters, but there is nothing behind it, no mechs, no switch, even the holder for the mech is gone.

The keyboard problem WAS a battery issue. Unfortunately, even replacing the battery did not fix it (motherboard just constantly repeats the post).

I pulled the custom cards off the motherboard, and tried them in a spare 486 motherboard. Eventually after much tweaking I got it to come up. I didn't get it to fully come up though, it required a sound card on a certain IRQ and address, and the motherboard I used had the onboard video at that address.

Anyway, eventually I just set all the custom cards for the game aside, and just stuck a small form factor P2 400 in place of the original computer. This was also a pain in the butt, mainly because I had to guess at the trackball button connections. In a truly genius decision they didn't wire the buttons to the serial port along with the trackball, but instead they wired them to an ISA input card. Anyway, I eventually figured out how to wire the buttons through the serial trackball input PCB. At that point I slapped it back together, played a game of windows Solitaire, and then went to work.


Stuff inside that may be of interest to BYOACers.

ISA Rom boot card with ROMDOS and Tournament Solitaire installed on it. New roms could make this all kinds of useful. Stick this in a computer and the computer WILL boot from it.

ISA interface card. I believe that this is an older version of that massively expensive Happ controls CIB interface kit. It has a config rom on it, that I assume would have to be swapped out to take full advantage of the board (Tournament solitaire was only using a few inputs).

Happ trackball to serial port converter PCB.

2.5" Happ trackball.

[paigeoliver]

Oh, and the main reason for the almost complete lack of dating activity is this.

I am a born again Christian, which means I am a member of a subculture in which almost EVERYONE is married by age 22 or 23 (especially the girls). Unfortunately I am 26, and not getting any younger. I only know one girl older than 21 who isn't already married, and she is in Texas right now (I am still trying though). Pretty much every girl I know between the age of 18 and 21 is away at college. That leaves me with one nearly 19 year old girl who already turned me down (nicely though), Sarah who is far away in Texas for a few more months (and who truthfully never seemed very interested anyway), and Lorelei (21, recent college graduate, but I have known her since she was 12, there have never been any sparks).

Both my dates this year were with "Mary", who was my best friend's wife's roommate from college. She lives far away though, and nothing is going to happen there (especially since we got into an arguement and kind of stopped speaking).

[Buddabing]

Oh, and the main reason for the almost complete lack of dating activity is this.

I am a born again Christian, which means I am a member of a subculture in which almost EVERYONE is married by age 22 or 23 (especially the girls). Unfortunately I am 26, and not getting any younger. I only know one girl older than 21 who isn't already married, and she is in Texas right now (I am still trying though). Pretty much every girl I know between the age of 18 and 21 is away at college. That leaves me with one nearly 19 year old girl who already turned me down (nicely though), Sarah who is far away in Texas for a few more months (and who truthfully never seemed very interested anyway), and Lorelei (21, recent college graduate, but I have known her since she was 12, there have never been any sparks).

Both my dates this year were with "Mary", who was my best friend's wife's roommate from college. She lives far away though, and nothing is going to happen there (especially since we got into an arguement and kind of stopped speaking).

I don't think you have to date only Christians. I know plenty of Christians whose spouses were saved after they were married.

Maybe God put you on this earth for the express purpose of saving someone you are dating/are married to.

After all, you and I, and Sinner too, are sinners, and so are any Christian women you may meet and date.

As Rampy would say, "shrug". Pray over it and ask God what to do.

Good luck!
Buddabing

[paigeoliver]

and then many years later I didn't want this floating around so I edited it.

Now as far as games go.

Today I got the monitor mounted in the Space Firebird. That was a real adventure. I used a decased computer monitor mounted on a slab of wood. After about 6 attempts I managed to get it mounted perfectly centered, and with all the original controls accessable, and with the monitor boards firmly mounted.

I was unable to use the original black plastic bezel (didn't quite match up). So I added a piece of smoked plexi. That (combined with the fact that the Space Firebird plexi is also smoked) completely hid the lack of plastic bezel.

I am using the original control panel, and all the original buttons. The original joystick is gone though, so I am using an NOS Happs Universal that I had laying around. That is the perfect choice for this panel, as it didn't have visible joystick bolt holes, and the design on the universal hides the large left-right slot that the original 2-way rode in.

For the PC I am using an Athlon 650 with 128 RAM, mounted in the motherboard cage that was originally in the Solitaire Challenge cabinet.

I haven't decided on a frontend yet. Maybe arcadeOS? Just because I am already using Mamewah and Advancemenu on other cabs.

[eightbit]

I haven't decided on a frontend yet. Maybe arcadeOS? Just because I am already using Mamewah and Advancemenu on other cabs.

Very interesting, now why use different front ends? I want to switch both my cabs to Mamewah. I've learned how to use it and have started tweaking on it so I can really take advantage of what it can do. I also don't like to have to babysit my games when theres people playing them so I like a consistant interface.

[paigeoliver]

I haven't decided on a frontend yet. Maybe arcadeOS? Just because I am already using Mamewah and Advancemenu on other cabs.

Very interesting, now why use different front ends? I want to switch both my cabs to Mamewah. I've learned how to use it and have started tweaking on it so I can really take advantage of what it can do. I also don't like to have to babysit my games when theres people playing them so I like a consistant interface.

Well, all my cabinets have to be different. I like the fact that they all have totally different feels. Each one is very different. Different controls, monitor setups, cabinets. They all feel so completely different that I don't want to break that by using the same frontend twice.

As far as friends are concerned, all they need to know is that the joystick picks the game, and the first button launches the game. But usually when I have friends over I just load up a decent game on each cab and leave them that way.

Got a bit more work done today. I fixed my friends Super Strike machine, then I added switches on the coin reject buttons on my Space Firebird mini (which had got to be one of the cleanest installs I have ever done, as I found a set of microswitches with roller activators mounted on metal frames in my parts box, they bolted up perfectly).