Hey there! I got lucky Sunday night (no, not like that). I got a great deal on a somewhat rare item on Craigslist:

I’m not referring to the cat. He’s not that rare, there are loads of them all over town. I put the cat there for scale.

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Behold, the Orange-y Power of Q*Bert

Disclaimers

1. This post is going to be one part tutorial, and one part photo gallery. If you have a problem with that, you can bite my furry orange nose.

2. Warning! This post is a bit long, but it is SOOOO worth it.
3. The fabric looks like crap in some of the pictures, due to the flash. For some reason, it looks almost reflective when the flash hits it. It looks much nicer in person. You’ll have to trust me on that.

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What’s this, an arcade related post? Wow! Pretty crazy, I know….

I’ve been trying to get my games in working order for our Christmas party. For GTI Club, I’ve been struggling with a Wells Gardner U5000 (AKA steaming pile of horse crap) for awhile now and *think* I have that fixed.

The sound on my Q*Bert has been wrong for awhile now. I tried fixing this before and didn’t get anywhere with it. I didn’t think it was that bad, so I gave up for awhile.

I decided to take another crack at it. I thought that only one sound was wrong, the noise made when coily jumps off the board. I now realize that mine sounds pretty craptastic compared to how it should sound so I need to get this fixed even more now.

I figured this out by doing the sound test on Q*Bert in MAME. Here is how it should sound:

Here is how mine sounds:

Many of the sounds are missing or wrong.

There is a troubleshooting flowchart for Q*Bert sound boards here:
http://www.cademo.com/arcade/index.htm

When I last worked on this, I did quite a few things:

• Replaced the sockets for all socketed chips on the sound board, except for the SC01 speech chip at U14 (I didn’t have the right size socket for that)
• Replaced all the electrolytic capacitors on the sound board
• Fixed some issues with the header pins on the filter board
• Replaced A10 on the main board
• Replaced U16 on the sound board

For this new attempt at fixing it, I started by changing the socket for the speech chip at U14.

I didn’t have the right size socket, so I cut one in half:

That didn’t fix it, but at least I got to play with my soldering iron for awhile.

If I go by the flow chart, it looks like I should try replacing U15 next. However, I’ve read that U17 is also a common failure so I’m going to try changing that next. I don’t have any 74LS30 chips around so I just ordered a few. Maybe I’ll get lucky and that will take care of it. If not, maybe Santa’s elves will make me a new working sound board.

Hey there. I haven’t posted in over 3 months! Man, have I been busy with work.

I bought this marquee about 2 years ago:

I figured I could make an enclosure for it and light it up someday, over the top of my change machine. I have a small, narrow change machine shown here on the left without its base:

Ignore the cats, they were curious.

I spotted the same TOKENS sign in a small arcade at the mall today, on top of a large change machine:

The picture is horrible, but you get the idea. I’d love to make a box out of sheet metal like this one for it, but I don’t have a large change machine to put it on. Someday when I decide to light this up, it will probably just go on the wall above my small one.

On another note, I saw a gentleman at the mall today that looked very cool. Picture the love child of Colonel Sanders and Mr. Miyagi and you’ll get the general idea. If he made me wax his cars, I bet I’d get a big bucket of chicken afterwords for helping out.

Imagine all the games I can haul in this. If only I had somewhere to put them!

Hey there! I haven’t posted in ages. This is a quick post to let you know what I’ve been up to.

I got rid of my old pickup truck a few months ago. It was sitting semi-dead on my lawn for awhile.

I have been wanting to get another (newer) truck for quite some time but can never seem to save the money long enough to do it. I decided when I sold my old one that I would get on the ball and get a replacement soon. I’ve been spending most of my free time selling loads of stuff on eBay to put towards it. Check out my current auctions.

I’m about 80% of the way there. I’m hoping I’ll have another truck in a month or two. Then I may be able to pick up some more games that I won’t have any room for. Stay tuned…

My Mappy Restoration is finally done!

I started writing about this on CoinOpSpace.com to enter their restoration contest. I missed the deadline for the contest, but finished the restoration thread there. You can read all about it here.

I went shopping with the wife today at A.C. Moore and spotted a frame designed to display 20 baseball cards. I’m not into baseball, but I figured it would work well to display my Donkey Kong cards/stickers:

They are normally $21.99, and are on sale right now for 40% off. I saw the same exact one at Michaels for $34.99.

Hey there!

I haven’t had much to write about lately. I sold 3 games that were in my way in the garage. Now I have a bit more room in there to finish up Mappy, Pac-Man, and my Donkey Kong. Mappy is on deck to be painted very soon. I also sold my old pickup truck that was sitting dead on my lawn for quite some time. I have nothing to haul games in, but I also don’t have any room for more games right now. I’m saving up for another truck, and have been listing a lot of stuff on eBay.

We went to a great flea market in Mansfield CT. It’s held in the lot of a still operating drive-in theater. While there, we picked up these 2 stools for the arcade:

I didn’t realize it, but these are all over eBay. You can get them brand new in any color for about $100 shipped for a pair. Search eBay for “bombo stools” and get yourself some.