This is just a short post to update on the status of fixing the score/timing problem with Demolition Derby (see my earlier post in that category). I got a package of goodies from Bob Roberts today. In that package was a bunch of parts I ordered to get Moon Patrol and Pac-Man working, a power supply repair kit for Battlezone (I’ll explain in another post), leg levers, some tools, moon pies and mardi gras stuff…AND the capacitor that I needed to swap for Demolition Derby.

I put the new cap in, and it didn’t fix the problem. Oh well…probably should have been replaced anyway. I poked around on the board a bit, checking it over for problems. I was able to find the section on the board that corresponds to the timing and score. It has quite a few repairs on it, but everything seemed OK as far as I can tell (and I can’t tell much! ). I’m not touching this again at least until I finish watching my training DVDs from Randy Fromm.

I should be posting soon about a new game that we are getting soon, knock on wood. I won’t mention it’s name so I don’t jinx it.

I’m off to build some power supply boards for Pac-Man and Moon Patrol.

My wife got me a Clapper as a joke for Christmas, and I just got around to trying it last night. I hooked it up to the lamp on my nightstand, with visions of turning that puppy on and off like there’s no tomorrow.

In the commercial, they have old people clapping away. Note the speed in which they clap, and keep in mind that they may not be able to clap loudly due to arthritis, missing hands, etc…

There is NO WAY in hell that those old people could ever make use of this thing. In the commercial, they only clap twice, with the claps very close together. In reality, if you only have one thing plugged in, you need to clap 3 times. Each clap needs to be precisely separated by approximately 1 second of silence. WTF! Checkout that old lady at the end of the commercial in bed ( NSFW! ), and tell me she waited 1 second in between claps. She seems pretty angry to begin with, and I can only imagine how pissed off she’d be in the real world when it takes her like 10 minutes to get the claps timed just right. At that point, she would probably be better grabbing her shotgun and just blowing a hole through the TV to turn it off for good. We’ve been had people. This thing makes it much harder to turn things on and off, not the opposite as advertised. At this point, I think we should all write our congressman.

It actually was incredibly difficult to make this thing work. I would have to say that it took on average 15 attempts to get this thing to do it’s magic. Another plus is that if you have a light plugged into this thing, the ONLY way to make it turn on is via the clapper…that would probably come in handy when you think you hear a prowler. By the time you get the light to clap on, he’ll probably be driving away from your house with all your AS SEEN ON TV goodies in his back seat (except for your precious clapper!).

On a different note, what do you think would happen if you got 2 clappers, plugged one into the wall, the 2nd clapper into the first, and then plugged a lamp in? If you got the clapping just right, I bet it would rip a hole in the fabric of space, and kill us all (please don’t try this at home!)

In closing, I would highly recommend taking the money you were going to spend on a clapper and put it towards that chia-pet you’ve been wanting.

OK…the insanity continues. We picked up another game in Hudson, MA called Demolition Derby. It’s from 1977, and is the oldest in our collection.

I was on the fence about this one, but Linda had to have it. She likes driving games. This game has a black and white monitor, and very old looking graphics. Everything on it is in great shape for it’s age. I really like the shape of the cabinet, and the backglass with the old cars smashing into each other. The game has one small problem. Where the score and time should be at the top of the screen just shows white blocks. I checked the voltage going to the game board, and it was low - 4.4 volts. I upped it to 5.1, and the blocks started to appear different. They are now all jittery and you can sometimes see the numbers. This leads me to believe that the problem is not with the game board, and may be with a big blue filter capacitor in the power supply. I’m going to try to locate one and see if it fixes the problem. You can see what it looks like now in this video:

Wow…it’s been 2 weeks since I posted. I’ve been busy rearranging our game room a bit. Before, we had everything on a small wall in our basement:

I have Pac-Man and Moon Patrol in the garage, and will need room for those. I also needed room for another game that we just picked up the other day - Demolition Derby. So…I wired 3 new circuits, and put them all on switches. The games are now on the long wall to the left of the door in the pic above. Here is what it looks like now:

Side view:

House Rules sign from Brian at Oleszak Creative:

For the switches, I didn’t want to just use regular household light switches. Someone would surely flip one right while you are approaching a new high score and shut off the games. I wanted something a bit harder to flip. Linda suggested a big throw switch like in Frankenstein, but that would be a bit too dangerous…that gave us the idea of making it look dangerous though, as dangerous obviously equals fun! The more dangerous something is, the more fun it should be…showering is boring…showering with a radio and hair dryer is very exciting!

We bought some cool looking switches from Home Depot that were designed for outdoor use. We painted them red, mounted them on a piece of diamond plate (also from Home Depot), added a High Voltage sign (from Ace Hardware), and framed it off with some plastic trim. Here is the result:

I’d like to somehow rig the first switch so when you throw it something behind the wall plays an extremely loud sound of high voltage, like you’d hear in Frankenstein or when someone is being electrocuted…basically a big scary zapp. Something like some of the sounds listed here would be good:

http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/archive/Electronics/Electricity/Electrical-explosion-4/190964

I don’t know exactly how to do that, so if anyone does feel free to comment.

Hey there…Happy New Year! Hope you had fun watching the ball drop, and by now are hopefully hangover free.

We started prepping one of our upstairs rooms so we can paint it tomorrow. We are turning it into an office for Linda (the wife unit). By doing that, we can move her computer upstairs, and make more room for games.
I spent a good part of yesterday and today working on Moon Patrol.

Here’s one side stripped of it’s Aliens sideart sticker and black paint:

The bottom of the cabinet had some pretty bad water damage:

I ended up having to put new wood along the bottom on 3 sides. Here it is as I was working on it…

Right side before:

Right side after patch:

You can’t see it in the pic above, but I nailed a cleat below this out of the same stock (1″ x 2″) so I would have something to nail this to (visible in the next pic).

The left side had water damage a bit higher up, so I had to use a 1″ x 3″.

Left side after cutting away the bad wood:

Because I had to cut more off of the left side, you’ll notice if you look carefully (click for larger pic) that the side of the cabinet is no longer attached to the bottom because the cut is higher than the bottom plywood. To add a little strength to this, I used dowels and some wood glue in this repair.

Left after patch:

There is a chunk missing from the new piece of wood on the left side of the above pic. It happened when I cut it, but doesn’t matter because it’s gonna be loaded up with Bondo anyway.

Front before:

Front after patch:

It was a little tricky cutting out the old wood for the front, because the sides stick out past it. I wanted something I could temporarily put over the front to sit the saw on top to make up the height, so the edges of the sides wouldn’t get in the way of the saw. I used the back door, as it is the exact same width, and made up the height perfectly. I then tacked a piece of 1 x 2 as a cutting guide through the door and the front of the cabinet, and cut almost all the way to the edge. I was able to cut the rest of the way using a utility knife and a chisel.

All 3 repairs, before Bondo:

The bottom of both sides are actually not perfectly square in the corners. The corners aren’t just rounded off. The whole bottom is slightly arched like a very crappy rocking chair. The cabinet before repairs actually did rock when the leg levers were off. Anyways…I held a piece of the side that I cutoff on top of each repair and drew the curve. I then hit it with the sander until I reached the line, and finished it with a sanding block. You can see it in the pic above for the front corners. I hadn’t done the back ones at that point.

Here’s one side completely sanded and slathered in Bondo.

I felt like I was decorating a cake with this stuff…. I wonder if Bondo comes in butter cream or double chocolate? (Oh God, I hope so!)