It’s getting harder and harder to come up with post titles. I finally got some painting done on Moon Patrol. I decided to paint the black parts first using Rustoleum Satin Black in a can. Here’s a pic after I masked off the sides with some blue painters tape and brown paper from Staples:

Here it is painted after about 4 light coats:

The light reflecting off the black makes it look a little screwy, but it doesn’t look like that in real life…just in the land of make believe. I didn’t go nuts painting the inside, but I did hit it a bit here and there…I figured it didn’t matter much because it won’t be seen.  I painted the back doors rested on nails against the garage wall…you can see one of them in the pic above.

I picked up the paint for the sides today at Home Depot, and will be painting them soon….I can hardly stand the excitement!

It’s true. But she deserved it! She was trying to eat humans that I already had my eye on. No, we are not ready for the looney bin yet (though very close!)…we were playing Rampage:

I just picked this up today in Stratford, CT. This game is awesome. You get to be one of 3 monsters, obviously stolen from monster movies…King Kong, Godzilla, and the Wolfman. This game was in a warehouse that also had some other games in it. Nothing that I had room for or would be interested in except for this. Unfortunately, it was loaded with mold like my Space Invaders. I think it must have been in a damp location at one point, but it didn’t have any water damage. Just loads of mold:

It took me hours to clean it up in the driveway. My neighbors must have thought I was nuts! I looked like I was from outerspace with my mask, safety goggles and other hazmat equipment. I took all the boards out first. Then I vaccuumed all the mold out, and sprayed the entire insides down with Zep cleaner/disinfectant. I let it sit for awhile, and then wiped down every square inch inside with Zep again. Hopefully I got it all…

Before I put the boards back in, I sprayed them with the air hose to get any loose mold off. I followed that by cleaning the entire outside with some Fantastik with anti-bacterial goodness. Mmmm….love that anti-bacterial goodness. After finally getting it cleaned up, I put some new locks in and rolled it inside.

It works OK, but has a bit of a glitch that I haven’t had a chance to look at yet. The monitor tends to flicker after you play for awhile. The control panel overlay is pretty warn out, so if you know where I can get one please let me know.

Hey there…my Moon Patrol restoration is coming along. I can’t wait to paint it. I have both sides ready for paint. The front is pretty much done, but I’m going to look it over one more time. I’m working on the back now, which is very close to being ready as well. I don’t have any pics of the cabinet because there isn’t much to see. I’ll take some when I start painting.

Wade Lanham had mentioned cleaning monitors and other parts with something called Bleche-Wite.

You can get it at most automotive stores. He gave me the low down on how to use it, and it is incredible. You spray it all over whatever you are cleaning, in this case my Moon Patrol monitor. Let it sit for a few minutes and use a soft paint brush to brush away dirt, then hose the whole thing down with a garden hose. You can then spray most of the water off using an air compressor with an air spraying nozzle attachment thingamajig, and let it fully dry before hooking it up.

Before pics:

After:

Thanks for the tip Wade!

That’s it for today. I’ll be heading out tomorrow to pickup something cool for the gameroom, but I won’t tell you what it is until I get back so I don’t jinx it.

I just got back from picking up a change machine that I spotted on Craigslist and came home with something extra.

The change machine has a stand, but I forgot the bolts at the sellers house so I’ll pick up some tomorrow and mount it.

I’m going to load one shoot on the Pepsi Machine with beer, one with soda, and one with Dasani for Linda, if we can find stubby bottles that will fit. If we can’t, we may need to put beer in that chute too.

Hey there. I’m going to make this post a tutorial.

In case you didn’t read the older posts in the Moon Patrol section, the Moon Patrol I’m restoring had water damage on the bottom of the cabinet. I cut away the damaged wood and added new pieces to replace it. The old wood looked like it was rounded off at the corners intentionally, so I rounded the new wood to match, and was pretty happy with the result.

A cruel individual who shall remain nameless (Wade Lanham) decided to comment on those rounded corners and informed me that they weren’t originally rounded. At that point, I had 3 corners rounded off, and was going to get to the 4th soon. I was thinking of just leaving them as is, but it was bothering me. I’m spending so much time trying to make this right, that it would suck big time to have those corners rounded when it’s complete. I decided to fix them. This method would work regardless of whether you screwed up a corner on purpose like myself, or if you had one that was broken off.

Materials and tools you will need:

• Bondo
  
• Putty Knife
  
• Sanding block and paper (80, 120)
  
• Orbital sander (optional, but better than spinning your sanding block around real fast)
  
• Hammer
  
• Finish nails – 1″ or so is probably fine
• Light Block (for mounting lights on vinyl siding)
  
• Ruler
  
• Hacksaw
  
• Jigsaw (optional…watch your fingers!)
  
• Drill and bits
  
• Motivation
  

OK…here goes. The light block is in two pieces that snap together. Separate the pieces. You’ll need the piece that looks like this:

OK…take a beer break….ready?….let’s continue….

The side shown in the pic is the side that goes against the siding, and we are going to use it as a mold for the bondo. Bondo will stick to just about everything, except plastic. You basically need to cut this in half so you have 2 corners. The best way is probably corner to corner. I did it a little different but would probably do it diagonally if I had to do it again. I started cutting with a jigsaw which was fast. The only problem is it will heat up the plastic and melt it, and it quickly bonds back together. I then had to score it with a utility knife to get it separated. After I cut mine, the two pieces looked like the one on the left here:

Ignore that clamp…I didn’t end up needing it.

There is no easy way to explain this part…you need to measure and cut more of the plastic corner so it will fit underneath the corner, as shown in this pic:

Once you get this cut so it fits well, you’ll need to secure it. I did this by drilling a small pilot hole in a few spots, and banging in a finish nail just enough to hold the corner tight. You can see some of the nails better here:

Read the directions on the can of Bondo until you have them memorized. Mix the bondo on something flat that you can throw out later (like that girl you met at the sports bar last night?). When you have the bondo mixed, spread it into the mold like you are making a cake. Be sure to push down enough so that it forces the bondo down to the bottom of the mold, and leave the bondo higher than the repair so you can sand it later.

If you mixed the bondo right, it should harden in about 30 mins. If you crush a viagra and mix it in, it usually hardens a bit quicker. Feel the bondo to make sure it’s solid, pull the nails out and the mold should come right off.

Now, hit the side with the orbital sander using 80 grit paper until it’s smooth. For the edges, you can either use the sanding block, or the orbital sander. If you use the orbital sander you can easily make it crooked if you aren’t careful. Count the number of beers you have left, and make your decision. Here is the finished result on my Moon Patrol.

[BOREDOM DISCLAIMER]: I’m going to apologize in advance for what you are about to read. It is bound to be pretty boring. I’m going to go through everything I did to my Moon Patrol PCB last night in hopes it might help me fix it down the road. Buckle your seatbelt, cuz we’re going in….

This is a continuation of my Moon Patrol saga…if you don’t want to miss any of the exciting details, you may want to back up a few posts.

My mailman arrived yesterday. I was expecting him, and had let my dog out early for his arrival (j/k…I don’t have a dog). You know how The Postman Always Rings Twice? Well at our house, it’s more like The Postman Never Rings, Not Even Once. We have a shiny new giant door bell that is very noticable, but it goes untouched. This guy is a knocker.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like knockers just as much as the next guy, but when I’m working at home I like to have the music on. Because he likes to knock softly like an old lady with sore knuckles, I have to keep the music turned down low. This is also annoying because sometimes he comes around 12:30, but other times not until it starts getting dark out. Anyways, enough ranting about the mail…here’s what came:

What could this be I wonder? I flipped it over, and took a close look at the customs declaration.

Now I remember! These are those electronic pants I ordered from the pants district in Beijing! I hope they fit!

I ripped the package open with visions of my lower half plugged into a power outlet, and was incredibly dissapointed to find 16 of these:

I only ordered 15, so I guess one is for good luck.

Remember that boredom disclaimer up top? OK…if you are still reading, here is where I may loose you. I popped 2 of these in, to replace the suspect RAM. There are only 2 RAM in Moon Patrol as far as I know. Hooked it all up, and the problem was still there. So…according to the manual, problems can also occur with logic chips that are in the RAM circuits. The first one they mention is a 74LS139 chip in spot 2K on the main CPU board. I have a logic probe that I have never used. I figured it would be a good time to try it out. Everybody remembers their first time with a logic probe…do you remember yours?

So…I hooked it up and probed away like one of those aliens from the book Communion. I read the data sheet for this chip that I found via Google, and thought maybe it wasn’t doing what it should. In retrospect, I think I just don’t know what I’m doing. I ended up swapping out this chip with one I had on an old board and it did squat.

Now, because I am clueless, my options here are limited. I started looking over all boards very closely on both sides. I was looking for broken traces, or anything else that stood out. I noticed on the Character board (part #M-52-B-C for those taking notes), pins 9 & 10 on the chip at location 8B had solder connecting them together.

I thought that was a bit odd, and looked up this chip in the schematic. While I don’t understand much about the circuit, It definitely looks like these pins are not supposed to be connected. So, I desoldered them and put the board back in the cabinet. Now, the original problem was still there in addition to a new one. Everything that was supposed to be black on screen was now blue. I soldered the pins back together and it didn’t fix that.

I noticed a repair on the bottom of the Scrolling Video board, under where the ribbon cable connector goes. There was a gouge going right through 2 traces and someone repaired that with 2 blue wires. What is weird is that if you follow the traces they are replacing, it looks like they accidentally ran each wire to the opposite location. I desoldered them and soldered them where I thought they should go, like so:

The board is pretty much dead. I’ve decided that I messed with it enough, and am going to buy one that I know is working. When I get a bit better with this stuff I may take a crack at fixing this one.

Final Score: Moon Patrol 3, Jamie 0.

OK…first off, let me apologize for the crazy title. I’m trying to make this somewhat interesting, as by itself it isn’t exactly action packed. This post does get pretty racey, so children look away. You have been warned.

The mailman has come and gone, and still no memory from China for Moon Patrol. I did, however, receive the new trackball I ordered for Centipede from eBay.

The original one was a Wico.

I wanted to replace it because it was pretty worn out. It worked fine, but didn’t roll smoothly. Kind of like your mom.

They sell rebuild kits for these, but I figured it would be easier to get a new one for a little more money.

For those of you that are over 18, here’s a pic of the old one from the backside!

I put the new one in, and something wasn’t quite right. If I remember correctly, left and right were OK, but up and down were reversed. I read about this in the forums at klov.com somewhere, and it’s common when changing trackballs of different manufacturers. I ended up having to swap the green and yellow wires in the connector seen in the bottom right corner of the top pic above to get it to work correctly.

It’s working much better…we can centipede now with the best of them. (You may notice that I make new verbs up as I go…hopefully you’ll get used to it)

You can’t see much difference on the top of the control panel, but for those that are bored, here is a before and after:

As you can see, the control panel overlay is pretty worn out. I’ll be replacing that someday and will clean up the bolt heads then. The ball in this new unit is bright white. The original one was off white. I’m contemplating swapping it with one of the correct color, but haven’t decided yet. The ball alone goes for about $5. Incidentally, I’ve heard that the ball is the exact same size as a standard pool ball and a cue ball can be used. I’m heading to the local pool hall now to swipe one…wish me luck.

This video is incredibly disturbing. You have been warned!

I don’t have much new to report. My package from China didn’t arive yet. Bastards. They can deliver food to my door 5 minutes after I hang up the phone, but I guess the same doesn’t go for memory chips.

Moon Patrol is a 4 board PCB sandwich (why so much food in this post!?). The top board is for audio, and has a bunch of electrolytic capacitors on it, which usually start to wear out after 20 years or so.

I lieu of being able to change the memory chips, I decided to change all those capacitors. I actually had all the caps I needed for it finally, due to the assortment I ordered from eBay. It feels good to have the parts on hand to do repairs for a change.

Will the memory arrive tomorrow? Can you stand the excitement!? Will Batman & Robin escape the evil clutches of the Riddler??? Tune in next time to find out!

Just read an interesting article at msnbc.com.

According to the article, a bidet toilet from a Japan firm named “Toto” (woof) is being recalled for catching on fire.

The fire would have been just under your buttocks.
Toto company spokeswoman Emi Tanaka

Oh yeh…that’s all. Just flames under your ass. No biggie. Can’t be anything worse than your typical post Taco Bell bathroom visits.