Here is part 2 of this ongoing playfield restoration series. I’m guessing this will be a trilogy, but who knows.

I forgot to mention before that I’ve been using this article on PinballMagic.com as a guide.

I finally had everything removed from the playfield…with the exception of the roll over switches (I think that’s what they’re called).

I left these in because I’m lazy. I found a good way to keep them below the playfield, and it only cost me 50 cents:

The drop targets stuck up every so slightly, but I decided to leave them and just sand over their tops. They are worn out, and you can get replacements. They looked complicated to remove so I figured it would be best to remove them right before I’m ready to replace them.

The playfield had a mylar protective layer in the center. I had heard that some people used a heat gun and paint scraper to get these off. I was reluctant to put heat on it so as to not loosen the glue holding in the clear plastic inserts. I figured maybe I would try to sand it off, which didn’t work very well. This pic was taken when I gave up on that approach.

The areas on the right that are down to bare wood are just outside the area covered by the mylar. I opted to use my fingernails to pick at the edge and pull it off. It actually worked pretty good. Here is a shot of some of it in the process of removal:

The area below the mylar was super shiny from the adhesive, but didn’t feel very sticky. This sort of reminded me of peeling skin after a bad sun burn (I know, gross!).

After picking at it for a good while, I got all of the mylar off. I hit it with my orbital sander using 60 grit sandpaper. The adhesive started to collect in areas and turned into the consistency of bubblegum. At this point, I figured it would be best to remove as much of that gunk as possible. I did so with Goof Off. I sprayed it right on the playfield, and let it sit for a minute or so. Then I went at it with one of my favorite tools…a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. This did a good job of getting the adhesive off, but it was time consuming and the fumes were getting me pretty goofy (hence the name “Goof Off”).

After getting the glue off, I was able to make good progress on sanding off the old art…

…so close…and finally:

I made sure that I sanded right over the plastic inserts until they were flush. Some of them were slightly raised.

In part 1 from yesterday, I posted a pic of an area that some dumb ass drove a drywall screw through. I finished the day yesterday gluing that back in place. Here is that area after sanding:

It’s not perfect, but much better. I wanted to use wood putty on this in case it was visible but forgot to buy some. I opted for Bondo because I had it in the house and the playfield overlay should hide the area. Here it is after I finished bondo-ing (new verb) and sanding it.

After that, I hit the whole thing again with 120 grit and again with 220. The article said to use 400 and 600, but there was no way 400 would have stripped the paint off easily. I’m guessing maybe they are assuming you should know that. I couldn’t find 400 or 600 grit for my sander (I’m guessing they don’t make it?), so I used a sanding block and hand sanded it down with 400 grit. In the article, they then put polyurethane on it. I didn’t like the look of the plastic overlays, so I opted to hit it with 600 grit first.

Next, I blew off all the dust with the air nozzle on my compressor. I followed that up by wiping it down with a tack cloth, then cleaning it with Naptha and a rag.

At this point, I was ready to hit it with polyurethane. I bought Minwax “clear gloss” polyurethane in a can. It was too cold in the garage to do this part…I was afraid it wouldn’t dry right. I also didn’t want to fill the house with fumes. I opted to spray it in the garage and then bring it inside to dry. I had to do this carefully so as to not make a mess of the wet surface. I put handles on each side of the box so I could carry it easily into the house while wet.

The article recommends 3 coats of Poly, sanding in between with 600 grit sandpaper. The can says to recoat within 2 hours. If you can’t get the next coat on in that amount of time, it says you have to wait 72 hours! This is probably to prevent it from wrinkling. I found this out the hard way with Rustoleum awhile back.

I did the first coat at 6pm EST, and as of 9pm its still a tiny bit tacky. I’m guessing I’ll have to wait until Wednesday night now before I can get back to this which really bites!

CAUTION: This post has lots of pretty pictures. If you don’t like pictures OR if you don’t have eyeballs turn back now.

It was unusually warm today for December in RI, so I figured I better take advantage of it. I spent all day in my normally freezing garage working on my Baby Pac-Man playfield.

I plan on installing the playfield overlay from Phoenix Arcade. In order to do that, I have to remove everything from the top of the playfield and prep it. I’ve been reading tips on how to do this, and someone mentioned it is a good idea to build a box to hold the playfield while working on it. This is pretty much a must unless you want to crush all the fun stuff on the underside of the playfield (lights, wires, coils, etc…).

The guide I’ve been reading recommends building a box out of 2″x6″s. This seemed like overkill. I don’t think I need something that heavy duty. It’s not like I’m going to be walking around on the playfield or anything. I opted to use 1″x8″s. I couldn’t use 1″x6″s because it wouldn’t be tall enough for everything hanging off the bottom of the playfield. Here is the amazingly cool box that I built:

I had to cut those notches in it to account for things that were very close to the edge of the playfield. Here it is holding the playfield:

OK…now for the fun part – removing everything from the top. This took forever. Here is what it looks like naked.

I took all the pieces that I removed, put them in a box and shook it up really well. Actually, I made a pseudo playfield with them using a piece of polystyrene foam insulation:

That stuff is pretty useful. I was able to actually screw the posts right into it. Now I should be able to remember where everything goes when I go to put this jigsaw puzzle back together.

Along 3 edges of the playfield, there were black wooden pieces that were stapled from the underside of the playfield. I carefully pulled these off, leaving the staples sticking up in the air. I snipped them off:

…then I went at them with a nail set…

…no more staples.

After doing this, for staples that were banged partially out, I pulled them all the way out from the back using a small screwdriver. Some of them I just left in. The wood trim will cover the holes, so they won’t be seen.

Some no talent assclown repaired 2 coils and must have lost some of the screws to put the mounting brackets back on. He uses drywall screws as replacements that were way too long. What a dork. One of them actually didn’t do much damage. The other one, however…

Here it is after I changed it out for the right size screw:

You can see the very tip of the screw I used, but it is still actually below the top of the playfield. I put some wood glue in that area and clamped it down. Hopefully that will take care of it.

Here’s a shot of the playfield overlay compared to the old playfield:

That’s it for now. I’ll be back at it tomorrow. To close, here’s a pic taken from the perspective of a pinball that I thought was kinda cool.

I ordered a new CPO, sideart, and a playfield overlay from PhoenixArcade.com right before Christmas, and it came faster than I expected. Here’s what arrived:

The cabinet on this Baby Pac is in horrible shape, but getting this art in inspired me to get going on it. I figured the first thing I should do is gut it. I started to do that today, but was hindered by the fact that I have hardly any room in my garage. I managed to rearrange some of the project games in there…stuffing all but 3 in the back…

…then I hung up 3 of the bikes that never get ridden:

The fourth bike that is still sitting on the ground is not ours. We’ve been bike sitting it for about 4 years now, and the plan is to get it back to its owner ASAP. To the right of the above picture is Baby Pac, Space Invaders, and Breakout – all three of them blocking the garage door. You can see them a little better here:

I pulled all the boards out of Baby Pac. They all look pretty good except for the MPU board which has battery corrosion damage. I clipped the old battery off the board and will work on it when I feel motivated. I pulled the playfield out, and plan on working on that next. It’s not in horrible shape, but does have typical wear in certain areas. I’m hoping when I’m done it will look brand new.

In order to work on that, I have to build a box to sit the playfield on top of so as to not damage everything on the underside while sanding it. Here’s what the bottom of the playfield looks like (in case you’re bored):

I just noticed this picture on my phone, and forgot it was there:

I spotted this in Walmart while Christmas shopping and had to snap a picture of it. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but it appears that this unicorn is crapping rainbows. He’s looking back there either in shock, or in pride at his amazing accomplishment. The unicorn is printed on the outside of the plastic, and the rainbow is inside.

This year due to scheduling issues beyond our control, we opted to celebrate our Christmas on December 23rd, Christmas Eve Eve. This is also known as Festivus.

Sarah got a record player, a stand, and a bunch of classical records cleverly disguised as a FREAKIN’ ROBOT!!

Linda got a bunch of Simpsons stuff, and a Serger.

I got a ton of cool stuff. Here are 2 mario related things that I have on top of our Mario Bros. game:

I got a Nintendo Wii, with Super Mario Galaxy, The Simpsons Game, and Guitar Hero III.

Another really cool thing I got this year from my wife was a brutal punch in the nose at 5AM while sleeping. She was dreaming that she was beating someone up, and in the real world that someone was my nose. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I’ve amassed 24 arcade games in a little over a year.

He’s 68″ long, weighs 300 lbs, and has a very wet bottom:

Baby Pac-Man is 50% arcade game, 50% pinball machine, and 100% awesome. Restoring this one is going to be a major pain in the ass undertaking. I’m not sure exactly what is wrong with it, but was told it did not work. The arcade game portion was working however, so I guess maybe the pinball portion is broken.

I’m not going to attempt to work on anything electronic in this game until I restore the cabinet. Unfortunately, it looks like someone used it as a canoe to paddle down the ol’ Mississippi river. It was stored in a basement…apparently a very leaky basement. The cabinet is made out of fiberboard, and sucked up a ton of water. You can see areas on the cabinet that swelled from it. The one pic above doesn’t show the worst of it, which is on the left side. The bottom of the left side is absolutely horrible. At a minimum, I’ll have to put in a new bottom and sand the entire thing down. I’m not sure if I can sand the swollen areas down or not. I may take the approach that Brian Koenig did on his restoration.

On the way to get this it was raining, but it stopped when I got there. Because it was already water damaged, I figured a little more water wouldn’t hurt it so I didn’t cover it in my pickup. On the way back, it started raining, then snowing. I was in a hurry to get it in the garage so I didn’t get to take a good pic of the left side.

I had taken out the bezel and playfield glass at the seller’s house for safe keeping so they wouldn’t blow off on the highway. The bezel is in great shape (just dirty):

The playfield glass, however, is in slightly worse condition:

I  walked in the door with the playfield glass in one hand, and very very gently went to put it down to lean it against that door. I honestly don’t think it even touched the floor, and exploded! I’m very glad it wasn’t the bezel. I can get another piece of glass cut for a few bucks.

Here are some more pics:

Greetings earthlings! This post is a continuation of this mess. Basically, when I first got my Moon Patrol cabinet, I got a PCB along with it. That PCB had some major issues which I tried to fix. I got nowhere with it, and decided to just buy a working one. I’ve had the old dead board sitting here and figured I would take another crack at fixing it for fun.

Before this round of screwing with it, one of the things that was most noticeably wrong with it can be seen here:

That should read BEGINNER COURSE GO! Half the letters are incorrect. In diagnostics mode, there was a RAM error, but it was difficult to read because of the character problem. I’ll try not to bore you too much, but here’s what I did for this round…

Moon Patrol is a 4 PCB stack. Now that I have a working set, I figured I could use it to isolate the problem to a particular board in the stack. I swapped each board from the bad stack into the good stack one by one, powering it on in between to see if the problem would follow. Doing this lead me to figuring out that the main CPU board, #2 in the stack, was the one with the problem.

With that out of the way, I noticed in the manual that if you don’t have any characters on screen at all, the ROM in  3F on the scrolling video board is bad. I swapped it with a good one, and the problem was still there. I guessed that maybe something connected to 3F was bad, and if I remember correctly, I traced 5M on the CPU board back to that chip. It’s a logic chip – 74LS245. I searched the RGVAC newsgroup for this chip, and many people were reporting that they fail pretty often in a lot of games. I then did a test I learned from Randy Fromm on that chip, checking each pin to see if any were out of wack. The basic idea is you put your meter on the diode test setting, put the red lead on ground, and probe each pin on the IC. All pins on the chip except for ground and Vcc (+5v) should read around .5 to .9. Anything way lower (like .004, for example) or way higher is probably bad. You can then compare any suspect pins to another of the same chip on the board if there is one. I did my comparison to the same chip on the working board. I found that pin 18 read .002, and was shorted to ground. I thought this was pretty cool, because I really am clueless with this stuff.

So, I removed 5M, put a socket in, and replaced the chip. With the old chip out, I tested it again. While pin 18 still read wrong, the short was not there. The short was actually on the board somewhere else. I went over every single trace on the board visually looking for problems, hoping to find the short that way. While doing this, I spotted this on the chip in 1K!

That is definitely wrong. I checked the same chip on the working board and it wasn’t intentionally not soldered. So, I removed that chip, bent the pin back, put a socket in and popped it back in. I still had that pesky short however. I read through the schematics, and wrote down every thing that was in circuit with 5M pin 18. That gave me a list of about 6 or 7 chips. I figured I could test them one by one, but the fastest way was to clip pins on the chips in question. I had replacements for them, so I started clipping hoping I would get lucky. I found the suspect chip at 1D. Pin 8 was shorted to ground. I replaced that chip and the short was gone. In the process of finding the short, I clipped pins on 3 other chips so I changed those as well.

BOY this is long and boring.

Anyways, after all that, I hooked it back up and the character problem was solved. The board still has issues however. It keeps resetting, the tank is missing sometimes, and the background looks a bit weird. In diagnostics mode it says RAM NG 8000, which according to the manual means RAM 3C on the scrolling video. board is bad. I know that’s not the case because I had already changed that RAM prior to this, so I have no clue what’s causing it. I’m taking another break from this board but maybe I’ll get back to it in the future.

We’ve had 2 snowstorms just a few days apart, and I am SO sick of shoveling. I’m hoping we won’t get anymore snow at least until after Christmas. I guess that makes me a scrooge.

We were snowed in on Sunday, so we figured it would be a good time to decorate our tree. Here it is in all its crookedness:

Notice the strange gray creature lurking under the tree.

I think this tree is defective, and we may bring it back to the nursery after Christmas. This tree looked great when we picked it out, but we can’t get it straight no matter how hard we try. Now I know how Richard Simmons parents feel.

Here is a pic of me being stupid (all pics of me are like this):

I have pictures of my wife being stupid, but she won’t let me post them online.

We picked up a few new cool ornaments this year. Fred and Barney torsos:

Simpsons Pin Pals:

I feel compelled to include something arcade related here, so here is a video of our Tazmanian Devil pinball machine ornament:

And to finish this off, here is a picture of a boneless cat:

Checkout this awesome Centipede Tattoo:

All you arcade geeks should recognize this as the sideart from Centipede.

I saw this on Neatorama.com. They saw it on someone’s Flickr account.

Howdy, partner. There are only 12 shopping days left until Christmas. If you celebrate Kwanzaa, you get an extra shopping day (you lucky bastard).

We have our tree up, but it’s not decorated yet. We will probably do that this weekend. It is however leaning a little more to the left every day since we got it Sunday, and it should fall over as I finish writing this post.

I don’t have anything new to report in the arcade world, but I feel so very badly for keeping you in the dark for 7 days recently, that I managed to dig something out to take a picture of. Here’s a Pac-Man switch cover that I got on eBay awhile back:

Isn’t it cool? The pic doesn’t show it well, but it’s about an 1/8″ thick and made of plastic. Unfortunately, the light switch in my arcade has 2 switches. Maybe I’ll remove one just so I can use this puppy.