A few days ago, I posted about some Simpsons movie promos that I got on eBay. The seller rolled them inside a Simpsons Movie poster that I did not buy from him, and I was surprised to see it in the package. It looked almost identical to this one:

We have a few too many Simpsons Movie things up, and this was a little bent in certain areas. I didn’t want to throw it out, so I cut homer out with an x-acto knife and put him up on the wall with some spray adhesive:

It came out pretty cool…it looks almost like it’s painted on the wall.

Here it is in context with all the other stuff on that wall:

He can watch us play pinball now. I don’t mind as long as he doesn’t get donut crumbs all over it.

I was hoping to get something arcade related in the mail today to write about, but it didn’t happen. So, in honor of the new Knight Rider special coming this Sunday, here’s my rust bucket truck tricked out like KITT:

It drives itself just like the real KITT, except it leaves a trail of rust behind it.

I just got these in the mail, straight from eBay:

I need to get some Pac-Man shoelaces for them. When I find them, I’m thinking of hanging them on the wall by their laces.

These are children’s size 1. All attempts to jam my size 10 1/2 feet into them were futile.

Here they are zoomed out in context with the room.

I have another very cool item on the way that I’m going to use to decorate the arcade. I’m hoping it will show up tomorrow. I’ll post pics when it arrives.

Good afternoon! I’ll make this post quick, because I really should be working. I somehow woke up around noon time today. I guess that’s what I get for staying up too late all the time.

I did a cap kit on my Baby Pac-Man monitor last night. It has a Wells-Gardner K4800 series 13″ monitor in it. I had plenty of capacitors, so I didn’t need to order a cap kit for this one. I went by Bob Robert’s cap map for a K4900 which is basically the same monitor but in a 19″ version.

Here it is before:

and after

Did I mention I like doing cap kits?

Man…that title was a mouthful! I won these 2 window clings on eBay:

They are on a paper backing. They would probably look awesome if I peeled them and stuck them to glass but I don’t have a window big enough to do that. I also think that if I did put these in the window, the neighbors would think find out that I’m a weirdo.

They have a cool texture to them:

For now, I put them over my desk (and over piles of junk):

No, this is not a singles ad. I spent most of the day today replacing all these old crappy connectors from Baby Pac-Man…

with shiny new ones:

This took sooooo long. It seemed even longer because there is no heat in my garage and its pretty cold today. I can’t wait for the Spring!

If you are REALLY bored, here are before and after shots you can click on to see the old vs. new connectors:

One thing that I thought was strange was the factory placement of the polarizing key for connector J1 on the solenoid board. That is a 15 pin connector, and they put the polarizing key dead center on pin 8. Because of this, the connector could be flipped around and connected backwards. I didn’t want to replicate this, so I found an unused pin towards the end, snipped it off, and put another polarizing key in that spot:

Changing the first connector got the game up and running again (it stopped for no reason). In between changing each connector, I fired the game up to make sure everything was still OK. This gave me a chance to get used to playing the game. There were 20 connectors, so I played it at least 20 times. It’s incredibly hard, but I am just starting to get the hang of it.

Next on my list is a cap kit for the monitor. Then, I’ll probably put on the control panel overlay. After that, I want to sand down the new cabinet, patch any scratches and paint it. Unfortunately I’m going to have to wait for warmer weather to do that.

Happy Friday! I finally got the new (well, new to me) Baby Pac-Man cabinet from Kentucky. Its in great shape!

If you look at it closeup, it’s got a few scratches here and there. I’m thinking of sanding it down, patching any deep scratches with filler, and painting it. I’m not 100% sure that I will do that at this point though, as it is in such good shape. I could probably just touch it up a bit.

I have new sideart for it, and a new CPO. Both of those will definitely be done whether I paint the cabinet or not.

I didn’t realize that this had the playfield glass on it, which is a plus seeing as I shattered the other one.

Here are some pictures of the old soggy cabinet for comparison:

Checkout how much the “wood” swelled on the old baby. You can really see it if you look how it is sticking past the edges of the t-molding on his back corner:

Now, here’s the same corner from his dry brother:

The only damage on this new cabinet is on the very back, along the top edge:

It looks like something heavy was sitting on top of it or something, and it has a crack running along it. I should be able to glue that back together easily.

I’m still working on the boards for this, and probably won’t do anything on the new cabinet until I have everything working 100% in the old one. I had gotten the Vidiot board working, but now it’s no longer starting the game. Supposedly if you have a communications problem between the MPU and Vidiot boards that will happen. I can get into the communications test after boot up and it definitely isn’t communicating properly. It wasn’t before either, even when the game was working so I’m not too concerned about it. I’m going to put new connectors on the wiring harness today and see if that helps.

Here’s a picture of the twins side by side:

Checkout this chair:

Now, if only they made a toilet seat version. That would be something.

Greetings and salutations. I haven’t written in a few days, because I haven’t had anything exciting to talk about (and I’m lazy). I got word today that my new Baby Pac-Man cabinet *should* be here on Friday. I’m not holding my breath, but that’s at least promising.

I shot a short video tour of our arcade with my digital camera. I figured it would be cool to be able to show people what it looks like if you were actually here. Check it out:

Wow…it’s February already. Time flies when you are soldering the heck out of stuff.

I’ve written a new tutorial for you:

I still consider myself a newbie when it comes to electronics. I’ve picked up things here and there but have a lot to learn. I read on PinRepair.com that the 40 pin video processor chip in U16 of Baby Pac-Man’s Vidiot board is prone to failure because it gets ridiculously hot, and that a heat sink should be installed on top of it. The chips are expensive and hard to come by, so now that my Vidiot board is working I wanted to make sure to take this advice. I wasn’t exactly sure how to best go about this, so I figured I would write a tutorial on it. This might be moronically simple for some, but maybe someone will find it useful.

Materials Needed

1. Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive & mixing thingy (the first three items above from left to right)

$5.95 on eBay

2. 40 pin glue-on alluminum heat sink

$1.50 at DigiKey.com – part #HS274-ND (thanks PinRepair.com!)

3. Any IC chip that needs a heatsink

4. CD that you don’t care about

$.01 on eBay

5. One rubber band

$1.48 for 1/4 lb bag at Staples (shoot the extras at unsuspecting passerby)

General Ramblings

I headed to Radio Crap to see if they had some sort of adhesive for heat sinks. They didn’t, so don’t bother going. They have heat sink grease, which is NOT adhesive and will not work for this. They do have loads of batteries, crappy remote controlled toys, and cellphones. Are you interested in any batteries? Me neither.

Instructions

1. Get out the outdated CD. If you need to play it once for old times sake before wrecking it, go for it. I’ll wait. All set? Let’s continue.

2. The CD is going to be used to mix the adhesive on because that’s all its good for anymore. This adhesive is magical in that it supposedly transfers heat from the chip to the heat sink. Instructions for using this stuff can be found here. Apparently it’s highly toxic and you aren’t supposed to eat it.

Squirt out equal parts of the two compounds onto a clean area of your Michael Bolton CD.

3. Mix it up with the spatula like you are making some sort of homemade tooth paste, but DON’T brush your teeth with it (yet).

4. Spread a thin layer on the top of the chip…just enough to cover it. Try not to get it all over the pins.

5. Put the heat sink on top…press it down a bit but don’t go all “hog wild” on it. Wipe or lick off the excess.

6. Double up the rubber band and carefully put it around the heat sink/chip sandwich without bending the pins. This was a little tricky.

7. Wait a few hours and remove the rubber band. If you did your’s right it will look like the one above but without a rubber band on it. If it looks completely different it’s time to get a new hobby.

Epilogue

I did something pretty stupid when I did mine. The heat sink is EXACTLY the same length as the chip. After gluing it on, I couldn’t see the notch in the chip that shows you how to orient it when inserting it in it’s socket! Luckily I had another identical chip. I used my meter set to continuity to find 2 pins on one side of the “non heat-sinked” chip that were connected. Then, I found the same pins on the “heat-sinked” one which let me match up the direction properly. After that, I marked where the notch would be on the very end of the chip, and wrote on the underside of it (with a paint pen).

Don’t be a dummy like me…mark your chip first.