Sometime towards the middle of last week, I got sick of dealing with useless jerkfaced bastards customers and quit work early. I headed to the garage to start working on prepping my Baby Pac cabinet for painting.
Look at all the crap I had stowed away inside:
I am a lazy bastard. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?
I hadn’t cut my grass yet this year, and it was getting shamefully high. Neighbors jogging by would throw up a little, and small children riding their tricycles stopped in front of the house on the way by for a good cry.
We had some company coming over Saturday, so I figured It was time to get my butt out there and cut it. I had one problem however…my lawnmower was trapped in the garage. I had so many arcade games in there I couldn’t get at it. I figured it was a good excuse to take the time to bust up the old water logged Baby Pac cabinet that I was going to toss anyway.
I took the restored playfield and working parts out, and put them in a safe spot in my cellar.
Here it is after I took the back door off and knocked the bottom back panel out with my foot.
I put my feet on the bottom, and pushed it forward…the bottom fell right out as planned.
(Check out the grass in that pic above, and compare it to my neighbor’s lawn!)
Then, with the cabinet still in the position above, I grabbed each side at the base of the cabinet, and pulled them apart like the Incredible Hulk. I did have to hit it a few times with a hammer afterwards, and this was the sad result:
I did feel a little bad about doing this, but there really was no saving this cabinet. It was swollen worse than Angelina Jolie’s sausage lips.
Here’s what the garage looks like from the front now:
This is after I pulled the lawnmower out and cleaned up a little. The lawnmower is normally on that left wall where the broom is.
I actually have a tiny bit of space now! I think I have enough room to lay my good Baby Pac cabinet on it’s side to work on it. I think I’m going to repaint it, but I’m still not 100% sure if I will, as it’s in pretty good shape already.
While I was busting up the cabinet, a neighbor was riding by on a bike with his kids. He stopped to ask if I was selling any games, and I told him how I had to make room to get the mower out. His kid cuts lawns in the neighborhood, so I ended up having him do it. It was perfect timing, with me being lazy and all. 
Now that I have a little more room, I think I will be working on getting that good Baby Pac cabinet restored soon.
I just got this for $0.99 on eBay:
It’s going to look pretty cool on top of my Baby Pac-Man when I get around to finishing it. There’s a 7-11 down the street from me. I think I’m going to head there at lunch time and see if they’ll give me a free refill.
Here’s what it looks like around back:
I saw other cups in this series before on eBay. I should have bid on them…I think there was a Donkey Kong and a couple other games. I’ll have to keep an eye out for those now.
If you know anything about these cups, please educate me, cuz I be needin’ some o’ that there ed-ja-ma-kay-shun. We ain’t much for fancy book learnin’ in these parts.
and I feel like this dude:
I can’t imagine what it will feel like when I hit 40. If this site is still up then I will let you know.
My wife got me a very cool electronics project that I’m tempted to post about today, but I think I will hold off until it’s all together and working. In other news…
I finished up my Baby Pac control panel:
I couldn’t decide whether or not to paint the bolts black. Many of the pictures I saw online showed black bolts, but they also looked like they had refinished control panels. I saw some with unpainted silver bolts, and most of the bolts on mine showed no sign of paint (just rust)…except for the bolts along the top that hold latches in place:
Those bolts look to me like they were painted half black to line up with the black stripe at the top of the overlay. I didn’t bother doing this, and I went with unpainted shiny bolts for the whole thing. Here are some glamor shots.
I finally got around to working on my Baby Pac-Man control panel this past weekend. Here it is before:
and with all parts removed:
Look how nasty this hinge is!
I had to shut the radio off for this part, because I only have 1 circuit in my garage and it usually blows when the heat gun and something else is running at the same time. 
Here it is naked:
The picture above is AFTER I removed the adhesive left over from the overlay. I use Jasco Adhesive Remover, which is messy and a little toxic but works great. I figure if I have any brain cells left, they are tough enough to withstand a few minutes with this stuff.
Here it is with the new overlay on:
I used Windex first on the bottom half in case I didn’t get the alignment right the first time. It was a mistake. I’ll never use it again for a CPO. It made it not stick as well as the rest, and I had to mess with it for a long time to get it to stay down.
The controls are upstairs soaking in Pinesol in the sink…I’ll post a pic when I have them installed.
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?
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:
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
Howdy folks! I’ve been spending every free minute I’ve had working on the Vidiot board for my Baby Pac-Man. The last thing I was going to try was to change the 10.7386MHz crystal directly above the video processor chip in U16. The crystals I ordered came in. I put a new one in and it didn’t fix the problem. I was still getting only 8 flashes on the LED during bootup.
In desperation, I ordered new chips for U7 and U8 from Bob Roberts, which should be here tomorrow. I also ordered new RAM earlier today. I had changed about half the sockets on the board with new ones. I figured while I was waiting for parts, I’d keep changing the rest of the old sockets. I started with the socket for U12, which is the ROM that contains the programming for the video portion of the self test. That did nothing. I moved on to the socket for U11. When I pulled the plastic part of the socket off the board, I noticed that the pins were very corroded, even though the socket right next to it was fine. Popping a new socket in U11 fixed the problem, and I got 10 flashes at bootup. I can’t tell you how excited I am. I actually danced a jig, and I’m not Irish.
Here’s a video of it working. Keep in mind it’s hard to play while holding a camera in one hand. The cabinet is very tilted, so the pinball portion doesn’t play quite like it should.
Now, next on the list is to change the rest of the sockets for preventative measures. Then I’ll do a cap kit on the monitor and hope that my new cabinet gets here sometime this year.
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