I was sitting at the computer, and a mail truck I did hear
When what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a bunch of stuff for the arcade.

First up, my Centipede keychain from Oleszak Creative:

I haven’t decided, but I think I’ll probably put my Centipede keys on this and hang it on the coin door. The packaging for this was very cool, but I forgot to take a pic of it before I opened it. You can see the packaging and more examples of these keychains here.

Next, some DK art from ArcadeShop.com:

The thing stuck to the marquee in that first pic is the instruction card for under the bezel. I’d love to see these with the masking removed, but I’m not going to remove it until I have restored the Popeye cabinet that these are going to go in. I have all the art I need now for this. The only parts I need are a DK PCB, joystick, and buttons.

Finally….a “Tokens” marquee:

The plan for this is to make it into a backlit sign to put over my token machine.

That is all. Go back to watching cat videos on YouTube.

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.

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.

There is a big saga I created on the problem with the Centipede I picked up last Sunday over at KLOV.com. Read it if you are bored. I’ll summarize here a bit. Basically, Centipede is now fully functional (like Data from Star Trek, and yes I am a geek).

The guys in the forums at KLOV.com helped me big time with this. I’d give them a big kiss but I don’t like dudes and my wife would be upset. Anyways…I was able to get it to tell me that the 2114 type RAM in spot F2 was bad. I stole one from my Pac-Man board that has yet to be installed, and soldered it in. Turned it back on, and it gave me 3 beeps for the 2101 RAM in spot K7. I didn’t have any of that to steal. I placed an order via an arcade chip website, with express mail shipping. It was taking too long for me to get a notice that they shipped the chips, so I found another place yesterday that would overnight them – Eldorado Games. The guy was very nice…I also got a joystick for Moon Patrol from him. RAM came this morning. I replaced K7 and it came right up.

The monitor faded out after about 5 mins of playing. I’m not sure what the deal was with that. I checked the 2 fuses on the chassis and they were OK. I turned it back on and its working OK now…been runnig for about 30 mins or so. I pushed on the neck board a bit in case a loose connection caused that.

Next on the list for this:

• Rebuild the trackball (I have the technology)
• New control panel overlay
• Cap kit for the monitor
• Maybe a new marquee…this one has some good sized scratches
• Maybe sideart…still deciding on that
• T-molding

Here is how it looks in our game room (ignore the clutter):

The game room is growing very fast…I can’t get a good pic of the entire thing anymore, and yes we are insane. Speaking of insanity…we are off to see Zodiac. Cya L8R.

I picked up one of my favorite games on Sunday – Centipede!

I saw this one on Craigslist, and called ten minutes after it was listed. He said it wasn’t working (wouldn’t turn on), and would take $50 for it. I told him I would take it without seeing any pics of it. I was hoping it was in good shape. Overall condition of the cabinet is good. It has typical wear and tear on the control panel, and some scracthes on the sideart. It’s also peeling a little in some corners but not bad at all. I plugged it in and it wouldn’t come on. The power interlock switch for the coin door wasn’t closed even though the door was. I fixed that and it came right on. You can coin it up and play, and the sound works. The screen however looks like this:

I checked the voltages and they were OK. I am going to replace the big blue and see what happens, but I may need to replace the ROMs to get it going.