It looks like this will be going to print very soon. If you want to see this happen and need one, please head over to KLOV.com and add your name to the list!

– click the image above to enlarge –

To do the color match, I took a picture of the cabinet before I sanded it down. I brought it into Photoshop, and tried to match the brightness to other pictures (maybe the flyer? I can’t remember). Here are the swatches I printed and brought in for the color matching:

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.

This post has lots of pictures. As always, click them to make them bigger. I know you want to, so just do it.

Moon Patrol has been in the garage since I got it. I decided it was about time I bring it inside and finish working on it, which I did a few days ago. I finished putting the t-molding on, which was a lot of fun…especially the part where I put my finger right into the hot glue I was using and melted my flesh. It’s called “HOT” glue for a reason people.

I bought this “Williams Control Panel Molding Trim” from Arcadeshop.com:

Here is the control panel without this beautiful piece of plastic-y goodness:

You have to trim the molding to size. I used this stuff to glue it to the control panel, which worked great:

Here it is after the trim was applied:

I had an issue with the crappy monitor. I had cleaned it up and did a cap kit before, and adjusted all the pots the best I could. Whenever the game was turned on after being cold, the vertical hold seemed off. It wasn’t the typical problem of the screen not syncing and constantly moving like the v-hold on an old TV. This basically would sync and lock the image but the image would be halfway down the screen. Turning the game off right away and back on would fix it every time. I took the control board off:

The backside had some solder joints that looked questionable, and lots of crud (flux?) all over it:

I desoldered and removed all the pots. The old flux won’t cause a problem but I cleaned it up anyway with some 91% isopropyl alcohol, and resoldered the pots back in place:

Doing that seems to have fixed the problem. The image locks in right where it should be from a cold start.

I did a couple of things wrong when doing this work (I know, shocking!). So you might learn from my stupid mistakes, I will include them here as well.

Mistake #1

For those regular readers out there, you know that I’m waiting for a reproduction bezel for this from Rich at ThisOldGame.com. I noticed that the latches inside the control panel didn’t seem very tight. You didn’t get that typical snap that you normally get and the control panel was a little loose. I figured I might as well fix that, so I removed the latches and bent them a bit to bring them a little closer to the inside of the cabinet. That worked perfectly! Except for that fact that I didn’t have a bezel in the game. I put in my old bezel and the latches were now WAY too tight. I had to remove them, bend them back, and it was fine. The original bend I put in the latches was not needed, and I just wasted that time for nothing.

Mistake #2

When I repaired the cabinet, I forgot to fill in a hole that was left behind by a security bar. It was so close to the lower coin door that I just missed it. Someday I may fill it in, but not in the near future. I stuck a bolt in it for now.

Here it is finished, with the exception of a new bezel.

Here is is in it’s new location in the arcade:

Here’s a closeup:

I’m putting the files together to send to Rich at ThisOldGame.com.  From there, he’s going to reproduce it and sell them on his website. When I get word that they are available I’ll be sure to let you know here.

There is one more small piece that I’m going to work on…redrawing the paper instruction card that goes behind the glass on the right hand side:

They made different versions of these to use depending on your settings. I *may* have some NOS ones around. If I do, I’ll repro all of the variations of this.

Here is the end result, including the black vector portion layered on top:

The only thing I have remaining now is the halftone shading on the buildings.

I have the black raster portion to do, along with some halftones in red in that second rainbow strip from the top. Without all the black/blue stuff I keep wanting to see this with a palm tree for some reason.

I contacted Rich from ThisOldGame.com. He makes great repro art for Space Invaders, Burgertime, and other games. He said he would reproduce these if I can get him a good vector drawing of it! So, I’m now in the process of working on the redraw/cleanup for this using Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s coming along good so far. Here is a closeup of the original scan so you can see what I’m up against:

You can see all the cracks throughout the paint…it looks a bit like Bea Arthur after she’s been in the sun too long.

Are you done vomiting? OK…let’s continue….

This pic shows what I’ve got done so far:

Here is a closer view:

It looks a little fuzzy in that image, but it should look perfect when done. The fuzz is just due to the way it appears on screen and the level of zoom, etc…

OK…check out the nasty speaker board this game came with:

Where do I begin. Let’s start with the bare wood. That should be covered with speaker cloth. Then there is that unsightly metal vent crap that they’ve screwed over the speaker hole. I think I just threw up a little. Based on some recommendations in posts in the RGVAC newsgroup, I headed to Ace Hardware to look for some special heavy duty replacement screen material called “Paw Proof”. It is designed to keep these from ripping your screens to shreds:

I couldn’t find one specifically with that brand name, but I did find a roll of what must have been the same stuff. It was $3.49 a foot, and came in a 36″ roll. I bought 4′ to have some extra. Here it is after I sprayed the board with some black rustoleum and covered it with the screen:

I just folded it over the back and stapled it. I really like the way it came out. Thanks go to whomever suggested that material.

I started wiring up the cabinet. I installed a new marquee light, the marquee, a switcher, and a custom wiring harness that I put together. Here are some picks of the back. Keep in mind it’s not done, and I need to vaccuum out the inside a bit.

If you’ve been reading my other posts, you may be wondering if that monitor will work after I hosed it down with a garden hose. I hooked it up, and it was deader than a door nail. It turned out that the fuse 601 was blown, so the problem had nothing to do with my heavy duty cleaning. I messed around with the monitor, trying to figure out the best way to mount it. This was clearly not the original monitor. This one is a Kortek KTA-915, and was designed to be mounted vertically. I was able to situate it in a spot so that the back door should just barely close, and the bezel around front should just barely fit. Before I went through the effort of trying to mount the monitor, I wanted to make sure it was going to work.

My wife got me a set of Randy Fromm DVDs and his big blue book. He has monitor flow charts to help troubleshooting monitor problems. According to the one for this monitor, if fuse 601 is blown, it is usually due to someone hooking it up without an isolation transformer (more than meets the eye). It said that when this happens, the bridge rectifier may be shorted. I tested it, and it didn’t seem to test right. I pulled it out of circuit and it tested fine so it went back in. He also says to check capacitor 602 for a short, but it wasn’t shorted. So, the problem may actually just be a fuse. I didn’t have one that fit, so I ran to Ratshack expecting them not to have it, and expecting them to try to sell me a cellphone. I was very shocked to find that they actually had the right fuse, and didn’t even ask for my name or phone number when I checked out.

I put the fuse in, did a cap kit, and it fired right up! Here it is from the front.

I was able to play a few games by touching the control panel wires together. It should be a lot easier to play once I actually have a joystick and buttons hooked up.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment…