I got my Nintendo coin stickers today from Rich at ThisOldGame.com.

I ordered one white set for my Popeye, and one yellow for my future Donkey Kong should I ever get one. Here are the coin mech stickers, complete with dirty coin door:

I haven’t stuck the larger sticker below the control panel yet, because I plan on restoring the cabinet someday.

If you have a Popeye or a Donkey Kong, you need to go buy these now!

For those who haven’t read everything on this site (AKA “losers” ), everything was working great on my Defender except for the joystick, which was slow and sloppy. I ordered a repro replacement from MantisAmusements.com.

These parts are an exact replica of NOS Defender joystick parts. Here is the old one before I took it apart:

If you look closely at the round hole between the 2 screws in the bottom of the picture, you’ll see the pin that sits in it. See how much room it has to move in there? That is all wear from years of people Defendering like there’s no tomorrow. That hole should be tight around that pin, so it has just enough room to move and no more. I changed these parts, and the joystick is like brand new!

I played a few rounds, and the game is awesome now that you can actually control the ship better. However….Defender totally kicks my ass! I never played it in the arcade, but I was pretty good at the Atari 2600 version. I am dying to get this in the game room now, but there isn’t room until we move everything around.

and the only cure is more cowbell arcade games!.

In 1981, when leg warmers were just starting to get popular, long before Richard Dean Anderson was running around shooting laser beams all over the place, Defender’s baby brother was born. Ladies and gentleman, children of all ages….I give you….

STARGATE

This game was released one year after Defender as its sequel. As if Defender wasn’t hard enough, they supposedly made this one even harder. Those dirty rat bastards.

I got this game from the same location I picked up the skill crane that started all this madness back in October of ‘06. The building was supposed to be demolished to make way for a hotel. I was driving by to get some starbucks, and noticed the building was still there with a “indoor flea market sign” up. I went in to see what was left, and spotted this way way in the back. I almost missed it. The back room was pitch black. I wasn’t going to go back there but I ended up just barely spotting the back of it. This was 2 days ago, and I had no cash. The nice guy that owns the building wanted $50 for it. The game wasn’t working, but $50 is a great deal. I just couldn’t swing it. I told him I would probably come back in a few days after I pay my bills and he said if it was still there I could get it for $35.

So…I swung by this morning after getting more caffeine and picked it up.

It took me forever to drill the lock out of the bottom coin door. I heard change rattling around in there! When I finally wrecked a few drill bits, this is what I found:

$1.50 and an old bottle of white out. Now, $1.50 might actually buy a coffee, as long as I don’t get it from starbucks.

I looked the boards over. No corrosion from the batteries. The original style AA battery holder is in place, with batteries and all, so I got lucky the boards weren’t ruined. I’ll swap them for a lithium battery per Bob Roberts article. I fired it up, and it’s making game sounds. I can’t coin it up, but I don’t know if its just sitting in setup mode or not. The monitor has high voltage, but the screen is all screwy. That’s were I left it. I’ll do a cap kit on it and see what happens.

Making more progress:

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’m getting very close to finishing my Moon Patrol restoration. I got the cabinet back in December of 2006. Since then I have been looking for a decent bezel on eBay, and was having a hard time finding one. They just don’t seem to turn up for some reason. I finally found one recently, which was in horrible condition:

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…

Hey there, hi there, ho there. I haven’t done much of anything in quite a while on Pac-Man. I’ve been busy with other projects, and have been holding off on it a bit to figure out what I’m going to do about the sideart.

I was planning on buying a new control panel from Arcadeshop.com for $125 (ouch!). I recently saw a used one on eBay and ended up winning it for $2.25.

I’ll need to strip it, fill the extra holes, refinish it, and put a new CPO on it. I’m on the lookout for a good deal on a CPO, so if you see one let me know.

While grabbing the pic for this from my Pac-Man pictures folder, I spotted the pics of the cabinet after I stripped the black paint off it and before I got it down to bare wood. It really made me miss seeing the cabinet with art on it…I may need to get moving on this one soon!

OK…nothing spectacular to report here. I got the marquee light and the coin lamps working.

The marquee light was easy…I just put a new bulb and starter in and it came right on. The coin lamps were a little trickier. They were disconnected.

The original power supply had been replaced with a switcher, and they never bothered to wire up the coin door lamps. After much debating and research, I went with Bob Roberts’ suggestion outlined here:

http://www.therealbobroberts.net/wmslamps.html

The transformer terminals that the coin door lamps used to be wired to were outputting about 9.8V. The lamps need 6.3V. I got some advice saying hook them up to the +12V on the switcher and use 12V bulbs. I also got advice saying to hook them up to the +5V. Both may work OK, but I figured it would be better to keep them isolated so as to not cause problems with any of the 3 PCBs, and would be easy enough since the original transformer was in place.

The schematics call for a 2.0 ohm, 5W resistor to drop the voltage from 9.1V to 6.3V. I bought a 2.2 and a 1.8, figuring I would use whichever one made the voltage closest to 6.3V. I tried the 2.2 ohm resistor, and it dropped the voltage to about 7.5. I tried both of them in series and it dropped it to 6V, so that’s how I wired it up.

I cut the original connector off. You can see the yellow and yellow/white wires from it on the left of the pic above. Power goes from transformer tap labeled 13 into a 5A fuse. From there, it goes into the 2 resistors, and then to the coin lamp circuit via the yellow/white wire. It comes back on the yellow wire, which connects to the transformer tap labeled 14. I used some heat shrink tubing to cover the exposed wire after I soldered it.

The game is almost 100% operational. I have a joystick rebuild kit on order which should make it game room ready.

I would like to refinish and repaint it, and clean the coin door up:

The plastic coin label thingies are cracked and horrible looking…I’m going to try to repro those. I also need to clean off all the crud on the outside and see if I can make it look like new. Here is a close up of those crud laden, cracked coin slots in all their glory!

I did a bit more on Defender today. When I left it yesterday, it was working but the ship wouldn’t move up, and that just sucks.

The switch was making contact. I ended up tracing the wire all the way back to pin 1 on the top connector (3J2) of the interface board.

The wires were fine. I began tracing the circuit from that pin, and it went to resistor R12 in that top row of resistors. I pulled one end of the resistor out, and it tested OK. That connected to a small capacitor right below it (C13). I did the same with that and tested it with my capacitor meter. It was fine. Now, because I am clueless, I didn’t have much else that I really knew how to test without doing some research. So, I looked over the board to make sure everything was fine. One solder joint on a pin on the other connector looked a little crappy, so I fixed it. It had continuity before so I don’t think that really did anything.

The  last thing I did was take that capacitor in the lower right corner out and test it with my meter. It was a 100uf cap, but was testing kinda high…around 135uf if I remember right. For the hell of it, I replaced it.

When I hooked it all back up, the up switch was working fine. So, if I had to guess, I think changing that cap fixed it but I don’t really know for sure.

The joystick handles slow and sloppy (like your mother?), so I’ll need to work on that next.

Here is another pic of it next to its brother Moon Patrol.

Can’t wait to get these 2 in the game room…it’s going to be awhile though because I have to do a major rearranging. Anyways…it’s Friday. Have a good weekend…L8R.

For those of you following along, I’ve been waiting for a package from Bob Roberts with monitor parts. The mailman came around 2:30, a bit early. My ears are trained to recognize the sound of his engine…I hear him coming a mile away.

Anyways, he usually has to come to the door whenever he has a package because my mail box isn’t gigantic. I hear him open the mailbox, shut it, and take off. I’m thinking the package didn’t come, but went out anyway…and what to my wondering eyes should appear?

WTF! He crammed the box in there, defying the basic laws of physics. That thing was wedged in there like a fat guy in a little coat. It took me a good 10 minutes to get it out. I kept pulling on it, and thought I was going to rip the mailbox off the post. The only thing I can think of is he didn’t want to walk through my long grass and get ticks….especially wearing those USPS short shorts that they sport this time of year.

I did finally manage to get it out…here’s part of what was inside:

Bob Roberts is a great guy to buy from. He ships super fast, and usually throws in freebies. This time around, I got a set of leg levers and a pen. In the bag with the pen was a horizontal width coil that I ordered.

OK…Here’s what I did. I replaced the old broken width coil:

Then I put the new HOT and Flyback in. While doing all that, I noticed something was not quite right with the neck board.

It was actually cracked in half! Someone had put jumper wires over the cracks and then covered the crack with a big glob of silicone. Here it is on the parts side:

You can see the crack running down from the top right corner down to where my thumb is. I thought for sure maybe this would cause a problem. After getting it all back together, I hooked it up. No dice. I had no high voltage.

I took the chassis back out and poked around some more. It turns out one of the fuses (901) which tested OK before wasn’t now. After I messed with it a bit it would sometimes test OK, and sometimes not. I think what was happening is the wire inside broke but was still coming into contact with the other end. I changed the fuse, put it back in, and the damn thing came right up!

You can see its start up here and a bit of me playing it:

The ship won’t move up. The switch is making contact, so I’m not sure what the deal is. I’ll leave it for another day. I’m just glad to actually see it running.

Damn I’ve been busy lately! Feels good to get some arcade stuff done, even if it is small stuff.

The Rampage I got a few months back had an oddball joystick (Wico?) for the middle player:

In the interest of making this look original, I’ve been keeping an eye out for a replacement joystick. The one that should be there is a Monroe 4 way. Before getting this game, I never noticed these joysticks before. After getting it, I really started to like the feel of them. They are very different from standard Wico style joysticks. They have a smoother feel, especially when you are rotating them. They were used in Gyruss probably for that very reason. Here is a video showing the one on the right in action for all you people into arcade pron:

I had a saved search in eBay for awhile and just recently saw a NOS (new old stock) one turn up. It ended up going for big bucks…$108.50 to be exact! I wasn’t about to spend that for a joystick.

Anyways…another one turned up shortly after that was used, and a 2 way. I guess no one was as interested in a 2 way compared to a 4 way (can you blame them? ) , so I was able to get it for $10 ish. I figured all I had to do was put 2 more leaf switches on and hook it up. Alas….it was not that simple.

The joystick was very stiff (please no jokes) and didn’t move nearly as well as the 2 that were already on the game. I took it apart and greased it up and it was moving much better…BUT it wouldn’t move up or down easily. The other 2 can actually be rotated around 360 degress, like in the video above so something was up. I took a good look at the mounting plate:

The whole was an oval, only allowing movement from left to right. The other 2 had a perfectly round hole there. I ended up drilling it out to make it match. I had to go buy a new cobalt drill bit to get the job done, and it was a major PIA:

Here is a pic of it all apart:

The joystick in the upper right corner was one of the original ones, for comparison. There were some other differences. The white plastic actuator jutted out at the top on the original and was completely straight on this 2 way. The new one is also slightly higher and the ball is a little bit bigger but hardly noticable.

Here it is assembled with 2 more leaf switches added:

And….BAM! Here it is installed:

So much better! Now if only I could find a NOS control panel overlay…