I made some more progress on Moon Patrol. While some of the things I’m doing now may seem a little out of order, I’m doing them that way because I’m waiting to save a little money for the parts I need.

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…

I finally finished painting! Check it out:

In case you forgot what this puppy looked like before:

I still have lots left to do, but it feels good to actually see it look like a Moon Patrol again. The method I used to clean up the drips with Goof Off worked pretty good. I ended up using Mr. Clean Magic Erasers instead of a rag and a ton of Goof Off. By the time I was done, I think I was starting to hallucinate. I sprayed the Goof Off on the sponge, and wiped gently trying not to rub the edge of the stencil more than I had to. The paint started to smear at first and made quite a mess, but came completely off after I kept going over it. The vinyl stencil held up pretty good while doing that, but did start to lift a little in just a couple of spots where I probably scrubbed too much. Because of the screw up, the edges on the yellow layer look a bit harder than they should.

They almost look like stickers, but I think it still looks good. There are a couple of spots that I want to touch up with a brush.

One nice bonus…the stencils came with registration mark stickers for the Williams logo:

I let Linda put those stickers on, so she gets credit for finishing it. I have to order the control panel overlay and t-molding so it will be a little longer before it’s done.

I found a video today that seems appropriate to end this post, seeing as this has now returned to a Moon Patrol (well….almost!) and we are going to be returning to the moon soon:

Hey there, hi there, ho there. It’s getting a little late, and the fumes are getting to me, so I apologize if I get a little weird on you. The good news is I started painting Moon Patrol! The bad news is that I gaffed it up pretty good. Here’s how it went down…

I bought my stencils from prOk aka Brian aka OleszakCreative.com. I couldn’t be happier with them. I was going to use paint codes I found on his site, but for some reason (cuz they suck?) my Home Depot couldn’t use them. I ended up grabbing the colors from a pic I took of the cabinet after I peeled off the old Aliens sticker.

I used the eyedropper in photoshop to grab the colors and printed them out in squares for them to match. This can’t possibly be very accurate but was the only way I could get them close, and they seem to match pretty good from what I can tell so far. The paint I got was semi-gloss latex enamel, and I also picked up Kilz-2 primer and a HVLP spray gun.

OK…so I had everything ready to go. I thinned the paint pretty good with water until it tasted just right, and still had a tough time getting it to come out of the sprayer well. I kept messing with it and it just didn’t seem right. I finally got it to come out somewhat decent but the height of the spray area was pretty small. Here it is after the primer:

I did 2 coats of primer. If I didn’t have problems with my shiny new spray gun, I probably could have done just one. I started the blue next, and did a couple of coats, sanding in between with 220 grit paper, and it just didn’t look right. It looked a bit stripey. I had a feeling it was my gun, so I poked around on the interweb for a while, and finally found the problem. An HVLP gun is designed to be used with a compressor that has a large tank. My measley 6 gallon compressor wouldn’t cut it. I cleaned up the gun and brought it back to Home Depot, not telling them that I painted all day with it. I bought a standard duty gun, and the difference was night and day. It worked about a million times better than the other one with my tiny compressor. After doing another coat of blue with the correct gun, it looked like this:

The finish looked awesome, and I was psyched. I moved on to the stencils. Here is the dark blue after being taped in place:

After the mask is peeled:

After I masked off the rest with tape and paper:

And finally after painting 2 coats and peeling the stencil off:

The stencil worked great, and it looked very cool. It was realy starting to look like a Moon Patrol again, and the excitement of seeing it finished probably lead to what came next.

OK…so here it is with the stencil for the yellow on, ready for paint:

I did a single light coat of yellow, and it looked pretty good. You are supposed to wait 4 hours between coats with this paint. I don’t remember exactly, but I think I only waited about 2.5. By this time, it was getting a little colder outside and was dark. I did the 2nd coat, and it looked good. Went back inside for a few hours, and went back in the garage to checkout my handy work.

I had drips! Drips everywhere. As Q*bert would say, @!#?@!

I’m not sure what caused the drips. I guess maybe that last coat was too heavy, or I didn’t wait long enough, or someone is out to get me. Not every piece that is cutout had drips…if I had to give a number, I’d say 50% of the individual cutout shapes had drips and the other half did not. I was going to try to sand them off, but figured that would be difficlut and mess up the stencil. I think I found a good solution to this, but won’t know until it’s all done.

I tested with some scrap pieces of the vinyl from the first color on the board that I was using to test my spray gun. I stuck it down good, and went at the areas along it’s edges with Goof Off. I was very careful to not rub too hard near the edges of the vinyl, but just enough to get the paint off, down to bare wood. I peeled the vinyl off and it left all the paint under it in tact. So, I have to do that to every piece on the stencil that has severe drippage. I masked off every individual cutout that didn’t have drips:

Here is a closeup of how it looks with all the paint removed:

While it may look like total crap around the edges of the stencil, it’s still stuck down well and the inside is clean and smooth. I have a lot of work to do to get it all like this. When I’m done, I’m going to paint these spots again, with primer, the base coat, and finally yellow. I could just use yellow on the bare wood, but I’m concerned that the letters masked off won’t match these fixed ones.

I have a truckload of Goof Off, rags, and have sealed every window and door tight so the outside air doesn’t get in. Wish me luck!

TO BE CONTINUED

It’s getting harder and harder to come up with post titles. I finally got some painting done on Moon Patrol. I decided to paint the black parts first using Rustoleum Satin Black in a can. Here’s a pic after I masked off the sides with some blue painters tape and brown paper from Staples:

Here it is painted after about 4 light coats:

The light reflecting off the black makes it look a little screwy, but it doesn’t look like that in real life…just in the land of make believe. I didn’t go nuts painting the inside, but I did hit it a bit here and there…I figured it didn’t matter much because it won’t be seen.  I painted the back doors rested on nails against the garage wall…you can see one of them in the pic above.

I picked up the paint for the sides today at Home Depot, and will be painting them soon….I can hardly stand the excitement!

Hey there…my Moon Patrol restoration is coming along. I can’t wait to paint it. I have both sides ready for paint. The front is pretty much done, but I’m going to look it over one more time. I’m working on the back now, which is very close to being ready as well. I don’t have any pics of the cabinet because there isn’t much to see. I’ll take some when I start painting.

Wade Lanham had mentioned cleaning monitors and other parts with something called Bleche-Wite.

You can get it at most automotive stores. He gave me the low down on how to use it, and it is incredible. You spray it all over whatever you are cleaning, in this case my Moon Patrol monitor. Let it sit for a few minutes and use a soft paint brush to brush away dirt, then hose the whole thing down with a garden hose. You can then spray most of the water off using an air compressor with an air spraying nozzle attachment thingamajig, and let it fully dry before hooking it up.

Before pics:

After:

Thanks for the tip Wade!

That’s it for today. I’ll be heading out tomorrow to pickup something cool for the gameroom, but I won’t tell you what it is until I get back so I don’t jinx it.

Hey there. I’m going to make this post a tutorial.

In case you didn’t read the older posts in the Moon Patrol section, the Moon Patrol I’m restoring had water damage on the bottom of the cabinet. I cut away the damaged wood and added new pieces to replace it. The old wood looked like it was rounded off at the corners intentionally, so I rounded the new wood to match, and was pretty happy with the result.

A cruel individual who shall remain nameless (Wade Lanham) decided to comment on those rounded corners and informed me that they weren’t originally rounded. At that point, I had 3 corners rounded off, and was going to get to the 4th soon. I was thinking of just leaving them as is, but it was bothering me. I’m spending so much time trying to make this right, that it would suck big time to have those corners rounded when it’s complete. I decided to fix them. This method would work regardless of whether you screwed up a corner on purpose like myself, or if you had one that was broken off.

Materials and tools you will need:

• Bondo
  
• Putty Knife
  
• Sanding block and paper (80, 120)
  
• Orbital sander (optional, but better than spinning your sanding block around real fast)
  
• Hammer
  
• Finish nails – 1″ or so is probably fine
• Light Block (for mounting lights on vinyl siding)
  
• Ruler
  
• Hacksaw
  
• Jigsaw (optional…watch your fingers!)
  
• Drill and bits
  
• Motivation
  

OK…here goes. The light block is in two pieces that snap together. Separate the pieces. You’ll need the piece that looks like this:

OK…take a beer break….ready?….let’s continue….

The side shown in the pic is the side that goes against the siding, and we are going to use it as a mold for the bondo. Bondo will stick to just about everything, except plastic. You basically need to cut this in half so you have 2 corners. The best way is probably corner to corner. I did it a little different but would probably do it diagonally if I had to do it again. I started cutting with a jigsaw which was fast. The only problem is it will heat up the plastic and melt it, and it quickly bonds back together. I then had to score it with a utility knife to get it separated. After I cut mine, the two pieces looked like the one on the left here:

Ignore that clamp…I didn’t end up needing it.

There is no easy way to explain this part…you need to measure and cut more of the plastic corner so it will fit underneath the corner, as shown in this pic:

Once you get this cut so it fits well, you’ll need to secure it. I did this by drilling a small pilot hole in a few spots, and banging in a finish nail just enough to hold the corner tight. You can see some of the nails better here:

Read the directions on the can of Bondo until you have them memorized. Mix the bondo on something flat that you can throw out later (like that girl you met at the sports bar last night?). When you have the bondo mixed, spread it into the mold like you are making a cake. Be sure to push down enough so that it forces the bondo down to the bottom of the mold, and leave the bondo higher than the repair so you can sand it later.

If you mixed the bondo right, it should harden in about 30 mins. If you crush a viagra and mix it in, it usually hardens a bit quicker. Feel the bondo to make sure it’s solid, pull the nails out and the mold should come right off.

Now, hit the side with the orbital sander using 80 grit paper until it’s smooth. For the edges, you can either use the sanding block, or the orbital sander. If you use the orbital sander you can easily make it crooked if you aren’t careful. Count the number of beers you have left, and make your decision. Here is the finished result on my Moon Patrol.

[BOREDOM DISCLAIMER]: I’m going to apologize in advance for what you are about to read. It is bound to be pretty boring. I’m going to go through everything I did to my Moon Patrol PCB last night in hopes it might help me fix it down the road. Buckle your seatbelt, cuz we’re going in….

This is a continuation of my Moon Patrol saga…if you don’t want to miss any of the exciting details, you may want to back up a few posts.

My mailman arrived yesterday. I was expecting him, and had let my dog out early for his arrival (j/k…I don’t have a dog). You know how The Postman Always Rings Twice? Well at our house, it’s more like The Postman Never Rings, Not Even Once. We have a shiny new giant door bell that is very noticable, but it goes untouched. This guy is a knocker.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like knockers just as much as the next guy, but when I’m working at home I like to have the music on. Because he likes to knock softly like an old lady with sore knuckles, I have to keep the music turned down low. This is also annoying because sometimes he comes around 12:30, but other times not until it starts getting dark out. Anyways, enough ranting about the mail…here’s what came:

What could this be I wonder? I flipped it over, and took a close look at the customs declaration.

Now I remember! These are those electronic pants I ordered from the pants district in Beijing! I hope they fit!

I ripped the package open with visions of my lower half plugged into a power outlet, and was incredibly dissapointed to find 16 of these:

I only ordered 15, so I guess one is for good luck.

Remember that boredom disclaimer up top? OK…if you are still reading, here is where I may loose you. I popped 2 of these in, to replace the suspect RAM. There are only 2 RAM in Moon Patrol as far as I know. Hooked it all up, and the problem was still there. So…according to the manual, problems can also occur with logic chips that are in the RAM circuits. The first one they mention is a 74LS139 chip in spot 2K on the main CPU board. I have a logic probe that I have never used. I figured it would be a good time to try it out. Everybody remembers their first time with a logic probe…do you remember yours?

So…I hooked it up and probed away like one of those aliens from the book Communion. I read the data sheet for this chip that I found via Google, and thought maybe it wasn’t doing what it should. In retrospect, I think I just don’t know what I’m doing. I ended up swapping out this chip with one I had on an old board and it did squat.

Now, because I am clueless, my options here are limited. I started looking over all boards very closely on both sides. I was looking for broken traces, or anything else that stood out. I noticed on the Character board (part #M-52-B-C for those taking notes), pins 9 & 10 on the chip at location 8B had solder connecting them together.

I thought that was a bit odd, and looked up this chip in the schematic. While I don’t understand much about the circuit, It definitely looks like these pins are not supposed to be connected. So, I desoldered them and put the board back in the cabinet. Now, the original problem was still there in addition to a new one. Everything that was supposed to be black on screen was now blue. I soldered the pins back together and it didn’t fix that.

I noticed a repair on the bottom of the Scrolling Video board, under where the ribbon cable connector goes. There was a gouge going right through 2 traces and someone repaired that with 2 blue wires. What is weird is that if you follow the traces they are replacing, it looks like they accidentally ran each wire to the opposite location. I desoldered them and soldered them where I thought they should go, like so:

The board is pretty much dead. I’ve decided that I messed with it enough, and am going to buy one that I know is working. When I get a bit better with this stuff I may take a crack at fixing this one.

Final Score: Moon Patrol 3, Jamie 0.

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.

My family and friends now realize that I have a serious problem with coin op games and are on the look out for me. My brother called me a week or so ago and said he knew someone that had a pinball machine sitting in the garage that they wanted to get rid of. That’s this one here:

It’s a MIBS, made in 1969 by Gottlieb. Its an electro mechanical machine – no circuit boards. Lots of bells, gears, and other fun stuff. Someone painted it brown (at least I think its brown…I’m color blind). It should look more like this:

When I got it home, it was dead. Plugged it in and nothing happened. It had a blown fuse, and some other fuses that were not the correct values. I fixed them and it came on but wouldn’t start a game. After reading through the great info at pinrepair.com, it got me playing around with the credit score wheel in the back. You can see that in the pic on the backglass, towards the right. It is there to show you how many credits are in the machine. I turned that wheel, pushed the button on the front of the game and it started up. It has some issues but can actually play a bit and make a lot of noise.

My Dad had picked up a Pinball machine and gave it to my brother. It was sitting in his storage unit for a few months. My brother is leaving it with me until he has a place for it someday. That one is Solar Ride, circa 1979 also by Gottlieb.

This one was also (and still is) dead. Some mice decided to make a home on the playfield. Damn mice. They have no respect for toys. Anyways…this one had the same issues with the fuses as MIBS. I fixed them, turned it on, and the speaker was making a very loud humming sound. I turned it way down, and could hear a coil stuck on. The coil for the left ball trap was charged and stayed that way. I’m guessing this is what burned the fuse before. The game won’t start in the condition that it’s in. I’ve heard that this could be caused by a bad transistor on the solenoid driver board so I’m going to see if I can test them all and replace the bad one if there is one. I really am just guessing as I don’t know much about these puppies.

I bought some rubber kits for both and some wax from pbresource.com. I’ll keep you updated on the progress as I go…