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:

This video is incredibly disturbing. You have been warned!

Hey there. Happy Friday the 13th! A black cat crossed my path several times today. Her name is Twinkle, and she is a demon spawned in the very depths of the netherworld.

Just seeing her picture should be sufficient enough to make your day today very unlucky. If she could only see you in person, she would surely use your face as a scratching post, because that’s her way of saying hello.

I don’t have much arcade news to report. I’m waiting for some memory to come in from China to fix my Moon Patrol PCB. It’s probably on a raft right now.

Because I know you are incredibly bored waiting for me to fix some more games, here is a pretty cool video I found of David Blaine to entertain you.

I found this on Digg.com. For those of you that haven’t seen it:

This is the funniest commercial I’ve seen in a long time…couldn’t stop laughing last night.

There isn’t much new to report regarding our arcade projects, so let’s start this post with a monkey playing pac-man:

In non monkey related news….I ordered a ton of capacitors, IC sockets, and TTL chips (mmmmm….chips) from eBay. I’m tired of not having parts when I need to fix something, and figured it would be a good idea to stock up on common parts. I also got everything dirt cheap, which is always good.

When I got Breakout, I was told that the monitor kept blowing fuses. I changed all the capacitors on the chassis, and the Horizontal Output Transistor, hooked it all back up, and turned it on without the game board hooked up. The monitor powered up and the neck of the tube glowed, and no fuses blew, which is good cuz that would really blow. So, I *think* I fixed the monitor. I hooked up the game board, and couldn’t get it to show any video or make any sounds, so I’ve got more work to do. I’m pretty clueless with a lot of this stuff…my lack of knowledge tends to make this a slow process, but I’ll get it going eventually.

I also tried to figure out what was causing the score problem on Demolition Derby (see the posts in the “Demolition Derby” category). I tested all the ICs in the circuit that controls the scoring using a method described by Randy Fromm, and couldn’t find any bad ones. There were 4 capacitors on the board that looked pretty worn out, so I replaced them. I fired it back up, and it didn’t fix the problem. It did however, kill the sound in the game. So now I have 2 problems to fix instead of one. There is a giant orange 4400mfd capacitor on the board that looks pretty spent too. I ordered a replacement for that from Mouser.com.

This video is pretty cool, though I’m guessing its fiction: