September 7, 2009

I’ve had some arcade game movement in the past couple of months so I thought was time for another update.  I still haven’t made much ground in any of my restoration, although I was able to (poorly) paint the Donkey Kong cabinet I picked up in Louisville.  I picked up a new paint gun so I’m going to have to take another shot at it.

I also patched and (mostly) prepped my Donkey Kong Jr cabinet for painting.  I want to get it ready to paint before doing the cabinet mentioned above so I can knock them both out in the same day.  I decided both will be turned into Red Donkey Kongs and I will either install original DK boards or go with a 60-in-1 multicade setup.

As far as purchases go, I picked up a couple of cabinets in Ohio.  The first was a non-working Crown’s Golf game I picked up in Cincinatti for $20.  I messed with it a little but no luck getting it going yet.  I figured it was cheap enough so I might as well pick it up.  Maybe I could use the monitor or power supply.

Also, I found a deal on a Golden Tee 98 in Columbus.  The listing said the game worked, was upgraded to Golden Tee 2k courses, had a “new” monitor, and a new power supply, but the image was upside down.  Easy enough, I thought.  Either the monitor was installed upside down (it could happen) or some wires were switched.  But, when I got up there, I saw that the image was actually split with part of it being upside down.  It appears as though the frequency is wrong for monitor.  But it’s a standard res monitor and a standard res game, so that’s not it.  Everything is wired properly.  For now, I’m stumped.

I had a 25″ TV taking up space that I wasn’t using, so I purchased an RGB to NTSC adapter and inserted it into the cabinet.  Unfortunately, as expected, quite a bit of signal is lost in the conversion process so it’s not the best solution.

However, just a few days ago, I saw an ad for some games available near Cincinatti.  Available were a Ms Pac-Man, a Nintendo Playchoice 10 with 7 games, and a Teenag Mutant Ninja Turtles.  If I had the right vehicle, I would have returned with all 3.  Unfortunately I only had room for one, so I opted for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The cabinet is exactly the same as My Golden Tee and it was working, minus the control panel.  So, I bought it primarily for the 25″ monitor.

After returning home, installing the monitor in my Golden Tee, and firing it up, I found out that this particular monitor requires and isolation transformer.  Oops.  I immediately blow a fuse.  Fortunately I’m prepared for this and have more fuses handy.  After installing an isolaiton transformer I had laying around… I blow another fuse.  Not good.

I go online and seek help from the fine people at KLOV.com.  They gave me some hints of what might have gone wrong with too much power.  It looked like a lot of work ahead.  I removed the monitor chassis and found my ground trace on the edge of the board was completely fried.  That was an easy enough fix by running a wire to bypass the burned edge.  Someone told me to check the bridge, that 2 of the diodes would probably be shorted.  Bingo.  I had to google to determine what the bridge was, but I found it and 2 dead diodes.  After a trip to Radio, I mean, The Shack and a couple of assorted packs of diodes later (wouldn’t you know they didn’t have the exact ones I needed in their packages) I replaced the 2 diodes and hoped for the best.

In the off chance that my isolation transformer was bad, I lugged the 25″ monitor back downstairs to try in the TMNT again, since I knew it was working fine before.  Fortunately, it fired up and worked just fine.  After reinstalling it in my Golden Tee and replacing the sync wire, I finally got to play the game it was meant to be played.

I still have a couple of small issues with the monitor but nothing major as of this point.  There’s a small spot at the top of the screen where the image is shfted but it’s not that noticeable yet.  The monitor will need a cap kit anyway, just to freshen it up a bit, so hopefully that will take care of that issue.

And finally, my Red Donkey Kong has taken its spot in the game room.  I still need to do some touch up work to it, but it’s cozy for now.

So that’s my update.  I now have 4 (mostly) working games sitting in a garage about 3 hours from here, 2 Donkey Kong cabinets in my game room (1 having a Donkey Kong Jr board installed), a Golden Tee in my upstairs office, 3 Nintendo cabinets, a Centipede, a Crown’s Golf, and a TMNT cabinet in the garage.  I need to start making room soon.

December 9, 2008

I finally snapped some pictures of the lot of games I picked up a few weeks ago.  In the pictures you’ll see the Golden Tee 3D, Kid Niki, Haunted Castle, and Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters…

October 28, 2008

I had not mentioned it here before, mainly because I didn’t want to alert someone to swoop in and steal my deal, but I reached an agreement to buy a few arcade games this past weekend.  There had been an ad on Craigslist for some time, advertising these games for sale.  The person selling them was initially asking $500 for a lot of 4 games.  But, over time, we discussed it and I got the lot for a grand total of $250.

The ad did not offer much of a description, but from my conversations with the seller, I found out three of the games were working fine, while one had an unknown problem.  One game was sitting in their house and was in pretty good shape while the others were in a storage building and collecting cobwebs.  The 3 in storage were in somewhat rough shape, but nothing that couldn’t be repaired.

The Games

The non-working machine is a Kid Niki: Radical Ninja.  The cabinet is in decent shape but needs cleaned.  There are dings, scrapes and scratches that need patched, but it won’t be too difficult.  I will probably end up replacing the t-molding on it as well.  However, I would like to get the machine in working order first.  I really have no idea what’s wrong with it.  It looks like someone has replaced the normal cord with a plug from a PC power supply.  Plugging that in will kick off the fan, but nothing else happens.  No sounds, no lights, nothing.  I supposed I will start with checking voltages.  I have a few other games to restore before this one, so it might be awhile.

The second game is Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters.  The cabinet is in OK shape but, like mentioned above, needs some patching/painting.  It powered up right off the bat and seemed to be working great.  However, I noticed that the top of the screen is cut off.  I think this is usually an indication of a bad capacitor, so I’ll get the monitor model information and see if someone sells cap kits.  If not, hopefully I can dig out the schematics and give it a capacitor overhaul.

The next game is probably going to become a favorite of mine.  It is Haunted Castle, a game from the Castelvania series.  The game works great.  All controls are functional and the monitor is full, bright, and with no waviness.  However, there’s always a catch.  The cabinet is in very rough shape.  The bottom must have gotten damp at some point, because the cabinet is breaking off.  Fortunately, the sides are lower than the actual floor of the machine.  So, I might be able to whack off the overhang and do some minor patching around the bottom and give it some feet.  The cabinet won’t be 100% complete, but it will look a lot better if I can pull this off.

The final game, and one I really wanted, is a Golden Tee 3D.  This is the machine that was sitting in their home.  From an operational point, it seems to work fine.  The monitor might need a cap kit because I saw a little waviness, otherwise it’s really bright with little to no burn-in.  The trackball, however, is a little rough.  It has been dinged up over the years and rolls rough.  I might be able to clean it out, but ultimately I will probably end up replacing it.  I will most likely have to drill out the locks and replace them, but it’s a small price to pay.

So there it is, my treasue I found tucked away in eastern (not “Eastern”) Kentucky.  I’ll post some pictures when I get a chance to snap some.  I guess these will turn into projects V, VI, VII, and VIII.