Archive for April, 2007

Heroes came back on tonight with new episodes, so that was the highlight of the night.

Today was the day, and a long one.

We got the belt sander from Wes and got to work in the early afternoon. I sanded one whole side of the Pac-man cab before I felt like I really needed to go and get some more belts. We went and got a two pack, and a plastic bristle brush to wipe off the wood particles if the belt got clogged.

I then sanded the remaining three sides of the cabinet. The hardest seemed to be the back up at the top, with the small area, all the holes and areas where stickers had been. We took a scraper to parts of it to get some of the paint off. In the end, the whole cab looked great, back down to the base plywood for a fresh start.

I took some citrus cleaner and cleaned the bottom of the cab and the top a little bit, without spending too much time on either. The top isn’t really clean, but I was in a bit of a rush and knew we wouldn’t finish everything today.

Then I took some CLR and mixed it into some warm water and wiped down the inside of the cabinet. It was a little damp, so I put it out in the driveway in the sun, and went inside for an hour or so to let it dry.

Then, later we came back out and got started. The cabinet didn’t have the monitor mounting rails in it when I got it, because there was no monitor, so fortunately I had the rails from my other Pac-man cabinet so we used those. I will just have to find myself a cheap second set of rails for the game.

We put the monitor in, mounted it, and then Justin got to putting in the other parts. He put in the switcher power supply, the isolation transformer, and redid the wiring. He had to hack apart the Vs. Golf power supply for the cord, and for the fuse mounting because the other one was completely fubar.

While he was doing this, I was taking apart the old control panel and figuring out to do with the controls. The Joystick was a rusted piece of junk that was mounted too low, so I took out a bat handled joystick from a Ms. Pac control panel to use instead. I took off the buttons and the control panel overlay was just pressed between some composite board and plexiglass, so I was able to save that. I then had to get all the wiring right, so I had some soldering to do for the new joystick.

Justin got everything hooked up, including putting the power switch back in, and getting the gameboard ready, turned on the game, and Bam!, it looked great. Only problem was the screen was upside down, and there didn’t seem to be a dip switch to flip it, so we took the monitor out and turned it around. When we did that I realized the way the frame was facing that this was the correct way to have it mounted based on the other Pac machines I have seen.

I made a little tag for the connector to signify the parts side, and then turned my attention to the control panel. I took the extended clip racks off the old vs. control panel and then drilled some holes in my Pac-man control panel to mount those. First try, the control panel snapped into place in the cabinet.

So the last thing we did was test the controls. The joystick had to have two wires swapped, but because I use easy connects, that wasn’t a problem, and the game was working fine. I wasn’t able to mount the buttons yet because there is no spacer with the metal control panel, no wood like there was in the original, so I have to figure out what to do there. I also have to add some screws to fasten the joystick, and I would like to sand the whole thing down and give it a new coat of paint before I am done.

It was a really solid day of work. The marquee bulbs don’t work right now, but they are getting power, so that is good. And because they are just regular bulbs, they are easy to replace.

Next step will be mounting the joystick, and then figuring out how to mount the buttons, if I put wood on the back or what my choice is. Quite and upgrade from where the cabinet was when we first got it.

After church we went back for our second visit to Buck Creek, and again it was much enjoyable.

We got back early afternoon, and I started right away in working on the cabinet. I had four sides to sand down, so it would take a while. And it did. I made some other arcade related calls, and ran a quick errand. We worked on it all afternoon, Justin helped, and he worked on the monitor chassis. After I finished sanding, I cleaned the bottom of the cab, a little bit of the top, and then the inside.

We took a short break to watch a movie about a school, the holocaust, and paperclips, and then ate some dinner. Then, finally, after dinner Justin and I had a fresh cabinet to start loading the Mr. Do guts into. I worked on the control panel, Justin put together the power supply. The first obstacle was the monitor, and we had to use the rails from my other cabinet, meaning I am short a set for a little bit. I hope to have another set next weekend.

The girls came outside for a little while to talk about our summer vacation plans, and we just continued working. There was a lot to do, and we didn’t get as far as we hoped. But by the time we went to bed after midnight, we had a Mr. Do that powered on with controls that worked as well. The picture looked great. The control panel needs a lot of work, setting the controls up permanently, but the main hard stuff is done, and it felt good to get that far. Said goodnight and probably goodbye to Justin and went to bed.

Right now we are just fostering him, but you know, we’ve given him a name, so seriously, I don’t think we are giving him back.

He was a real steal at the price of free, so this week we’ll have him checked out for anything major at a vet.

We stayed very busy today. We left close to on time this morning to start the wine trail, and got to Chateau Thomas by 10:30. We then progressed along to all of the remaining winery locations. We next headed downtown to Easley, then up 31 through all of the nice old homes to Carmel and Ferrins Winery. Ferrins was interesting, had some interesting wines. The wines weren’t bad, but we liked Ferrins overall the least of all of the locations we visited. Then, it was just down the road to our favorite tasting spot of the day, Grape Inspirations. We liked pretty much everything we had there.

Afterwards, we had a picnic lunch while was much needed to balance the alcolhol, and later met Justin’s cousin, Jill, and her husband Mike.

Then, we headed back around the city. We made a short stop at home, before we headed down to Bargersville to Mallow Run Winery. We liked the location here quite a bit, kind of like a Oliver before it got really fancy.

When we got back, Justin and I ran an errand over to my work, and picked up a huge wine rack that my boss gave me. We got that in the house, glued on some panels that had fallen off in the mirror area and let it set.

We ate dinner, and then played games outside like Hill Billy Golf, and corn hole. In one round tonight, I was on fire. I hit 4 cornholes in a row, all four of my bags for that toss!!!! You wouldn’t believe it even as I am telling you right now.

Chris stopped by to let me borrow a book, and he stayed over and later Michelle met up with us, and we all sat around the fire and chatted. Everyone left or went to bed fairly early tonight, we had a busy day.

Here are some photos of our new bedroom set that we got for a great deal, and the wine rack that was given to us.

A photo of the group that got together for Sarah’s surprise birthday party earlier this month.

Something pretty cute Sarah wanted me to note. He has started doing some barking, and although we think this is the most darling thing, we have to tell ourselves that it will be bad later, so we scold him when he does it. But usually, he will do one little bark, and then right after he does this sort of chewbacca call growl thing. It is really funny.