Wizard of Wor, Dig Dug and Tetris Sold!
For a month or so I had been responding to the common Craigslist ad looking to “buy” games. Usually people put out these ads looking for freebies, but I knew it couldn’t harm me any to try to sell some of my non working games. I wanted to try to reduce as many distractions as possible to focus on studying, and fixing up the Midway Wizard of Wor, Atari Dig Dug, and Dynamo cabinet Tetris were time suckers to say the least.
The Tetris was the only one I was seriously considering keeping in my game room, but the black cabinet was so ugly. The original intention was to resell these once they were working to help pay for gas, or take down the paid cost on one of my other games. But the motivation for selling a game to make a small amount of money waned for me. I got my holy grail, the Jr. Pac-man. I had originally wanted to use the money I made to help pay for my trip out to PA to pick it up. But thanks to DanOfEarth, that wasn’t an issue anymore.
Finally, last Tuesday I found some people who weren’t looking for free games, and were interested in the three I had to sell. I just wanted my itemized costs back in total for the games, and the price was more than fair, great if you intended to keep one of the games. Dig Dug is too slow of a pace for me, Wizard of Wor holds no interest for me other than the fact that it is a two player game, and Tetris, again, ugly cabinet with no sideart.
Here are some photos of the games being taken away.
I made a whopping $10 on my sale after all of my costs were added up, but I learned a lot. I originally bought the Dig Dug as a Land Sea and Air Squad, painted solid black on the sides. It was my first game that I brought back from the brink of oblivion, and restored in some sense of the word. It was a lot of fun, bargaining for the deals, but it was a lot of work, and without knowing much about electronics, it was hard work for me to constantly figure out all of the problems I was having with any given game.
In the end things worked out great. I didn’t lose anything but time, and that is debatable when compared to what I learned and the contacts I made hunting down the arcade parts. The games found a good home where they should be reused in a family fun center, and I can park in my garage again:) Just in time for winter. Not to mention I can keep the other two cabs in case I need a fix, my empty Atari Food Fight and Atari Xevious.
Dynamo Cabinet 19″ Monitor Mount Board Dimensions
Last Saturday I mounted a 19″ monitor in my Tetris Dynamo cabinet. The cabinet is 25.5″ wide, so I don’t think it was meant to fit a 25″ monitor originally, the monitor opening is 22.25″ x 22.25″ square. Maybe it was meant for a 21″ monitor?
Either way, the opening was way too large for me to mount my 19″ monitor without some customization. A JAMMA cabinet, they are meant to be universal cabinet for any game. Probably an easy job for most guys with power tools. But I didn’t have any, so I called in a friend.
The night before I measured out the board we were cutting, and I thought I would share those dimensions here in case someone else could use the information.
I had a 3/4″ thick piece of plywood scrap that I got for free that I worked with. I think the thicker the better since the monitor is so heavy.
Here are photos of the monitor mounted in the cabinet;
And here is the dimensions for cutting a board to fit your dynamo cabinet and mount a smaller monitor.
Notes: The holes that I drilled were 1/4″ for the mounting bolts. I made this drawing for a horizontally framed monitor. You will notice the slots to the side for the frame flaps to slide through.
The dimensions are as following (Converted to the decimal);
- Total Board Size – 22.25″ x 22.25″
- Inner Square Total Size – 14.5″ H x 18.25″ W
- Monitor Flap Slots – 1″ H x 1.0625″ W
- Space Horizontally around cutout – 1.875″
- Space Vertically around cutout – 3.875″
- Bolt Placement From The Left of Board (Top and Bottom) – 2.625″, 9″, 15.5″
- Space to center of holes – 75″
Hope I described that clearly. Like I said above, I had to make the opening a little taller than 14.5″ to fit the 19″ Electrohome monitor screws.
Board Cutting, Studying and Ocktoberfest
Paul was supposed to be over at 10 am to help me cut out a board to mount a monitor in the Tetris. He was on time on the dot.
I took us about an hour and a half, with all of the “try it again’s”, putting the board in the machine, and then putting the heavy old monitor through the opening to make sure it would fit. A lot of times we had to shave parts down, most of the extra cuts were to accommodate the screws on the sides of the monitor frame.
After Paul left, Sarah and I took Nokes on a walk. (Non Lifting day :)) We had a quick lunch when we got back and then started my day of focus. I studied for a good part of the day, two and a half hours to be exact. I would study for an hour and then take a break. An hour on, 20-30 minutes off. For breaks I would watch Scrubs, or play some Jr. Pac-man. I even chatted with Chris for a little while.
Sarah spent the day cleaning. She organized stuff in the family room, cleaned up the kitchen, did laundry, and kept reading the Harry Potter book. She is getting closer, I would say she is about half of the way through it, and I believe this is the last book. At about 4 pm she went out to the store to do some shipping, and get some food to make for tonight’s party. She didn’t get back until close to 6, apparently she had some problems. We worked together to try to get the cheesy potatoes made. The Revive part was at 6:30, but we didn’t get there until almost 8 pm I think.
Turnout was good for the event, mostly the regular crowd except for Emily who was home with her friend Sean for the weekend. She got a new car and we checked that out. But about half way into the party there was a mass exodus of about 5-6 people. The rest of us played a game of hearts and had a laugh until just before 11 when we all headed home.
I tried to watch some of the Rockies game when I got home. I saw Matt Holliday hit a 3-run homer that put Colorado within 1 run, but fell asleep and missed the whooping that Boston put on in the later innings.
Friday’s are for relaxing
Sarah and I went to the gym right after work, for only the second time this week meaning we’ll have to go sometime this weekend.
When we got back, we both just chilled out. I made a quick post on the blog, and then I got to take a bath, it’s been awhile. I think I knew I had plenty to do, and had one of those overwhelming segments of time. I just tried to focus on what absolutely “had” to be done for tomorrow.
Sarah slept on the couch for most of the night. I played a little bit of Jr. Pac-man, but I also reviewed my online IUPUI app and figured out some things. Also canceled the Blockbuster account for a little while to help me focus and have one less distraction.
Then, it was out to the garage to dimension out the board we’d be cutting in the morning. This was the only necessary thing I had to have done by the morning. Paul was coming over fairly early and we were going to cut down that piece of plywood to fit in the Tetris cabinet and to mount the monitor in there. It took me over an hour to think through all of the cuts, it seemed like it too me too long for how complex it actually was.
I studied for only a half hour tonight, it was so late that I knew if I started before I went to bed it would be useless. Tomorrow I will be better.
Tetris PCB has arrived
I won the Tetris arcade PCB over a week ago off ebay, so after having to wait to transfer paypal payment to my account (why does that take so stinking long?), I paid for it and it was waiting for me at home on my doorstep today.
It said JAMMA in the auction, and that it worked. I don’t see “JAMMA” by the edge connector, but maybe that isn’t on every board. Either way, hope to try it out this weekend when Paul comes over to help me finally saw that board and soon after, mount the monitor.
Dynamo Cabinet Push Buttons – How to disassemble?
I was dinking around with my Tetris Dynamo cabinet this morning, and I got on a kick to clean the buttons. They have all the dirt and the grim on the sides that make it so they hardly work.
However, after I took the buttons off, they didn’t have the typical bottom where you would have a micro-switch, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to take them apart.
Here are some photos;
Does anyone know what types of buttons these are? They have an “IL” printed on them. I would like to take them apart to clean the buttons up easier.
