Arcade Resources
Putting WG4700 Series monitor in R-Type
On Sunday night I got the bug to progress with this.
I had to take a whole bunch of stuff apart in the hacked together Mr. Do! cab, so much so that I am not completely sure I could get it back together again after another month or so. I would more than likely probably forget.
I got the monitor out and the isolation transformer. I brought everything out by the R-Type, and took the nice monitor out of the R-Type. I gathered up my supplies and remembered that I didn’t have any solder wick. I was going to need to add longer wires to the Isolation Transformer and I would have to desolder the old wires. I wanted to have a new clean connection, so I would just wait until I got more wick.
On Monday I got some wick and immediately I went ahead and desoldered the old wires and cut new wires. I soldered them on, and then got to looking a little closer. I think the wire I have is probably 20 gauge, and there is a slight enough difference between these and the old wires in size that makes me think the old wires were 18 gauge.
So, I stalled again. Such a stupid simple question, but not something I know. What is the minimum wire gauge you have to use when connecting wires to the 0V and 115V connections on the isolation transformer.
I posted on the original topic I had made in the KLOV forums, and I got little reply in a day. Someone told me that it was bad to go down in gauge, completely not answering my question. I am not sure of the gauge, and not sure how to test it save putting it in the little holes in my stripping tool to see what is closest. That doesn’t seem exact.
So, back to bugging poor old Bob Roberts since he is familiar with this topic already.
He told me that 20 gauge would work, but 18 is better. So, I am going to waste what I did and put some 18 gauge on there, hopefully tonight.
The other issue with the monitor is the RGB connection. It was something pretty weird on the other game, the molex connector having wires going in every other slot, not right next to each other like you typically see with a RGB pigtail. I will have that stupid little hurdle to overcome.
Space Invaders Deluxe Boards Arrived
I was happy to find these waiting for me tonight when I got home. I emailed my potential buyer to let them know. They would like to see some photos of the machine working again….naturally. I will have to try to get those to them tonight. But either way, it doesn’t sound like we will be working out something for 2-3 more weeks.
Jr. Pac-man truck progress
The truck continues to move along, but at a little slower pace than the beginning.
The last I heard it is still in North Carolina with the disassemble project they were working on. But, there is some good news for those getting games. There will be no new stops added, so hopefully the route it has is final and we can better judge when it will arrive.
I heard Rick is going to be out of town for a week, so I figure that the truck won’t even be to his place for another week. That puts the truck at my place now somewhere around the 21st of September. I assume they are still coordinating with Rick, he has other games than mine that they want.
The time is benefiting me from a savings point, but it is hard to stay patient.
The Glob custom kickplate
Rick asked me to give him a ring last night, and this is what we talked about. He said he has a set of sideart that he will take photos of, and was hoping that I could take the characters from “The Glob” and put together a custom kickplate. I told him that shouldn’t be a problem, send the photos my way.
I had never heard of the game, so I took a look at some photos. I would like to try playing it, the artwork is kind of strange looking though. Not sure if I would classify it as appealing.
Thinking more about artist for Jr. Pac-man machine
I have made a reminder on my calendar to research into the Jr. Pac-man arcade game artist eventually, but right now I have so many arcade related projects to do that I keep waiting to do the research.
But yesterday I found the artist for the Baby Pac-man machine by Bally. Now, the Bally/Midway pinball division was probably totally separate from the video division, but they may have still had some cross over and members of the arcade game art direction units may have known each other. I may try to research the artist’s name some and see if they can help point me in the direction of eventually finding the Jr. Pac-man artist.
Space Invaders Deluxe Boards Fixed!
I got an email back from Alex tonight. He got the boards, did his tests, and fixed them. It was the problem that I had narrowed down with the power supply, this is what he said;
We did find that the -5V voltage regulator on your power regulator board had failed. It’s been replaced, and the power regulator is working properly again.
The motherboard and sound board both tested OK – luckily the problem with the power regulator board didn’t do any damage to them.
My biggest concern was that the Space Invader that was racing across the screen when you plugged the game in was permanent damage. We had left the game on for awhile on the first night that I got it back in April, and I thought for sure that the wrong voltages had corrupted chips on the main PCB. This was something that Alex had indicated to me, and I wasn’t sure if that would be an additional expense because, really…that would have been my fault in a sense.
But, it sounds like things should work out fine. I just hope I still have a buyer when it gets sent back to me.
Progress on the Xevious
We had a Discover gift card from last Christmas, and we had to go to Menard’s on Saturday so I decided to pick up the industrial liquid container of Goof Off. I worked on the top corner of the game, just scraping off a little bit to see how I would apply it and how well the liquid worked. Pretty much worked the same, and it is difficult to apply but by unit it is cheaper as a larger container.
I was killing some time, so I just took apart some other things. I took out the marquee and chucked it, and used the goo gone on the auction sticker on the plexiglass. I found a major mouse nest behind the marquee that I had to vaccum out, that was fun.
Then I peeled off all of the bowling lane pattern on the wood on the marquee as well as the overlay on the control panel. There was a hack job done to the control panel for sure, some shotty bondo work, and there were a ton of extra holes in the cpanel. I have my work cut out for me if I see this thing through.
