Tokens Only » Present

Galaga restoration

cnlmoore — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:36:42 +0000

Flash back all the way to October of 2001, not too long, but an eternity when you think about the advances in technology since that time. I had picked up my very first cabinet, a Galaga UR and was anxious to restore it to its former glory. I think it is very important to document the strip down of any cabinet, primarily so you can remember where stuff goes, but also to share the details with the collecting community. I didn’t have a digital camera back then and was taking pics with my 35mm camera, a slow process.

I decided to borrow a friends digital Sony Mavica for instant results. Cutting edge at the time with its little 3″ removable disc media. Wow, what a difference, I can’t imagine using a 35mm ever again! I stripped the cab of all its parts and started to clean it up. The bottom and lower back of the cabinet were water damaged and the cab was missing a wheel, so drag damage. I figured I could just swap in some new panels and repaint/laminate. Easier said than done as Midway used these bizarre RTA (ready to assemble) connectors all around the bottom piece. I guess for ease of assembly.

I was able to find replacement RTA fasteners that were almost exact duplicates of the originals. They weren’t cheap (imports from Germany) but I was trying to repair it correctly. I cut new blanks for the bottom, back and back door. I sanded, patched and sanded the entire cab to make sure it was nice and smooth. I would paint the back components, but for the sides I was going to install some nice black laminate for durability.

I installed leg levelers and casters. I couldn’t find a spare original caster and since I only had one was forced to settle for a pair I found at Ace Hardware. I had rewired the cabinet after bringing it inside to install the artwork and Lisa was in charge of play testing to make sure it was working properly. Well, she hit level 21 and got this lovely message, “This player too hot. My electronic brain is scrambled. Immediate shutdown. Danger, danger, danger.” Then the darn game would reset. WTF is that? She tried it again and sure enough, same thing, but this time I got the pictures below. Apparently some Operator wanted to make sure you couldn’t play too long on just one quarter! Funny stuff.

I know I have more data and pics about my first restoration around somewhere, just need to dig. Until then, happy gaming.

Phoenix Cabaret restoration pt 3

cnlmoore — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:59:12 +0000

This restoration has been a serious pain in the butt. I ruined one of my carefully laminated side panels in my last effort, (See part two for that story.) and would need to make another panel. I had enough scrap material to join and make a new panel, so I gave it a try. It worked out well and I figured that after laminating it, you’d never know it was two pieces. Unfortunately during the sizing portion, I cut about 4″ more off the bottom than I should have. Measure twice, cut once, words to live by. I bit the bullet and purchased another piece of material. This time I got it right.

I carefully lined up the new, pre-cut blank on top of the other blank I had already laminated but not cut. I then used screws through the carriage bolt holes to secure the pieces in place. No movement this time.

Once secure and clamped to the saw horses I used my trim router to cut out the shape. I took about a 1/4″ per pass until I had only a bit left. Then I flipped it over and finished it off on the black laminate side. I was concerned about chipping the laminate and this worked out perfectly.

After completing the panels, I started to layout the blocking and nail it in place. I used the remaining old panel to measure locations. Everything was coming together nicely.

I also cut the blank for the new bottom piece and cut the air vent holes on the drill press. I used the blast cabinet to strip the rust of the brackets that were mounted on the bottom. They had seen the most water damage and had some serious rust. A little zinc primer and a coat or two of black and they are good to go.

I’ll let the parts dry a bit and then I’ll attempt to dry fit everything before I start fastening it all in place. Since I was planning to reuse the front section and the top angled pieces a dry fit will be important to make sure I judged the sizes and blocking placement correctly. Let’s hope so, more to come!

Opening a NIB Stern pinball

cnlmoore — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:11:37 +0000

Every 5 or 6 years I have been the lucky recipient of a fantastic company bonus. The first one was a NIB Lord of the Rings pinball from Stern in 2002, this time it was a NIB Simpson’s Pinball Party from Stern. This game came from the most recent and final short run and has a manufactured date of October 24, 2008. Here it is after the driver dropped it on my driveway.

I was anxious to open it up and move it into the game room, but I’d need help. I called my friend Bill K and he agreed to come over. We took our time and carefully opened up the box. Pulling out the sealed air foam inserts and cutting away the box until a hand truck could safely be used to move it off the pallet. There’s nothing like the smell of new pinball!

After we had the game safely off the pallet and strapped to the hand truck it was time to move it into the basement. Stair climbers and an extra hand make it easy work, especially when you have an exterior staircase. Double doors and a walk-out basement help too, no messing around here. Once in the basement Bill and I attached the legs and gave it a general once over.

We moved it into the game room next to the LOTR pin. I wasn’t sure if it would stay in this spot, but for now it was the best option. Powered up the game and everything looked good. I was able to play a few games, but only a few.

Every time the ball would shoot up the left orbit, or occasionally when it went through the garage door, a ball would get stuck somewhere under the mini playfield. I had to remove it to see what was going on. Turns out that the garage ramp piece was tightened down too hard. This pushed the ball guide into the path of the ball just a millimeter or two farther than it cared for. The ball stuck in place, as you can see. All I did was loosen up the screws a bit and it seems to play fine now. I also took some scans of the pinball plastics which I’ll post here. Email me if you’d like full size images.

I was excited to have a new pin for our first annual Halloween party, unfortunately the Friday before the Simpson’s Pinball Party started auto launching the balls, firing off the pop bumpers and other assorted craziness. Stern customer service was gone until Monday so the game had to sit quietly during the party Once Monday came I was able to determine it was a bad CPU. I’m waiting for it to arrive any day now, I hope.

Phoenix Cabaret Restoration pt 2

cnlmoore — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:56:48 +0000

Picking up from where I left off with the restoration (part one), I got a postcard from Menards stating that my laminate was ready for pickup. The box it came in was huge. I got it home safely and pulled out a sheet of the wood grain laminate. To my surprise the stuff was longer than a sheet of plywood by about 4 inches.

This would allow me to cover a whole sheet of plywood with room to spare, good if you’re building cabinets, but a pain to work with for a cabaret. I cut the sheet down into usable pieces which was approximately 24″ x 55″ each. I also cut two blanks of birch plywood to size as well. The plan was to laminate the blanks and then use one of the original cabinet sides as a template to re-cut the cabinet shape. I figured I could save my self some time doing it this way. Good plan in theory. So I laminated both sides of the blanks using contact cement and a paint roller, while that dried, I removed all the blocking from one of the original panels and got all set up to route the cabinet shape. I made two errors. The first is that I should have cut the shape before laminating and then just used a laminate trimmer and the second, that I didn’t fasten the blank to the original with anything other than clamps. The clamps moved on me and the router took out more than it should have. I was planning to live with it since it was in back, but then while routing from the front side, the original panel started to crumble and deteriorate. This caused the router to skip and grind away at the panel. Needless to say it was ruined. I would use it to make replacement parts for the remainder of the cabinet, instead of just tossing it out.

After that little screw up I decided to turn my attention to remaking the cabinet blocking and cleaning up the control panel. I used 1″ x 3″ and was able to duplicate the blocking pretty quickly, using a simple jig for angle cuts on the table saw. After the parts were cut I painted all the visible sides. The control panel I just peeled or scraped off the old cpo. There was so much rust underneath it came off without much trouble. The panel would get powder coated at Pro Tek and I’d probably have to do a custom cpo as I’ve never seen an NOS cabaret cpo for phoenix.

The next step would be to locate another piece of birch plywood to use as a blank and hopefully I have enough laminate for one more panel. This time I’ll cut the shape before doing anything else. Trying to rush the work only caused me further delay! Ugh.

Phoenix Cabaret Restoration Pt 1

cnlmoore — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:50:14 +0000

I wanted to get started on this game for some time, as it was a huge childhood favorite, both in full size and on the Atari 2600. I’ve had it for almost a year now and have slowly gathered extra pcbs and a few parts necessary to get started. (Check out my other post to see it’s arrival Phoenix Cabaret Added) The plan was to do some minor cosmetic repair, clean up the cabinet, swap out the pcb and move on. I figured I could work on it during the down time of the other major projects I had going on.

I wanted to install a double jamma adaptor from Mike’s Arcade so I could throw Pleiads in the cab as well. With my limited space I’m always looking to maximize the use of floor space and those two games work well together. It never quite works out according to plan, though. The first step was to strip out all the parts, label them and stash them in a tote for safe keeping. Once that was done I could haul the cabinet into the garage and look over the damage.

Once in the garage I was able to check out the weird corner repair and some other minor damage. Apparently one of the previous owners decided that using wood filler would make a nice repair. It didn’t. Problem is they didn’t use any support in the repair and didn’t do any sanding or even a complete repair job. No big deal, I would just re-do the repair and maybe just re-laminate the sides. I’d be keeping this one after all and it was worth the effort. So I popped off the wood filler and then figured I could strip off the laminate. Nope. The laminate was firmly attached and the particle board so flaky that it just made it worse. Crap. I just made a hole lot more work for myself.

So now I’ve got to undo all the brackets and carefully break apart the cabinet so I’ll have pieces to use as templates or possibly to re-use. I wasn’t planning on such a complete restoration and wanted this to go as quick as possible. I discovered an odd manufacturing bit about centuri cabarets while disassembling this thing. There are no glue joints at all. Every panel is held in place against some blocking and with simple carriage bolts. I was able to take the whole thing apart, without damaging the major pieces, in about 20 minutes. The bottom and the cracked piece in the back were the only fallout beside the side panels. What a fantastic way to assemble the cab.

The next step would be to cut some panels and laminate them. The phoenix cabaret had laminate on both sides, no paint, other than the brackets. I ordered some wood grain and black wilsonart laminate from Menards and would move forward once it was ready for pickup.

Phoenix Cabaret added to collection

cnlmoore — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:16:57 +0000

I got an opportunity to trade my project centipede cabaret for a project phoenix cabaret. Now you might be saying that I got a crappy deal, but I had very little into the centipede as it was from a bulk buy, I already have a multipede in a millipede cab and phoenix was one of the first games I played as a kid. I played the crap out of a cocktail version at Down the Hatch restaurant in Schaumburg IL on Roselle Rd. We’d go there after soccer games and I’d sit and play with the few quarters I could scrounge from my Dad. Great fun. Plus a phoenix cabaret is an uncommon or even rare game. So I made the swap, here she is. It needs some work so I’ll be doing another complete restoration on it.