The next step was to bring my pcb over to Bill K for testing on his Cinematronics setup (Vectorbeam pcbs are practically identical), but I never made it that far. I decided to re-install the monitor and the new ribbon cable from Mark H. before pulling the pcb. Game fired up with no shakes. Here’s the new ribbon cable installed.

Solution: New ribbon cable eliminated the shakes from the vector display. Pretty easy solution this time around, now I just need to turn down the brightness!

Taito Space Wars flyer from TAFA

If anyone knows more about the Taito version of Space Wars, please share your comments, I’d love to hear them. If you haven’t been to The Arcade Flyer Archive, take a moment to check it out, great resource for collectors and enthusiasts alike. Happy gaming.

February 2, 2009 – Update
I was able to get this flyer translated. Read it.

St Louis auction pics from November 22, 2008

Present Titles

Space War UR
No. 01841

Past Titles

Galaga UR No. 5922

I allowed the paint to dry a full day before I put on the clear coat. The finished panel looked great so I put it on the side and moved on to the next step. I brush painted the back door and the bezel frame with a fresh coat of black. I allowed that stuff to dry and started the re-assembly of the guts for the control panel. I purchased a new fluorescent fixture and some weather stripping to use for the “beer gasket”. It took me a few minutes of reviewing the old pictures to figure out how the whole thing was meant to go together, but I did finally get it. I almost spent some time touching up the flaked areas on the control panel marquee, but since I’ve heard some horror stories about bad touch-ups, I opted to leave it alone. A bad touch up is very obvious once the game is lit up. I’m anxious to get the completed panel back on the cab.

I then cleaned up the wiring harness and verified all the pins and sockets were good. I took apart and cleaned the counter and removed the old speaker with the deteriorated paper cone. The paper cone was falling apart as I moved it around until the whole outside edge had flaked away. I’d need a new speaker. There is no manual for the Vectorbeam version of the game available online and the Cinematronics manual doesn’t specify, so I grabbed an 8ohm speaker. I’d test it before installing. I cut a new cardboard bezel using a pvc end cap to get the right corner radius. I was ready.

I took everything out to the garage to re-assemble. While assessing the cab I realized 3 things; first that I forgot to cut the cord slot in the back, second that I didn’t finish up enough carriage bolts for mounting the cp and third, I am missing the coin box cover. No idea what happened to it, but the garage is a mess, I’m hoping it turns up. The other two items I could correct. I nailed the monitor cut out, cross brace and bezel frame back into place. I also put on the cp, mounted the monitor and the rest of the cab guts. You’ll notice that nothing sits low in this cab. Great if you ever have a flood and also easier to access. I fired up the game and got some shaky vectors and zero sound. I panicked as the party was only a few days away. I called Mark H and Bill K for advice, both great techs, mark especially gifted with Cinematronics. Armed with suggestions from Mark, I dropped off the board set at Bill’s house for him to look over that evening. In the meantime I’d move the game into the basement. I had to cut new holes for the speaker mounting, as the new one didn’t line up. I covered the openings with blue tape to prevent metal shavings from sticking to the magnet. I installed the speaker and grill using torx head screws.

Shortly after getting the cab into the basement, I got a call from Bill. He was dropping off a working pcb! As much as I would have liked to work on this pcb myself, under a time crunch you go with the pros. Bill came through in a pinch, thanks Bill. With the speaker in place and the pcb installed again the game was fired up and played great. She was ready for the party and for a place in the game room. Thanks to everyone who helped make this restoration possible, you know who you are

With the door ready to go it was time to find replacement carriage bolts. I didn’t have the 1 inch 10-24 black carriage bolts on hand, but I had a plain steel version. A common problem with new carriage bolts is they tend to have raised lettering on the top. Not something you want displayed on your newly restored control panel as the original hardware was smooth. This door used 12 carriage bolts, ugh. Plus the control panel has a bunch in the same size. I took a batch out to the garage and used the bench grinder to remove the lettering. I followed that up with a course and then fine grit sandpaper step to smooth out the rough marks made by the grinder. I didn’t do this by hand; I put each bolt into my cordless drill and spun it at the maximum speed. It worked well. To paint them I stuck the bolts into the edge of a scrap piece of cardboard. I lightly primed, then painted with black Rustoleum with a final clear coat for durability. Overall this was a pain and I will be ordering some carriage bolts for next time!

The coin mech assembly was simple, but had some parts that couldn’t be disassembled completely. I was able to rotate a few parts around on their rivets and did my best to clean everything using a toothbrush and some simple green. Lots of crud came loose. After drying everything completely, I used a product called Never Dull metal polish on the chrome and any easily accessible metal surfaces.

Never Dull is sold in a small metal can and looks like a big roll of cotton wadding. Most automotive stores sell it or some variation of it. It smells, but it sure does take the dirt and grime off metal parts. A shame the big chrome components aren’t visible from the outside as they turned out great. The return buttons were corroded and polishing them by hand would be a pain. I loaded them into my cordless drill and spun them at high speed, this made the cleaning and polishing quick and easy. I couldn’t get all the pitting out, but they looked better than before. The exterior coin return chutes were plastic and cleaned up with soap and water, so did a pair of “brownie” style .900 token mechanisms that I’ll use to replace the metal quarter mechs. Once it was all dry, I put the door back together. Here is the result.

The next step in this project is to finish putting the control panel back together and then putting everything back in the cabinet. The basement water issue has delayed my progress on this, but I hope to have it back up and running by the end of this month.

I’ll let the assembly set up over night to make sure it dries completely. While it was drying I started filling in the gaps between the new and old panel. Brian Jones of gamestencils recommended Evercoat brand filler products for use with vinyl. I ordered the metal glaze product online and gave it a shot. It has a much cleaner application than Bondo, that’s for sure, but it is difficult to apply on a vertical surface. It sands easier and provides a smooth finish, but the dry times are very fast. If you’ve never used a filler before, try bondo first, it’s a little more forgiving. Next time I will use bondo for deep gaps and initial filling, followed by a finish layer of Evercoat. Should be a winning combo.

I ended up doing a few coats of filler in order to get the joint to look seamless. After the final sanding, I flipped the cabinet and tackled the damaged control panel section. I cut off the bad area using my circular saw and the saw board. I cleaned up the cut off area with a chisel and sandpaper, then used my joiner to cut a slot for a biscuit. I laminated a small replacement piece with leftover white and black vinyl and glued it into place. Once dry I positioned the router template I made previously, and cut the block to the correct shape. I just need to cut the slot for the t molding, but I prefer to do that after any filler work. I didn’t have to do as much filler work on this side as the seam was better, not necessarily a good sign as the cab may not be square, I’ll check it later.

After everything was dry and sanded, I stood the cab up and did a few final repairs before starting to prep the cab for paint. I glued down a raised chunk on the top of the cabinet, and replaced a badly offset piece of blocking where the bezel would sit. I let that stuff dry and then started to mask off the sides and internal parts of the cab. I gave the existing black laminate on the front a good light sanding so it would take the paint and then wiped everything down to remove dust.

With the prep work complete I mixed up some semi gloss black enamel from Rustoleum. I mixed it with a little mineral spirits to thin the paint and allow a nice flow through the HVLP paint gun. The first coat went on perfect, no bugs! I wheeled it into the garage and allowed it to dry for two days.

With the black nice and dry I removed the masking and started the prep work necessary to paint the white sides. Another KLOV’er had contacted me and asked for a scan of the side art. He’d been on the hunt for Vectorbeam Space War art for a few years and was willing to produce his own with a scan. Since I had to re-mask the artwork anyway, I decided to make the effort and scan the art. Here you can see my laptop and HP window scanner making quick work of the job. I sent off the scans and also provided a copy to gamestencils in case Brian chooses to make the artwork available. Limited demand I’m sure, but drop him a line if you need the artwork.

I then mixed up the white paint and sprayed a nice light first layer. I allowed it to dry (4hrs), lightly sanded and hit it with a final coat. Amazing how much better it looks with bright white sides.

I let the cabinet dry for another two days and then got it ready for t-molding. Its looking good so far. Any areas that I missed with the router got hit with the slot cutting bit. I positioned the cab on my work horses so I could remove the furniture dolly I had attached to the base. I also attached the two “runners” on the bottom. The original bottom did not have leg levelers, just unfinished hardwood runners. They would take all the abuse from moving the game around. Next it was on to the t-molding which went smoothly. I notch my corners and just hammer the molding in place with a rubber mallet. I don’t use hot glue unless the slot is too loose to hold the molding.

Here she is, with all the restoration work complete to the cabinet itself. Now I just need to put the game back together.

After carefully removing the tiny nuts from the bottom of the pcb, you can carefully remove the button assembly, revealing an odd looking glass tube with some leads. This is called a reed switch. When the button moves up and down it passes a small magnet over the tube which effectively opens and closes the switch. I’m told they are very durable and should last a long time with proper care.

The buttons that were numbered came as larger assemblies with a shared housing. The others had individual housings. I took them all off the pcbs and disassembled each one. Each individual button consisted of 9 small parts, amazing how much effort went into making these things! I used a little oxy clean in a small bucket of warm water and let the parts soak. After about 20 minutes I started taking them out one by one and cleaning each bit with an old toothbrush. Lots of work, but after a good rinse you can see a huge difference. The buttons still have a bit of aging or yellowing, but they look 100% better.

After removing the chunk off the side I also pulled off the bottom and the back part with the vent. They had minor issues but overall it would be easier to just replace them with new pieces. The table saw makes it simple to cut new parts so why not take advantage of the opportunity to make it a really clean restoration. I used a little contact cement under the front laminate as it had started to de-laminate a bit. Even after clamping I only had moderate success. I got enough down to keep it from pulling away from the cab, good enough. I cut the bottom and back pieces and reattached the newly repainted mesh screen.

I cut the replacement panels for each side and used black and white vinyl laminate to match the original finish. The inside of the space war is this textured black vinyl and outside is white. Brian at game stencils supplied the vinyl, great stuff. Wasn’t sure how to work with it, but I just applied it directly to the particle board and it worked perfectly. Once I had both panels covered in vinyl I could attach them to the cab. I used a slot cutter and #10 biscuits to join the panels.

I used the saw board again to trim the excess from the new panel, after it was dry. The front of Space War has an angled edge and the saw board was the easiest way to match the angle. I also cut and fit a small block into the upper corner that had damage. I used a utility knife and a chisel to remove the damaged area. It was too small of a piece to cut out with the circular saw. Using a utility knife and a straight edge was a pain, but it got the job done. I used the chisel to clean it up. I cut a slot and used a laminated piece with a biscuit for a solid replacement corner. I used the saw board again to trim the excess. The grooves in the surface are for the filler material when I get to that point in the restoration process.

The last thing I had to do before working on the other side of the cab was to cut a template of the area around the control panel. The other side was damaged and creating a template would allow me to fit in a block and cut to shape later. I used 1/4 birch ply to make the template.

I’ll wait until I’m finished with the wood repair before I start on the filler material. Next update will be the other side and assembly. Stay tuned!

While taking the bezel apart (it was a multiple piece assembly) I pulled off this crazy color monitor overlay that had been taped to the back of the cardboard. I didn’t recall this on the game I played at CAX, so I called up my friend Mark H, a local with a nice working example of this game. He told me that the overlay was actually an aftermarket part sold by Wico in the 80′s. The idea was to convert your B&W vector game to a color vector to compete with all the color games on the market at the time. Price was $1.29 (or something like that). If anyone has a catalog and can scan the page, let me know!

Now to check out the damaged areas of the cab. While not too bad overall, there were three parts that would need replaced. I prefer to cut and replace parts rather than build them up with bondo. I think it takes less time and I don’t have to do as much sanding to make it look right. The top, back, left corner; the right side where the cp sits and the bottom, back, left corner were bad. Plus the bottom few inches had drag and water damage. Hard to tell in the pictures, but the swelling was bad enough to make replacing the bottom an easier solution than bondo.

With the cabinet stripped I turned my attention to the control panel. What a bizzare assembly this thing is. It has a flourescent fixture, the instruction plexi, a harness and multiple button assemblies all mounted together as one unit. It’s very heavy. I started breaking it down so I could clean all the parts and repaint the cp itself. The marquee sits on the front of the cab just below the control panel. The top marquee is metal and does not light up. Probably done this way to keep the wiring all in one spot.

I’m amazed at how complex this control panel is. Light fixture mounted to bracket, which is mounted to control panel, with clips and bolts galore. Each part was pretty dirty, especially the plexi instructions. Either someone spilled something on it at one point, or its just the 30+ years of crud build up.

That’s all for now. In the next part I’ll show how to disassemble and clean the button assemblies.