Old school arcade games
If you grew up in the 70's and 80's you might have fond memories of going to the arcade or playing video games in general... Heck there was a half dozen arcades here in the area and it was common to see machines in pizza places, corner stores, grinder shops and bars. I like them enough that there are a few here at the Dodge Garage and if I had the room I'd have a dozen or so..
Machine number one was an NFL Blitz 2000 conversion of a Virtua Fighter cabinet. It ran pretty happy that way for a number of years till the monitor died and got regulated to a corner of the garage with stuff piled on it. This winter (2016-2017) I got the bug to finally do something about it and ended up converting it to a 27" LCD wide-screen from Wal-Mart and making it a dual JAMMA (arcade standard) and MAME (arcade emulator PC based) machine.
The PC part was a computer that I picked up for free and modestly upgraded ($26) to quad core 3.0 ghz. It runs an IPAC-2 interface board which routes the joystick and button commands to the PC which holds about 80 games we like to play. The cabinet itself had some repairs done to the bottom edges, a foot cut off the back (the depth was required for the old huge 25" CRT screen) and a new back fabricated, trim replaced, the coin lamps are now USB powered LED's and the marquee lamp is an LED too.
Some further details can be seen over on my 3dfx page
The Mr.Do machine was picked up as a package deal with the pinball game shown below. I was going to convert it to a MAME (PC emulator) machine like the Blitz cabinet but when I found out it was actually a Moon Cresta machine (which is pretty rare now) I decided to convert it back. Conversions of arcade machines were very common and in this case Mr. Do was one of 30,000 Mr Do. conversion packages sold by Universal. Typically you would get a new PCB, new marquee (or marquee decal in this case!) decals for side art and instruction placards and Walla you have a new machine! New machines like this were in the $2500-$2800 range so spending $800 to upgrade was done often once a particular title fell out of favor and profits fell off.
Here you can see what the machine looked like after I peeled off the Mr. Do decal from the marquee.
Rear view after I have pulled things apart. I'm in the process of installing a LCD monitor and pulling the old wiring and PCB
I had to print up a new bezel surrounding the monitor, you can see where they stuck the Mr. Do instructions on and it was in poor shape in general. The one in the middle was the first attempt but the color was off and there was some imperfections in the artwork. The one on the bottom is the winner and final product after color correction in Photoshop and reworking some of the artwork. I had the file printed up at Staples on vinyl banner material and then glued it to cardboard project backing. The hole in the center has been resized for the LCD too which has slightly larger dimensions than the original CRT.
The final product: Marquee polished and upgraded with 22" LED lamp, wood and trim under marquee replaced, new plexi-glass, painted plexi-glass bezel, new fasteners, new printed bezel, side panels cleaned, new LCD monitor and support, new JAMMA wiring, new Happ buttons, WICO classic joystick, new control panel overlay, stripped and painted coin door, cleaned, polished and adjusted coin mechanisms, trim polished, wood touched up and repainted were applicable, new locks front and rear, 5 volt line adjusted to spec at power supply and PCB installed. The original CRT monitor has been set aside along with the florescent light fixture and wood bits that were replicated in case I ever sell the unit and someone wishes to convert it back to 100% original. I myself like the LCD screens as they are lower maintenance and consume less power.
I also installed a power switch behind the coin door as these Gremlin/Sega machines didn't have one! To shut the machine down you had to unplug it every night or remove the real panel and access the service switch! Crazy setup. Maybe arcades in Japan were on gang switches? This will be a fine addition to the big garage.
What the unit looks like with stock controls.
A shout out to http://www.arcadeoverlays.com/ for their excellent products and service!
Atari Centipede table I picked up in January 2017.
I was looking for one to put in the big garage for people to hang out while I was working on cars and at the same time setup to stream internet music/news. The Atari ones are nice as they have good style, are compact and the height can be set to decent levels. This table was already setup for MAME so I just have to find a computer I can install.. and I'm going to swap out the pads for casters so it can be rolled about.
Final computer configuration is a Dell 153 from my mom (I kid you not) with 4 gig of ram, $30 SSD hard drive, $8 Windows 7 key and a $6.30 CPU upgrade (Athlon 64 X2 5600+) mounted on a board and rail that slides right into the original PCB rail mount setup in the case. Sound is provided by some old car speakers I picked up... 25 years ago, a china Ebay car amp run off a cast off Sony laptop power supply. Wireless is a PCI long range WiFi card from Newegg.
Here you can see the PCB on the left and a LCD from my stash to replace the funky old Micron monitor that it came with.
Picked up some new reject buttons off Ebay, scanned in the one good Atari logo I had and printed up new replacements. Sweet!
1968 Williams Ding Dong
This one looks like it is here to stay: Picked up as a project for my wife's entertainment, it was pretty much "dead" on pickup. The only thing that functioned was lighting! After 2 days of trouble shooting, point cleaning, lubrication and tracing wire it was back up in operation. Have a new rubber kit and flippers on order and its mechanically good as new. Have one or two minor things left to tweak on it, has been a great learning experience.
Pac Man machine cabaret style that I built for a friend of mine as a gift, it started life as a bar casino game.
It has a Dell LCD monitor, 60 in 1 game PCB, Zippy joystick and Happ buttons and switches. The graphics I just grabbed off the internet and printed on photo paper and trimmed in yellow.
Williams 1975 vintage pinball table I picked up with the Moon Cresta as a package.
Did some work to it and sold it off as I really don't have room for a table in the workshop.
Also passing through... an original Sega Frogger found in a storage bay!