Rebuilding the herd

Back in 2000 I first got into arcade game collecting. I went on a binge of buying on eBay (and some local discoveries from Craigslist) and soon had an arcade hall with over 20 games. The games I had in the “herd” included:

Asteroids, Blasteroids, Moon Patrol, Battlezone, Lunar Lander, Space War, Phoenix, Xevious, Donkey Kong, Space Duel, Centipede, Tron, Galaga, Afterburner, Choplifter, Space Invaders Deluxe, and Missile Command.

I also had a Skee Ball and a pinball (Comet). Then I ended up moving a couple of times and the effort of storing the games and moving the games added up so I divested myself of the herd, donating a number of them to a local youth center. I kept the Lunar Lander, it was a hard find and a game that I had a soft spot for it.

Now move forward to 2009 and the arcade bug has bitten me again. My son was lamenting the glory days of having 20 arcade games in our garage, which got me thinking. After a friend helped me reorganize my garage (thanks Rick!) I had space for rebuilding the herd.

When I first started purchasing arcade games I was flush with cash from a startup venture, so I ended up paying pretty much market prices, and shipping to boot. I decided I would leverage my Electrical Engineering degree, and equipment (scopes, logic analyzer, etc.) and go after non-working games. This allowed me to avoid direct competition with “yuppies” trying to build out a game room. The onset of the recession proved advantageous, the price of video arcade games seems to have plummeted.

Battlezone

I noticed an eBay auction with a Battlezone for $250. It was “parts complete” and on top of that it appeared only the monitor was at fault (I really love the vectors and have developed some talent in fixing G05/19V2000 monitors). So I ran down to Atlantic City and swooped it up (good thing I have a Suburban).

Missile Command

Next I saw an auction on eBay for a broken down missile command cocktail. No top glass, no logic board, sitting in a warehouse in Pennsylvania (TNT Amusements). For $119 it was mine, and my son and I made the 90 minute trek to pick it up. We wandered into the wrong office at TNT and ended up in one of their warehouses. It was heaven, hundreds of games all over the place. After we pulled ourselves back to reality we asked Todd (the proprietor) and went over the warehouse to pick up the game. Todd had graciously offered to sell us a non-working Missile Command board for $50 but unfortunately couldn’t find it. Looking around he found a box of boards and located a Missile Command board that was “missing parts” and let us have it for $10. I figured this would allow me to hit up Eldorado Games for a swap in the event I couldn’t fix the board.

We got the system home and cleaned it up. I looked at the board and did some research, it appeared only the cpu (6502) was missing. I pulled out my spare 6502 (we all have spare 6502s don’t we?) and plugged the board in – it worked!

Space Duel and Breakout

Next I found a Space Duel cocktail (working) in the arcade collectible group. After agreeing to $250 for the Space Duel I was asked if I wanted an original Atari Breakout (working!) for another $50. I agreed on the spot and once again my son and I made a journey (+2 hours) to pick up the games. With a little work we could fit both games into our Suburban (I love my Suburban!!!).

Defender

Another eBay auction for a non-working Defender I was able to win for $200. This was a relatively close pickup, about 15 minutes away. My son and I got the game, and the owner (Steve) said he thought it was just a power supply problem.

Sure enough after we get it home and cleaned up we notice that there is no +5v or -5v. With some help from Bob Roberts we got a “Williams Power supply get well kit” and replaced all the power caps associated with the regulators and both 723 regulators (now with sockets).

Well we got back +5 but -5 were still missing. A quick look at the schematic shows that the -5 regulation is pretty simple, there are a bridge rectifier and a regulator (7905), so I ordered them both. While I was at it I ordered some buttons so we could clean up the control panel.

Bob was kind enough to ship the parts out before he received my check (he is just too much!), so we got the new parts a few days later. I took a chance and replaced only the 7905 (the rectifier would have been harder to remove). Defender is now working.

We still have an issue with the battery backed memory, but the game is working. I opened up the marquee and discovered that a 60w incandescent bulb was in use and the fluorescent light had been cut out. A trip to Home Depot netted me a new magnetic ballast and a new 15” T12 tube (yeah, early defenders used 15” tubes, not the 18” that is more commonly used).

July 19^th, 2009

Battlezone

I’m on to the battlezone. I did some sleuthing using my oscilloscope (another eBay acquisition several years ago). I verified that the power supply is okay, got all my voltages. I have a plug head that I made up for my Asteroids game to look at the X&Y signals to the monitor (yeah there’s an XOUT and YOUT test point on the boards but this was right in the oscilloscope probe bag). It appears that X is not working, and this can b seen pretty well by putting the oscilloscope in XY mode. This won’t work with the 19V2000 as the spot killer circuitry comes on and kills the display since there isn’t enough activity on the X signal.

October 2^nd, 2009

Ms Pacman

I got a new addition, a cocktail version of Ms Pacman. Technically it’s not mine, it’s for my daughter, but it’s not working and needs a lot of cosmetic work before she can take possession, so for a little while it’ll be mine.

Space Invaders

I have been looking for this game for a number of years, it’s not that rare I just wanted to get one as cheap as possible. Turns out an eBay auction for a “water damaged” upright cabinet with a low price went in my favor, so now I have to go and get the game.