Buying old arcade games

A friend of mine from college told his sister that I restored/repaired old arcade games. She was interested in getting a Tempest or a Donkey Kong game. So the question is "What is the best advice for these people?".

I told my friend that first you need to be a commited hobbyist to have one of these games, they break down often. A game manufactured in 1982 is just not meant to last 30 years, so they are always breaking down. Another thing is cost. Tempest is one of the "hot" games, and a working Tempest can cost $1500 or more, a broken one can cost $700. And a broken Tempest can present a host of problems in getting parts, particularly for the color XY monitor.

Donkey Kong isn't much better. I've been looking for a non-working cocktail version for about a year now. My price threshold is "$250", and that assumes it's "parts complete" and in reasonably good shape. I haven't seen anything for less than $350, and even as high as $600. So much for the recession keeping prices low.

While Donkey Kong isn't as hard to keep running as Tempest, it's no picnic. If you want to keep it authentic then you'll always have something coming loose or needing re-seating. When I restored a PacMan for my daughter, I upgraded the power connectors and switches. So now I have a NEMA IEC connector (like the back of a computer), which definitely isn't authentic. I also added a fan to help things run cool and replaced the internal power wiring (once again for safety).

I recommended to my friend that they consider going with a pre-built MAME cabinet. The downside is cost and authenticity. The upside is it's modern, fixable by the average computer geek and runs hundreds if not thousands of games. You can find used versions of MAME systems for the $1500 range (maybe less if you look around for a distressed seller), and new ones in the $2300 range and up. But they will work and play all the popular games.

Owning old arcade games, especially systems from the 70's and 80's, is a hobby and takes real dedication in both time and money to keep them working. Totally restoring a game is expensive, the restoration of the PacMan game cost about $700, and that is just parts. Getting into this hobby is not for the faint of heart.

I'm back!

Okay I'm back. It's been a while. Another hobby took precedence, Home Brew beer. I recommend it to anyone who wants to have really good tasting beer that is a lot of fun to make. And when I say "really good tasting" I mean better than virtually anything you can buy, and cheaper to boot!

Asteroids - cocktail
My next project won't be Battlezone or Missile Command, but rather to get the Asteroids cocktail that I purchased a while ago up and working. I have two 15" B&W Vector monitors that don't work, one from the Asteroids game and one I purchased quite a while ago. I just picked up a 15" CRT so I can replace the burned out tube in one of the monitors. My goal is to get the monitor working with my Zektor ZVG and then proceed to fix the game.

The cabinet is in pretty good shape (I'll post pictures later). There's a power supply and all the other hardware but the motherboard is missing. Fortunately I have a spare, and working, motherboard, so I'm off to a good start. I should be able to get the system playing blind rather easily, but I'm sure the monitor will be a real bear.

I have stopped purchasing new games, I've fallen behind in fixing the games I have and keeping them working. So until they are all working and setup no new games!

Stargate fixed!

I got lucky this weekend and was able to get the Stargate game working. After I pulled the game boards out of the cabinet I verified that the mode of failure was the same, nothing on the screen, no sound, and bizarre display on the 7-segment display that posts error messages.

The values being posted kind of looked like '1..3..1..' which is a RAM failure. Since I happened to have an extra set of 4116's I swapped them all (one back at a time) and nothing changed. I then read on on these types of failures and the CMOS RAM was a suspect. So I cut out the 5114, put in a 18-pin socket and stuffed a 2114 in it's place. That would be functional but it wouldn't allow for battery backup, but I didn't have a 5114 laying about. Of course this didn't change anything.

I then found some Stargate troubleshooting documents, one in particular stood out (here), and the emphasis was to check the power first before doing any other work. The first step is to check that the regulated voltages coming off the power board are proper, the second step is to verify that the voltages at key points throughout the system are proper.

Sure enough there was no +12 (regulated) coming out. With my scope I could see I had good voltage at the test point, but the connector going off-board had only about 1.92v. I pulled the small daughter card and could read a good voltage without the connector, leading to me to suspect something was pulling down the +12. Once I reconnected everything I got a good reading on the +12v going off board, and Stargate booted! The important lesson here is that one should always check the voltages first.

At some point I'd like to do a "get well kit" on the power board, but everything is working and this isn't a priority.

Now that Stargate is working I have to choose my next game to fix, Battlezone or Missile Command. Battlezone is such a physically large game that the current plan is to disassemble it to get it from the garage into my basement work area. Another project I have is to get a 15v2000 (15" black&white vector) working. This has been sitting on the shelf for the last 10 years (!!) and really needs to get fixed - though I don't have a game to hook up to it. My original plan was to use this with my Zektor ZVG in bar cabinet, but I'm kind of hooked on a 19" screen for the ZVG.

Wrapping up Defender

Since I purchased the Stargate game, the priority has been to get Defender done. I decided not to refinish the cabinet at this time, but electronically the Defender game is done. I ordered some feet from Happs Controls (leveler feet) to replace the worn ones on the game, and now Defender is back to being upright.

My preliminary testing of the Stargate game indicates the monitor is fine, so the problem (the game just shows a blank screen, no sound) is with the game boards. Looking at the power supply the LEDs are all lit, so it appears that the power supply is good as well (I’ll put a probe on it to make sure).

So now Defender is back in it's cabinet and playable. I need to tighten up the joystick, it's a bit sloppy, but otherwise the game is in good condition.

I have pulled all the electronics out of Stargate. Tomorrow I'll hook them back up and start the process of figuring out what is wrong. I've ordered a battery backup kit (the lithium battery one that Bob Roberts sells), and some RAMs just in case.