It's alive! Sort of...

I had some time to work on the asteroids game. I've pulled it all apart, cleaned it up some, and assembled it on my "work bench".

You can see in the upper right corner my Zektor ZVG. I use it to drive a 19V2000 vector monitor so I can play all the vector games using VectorMAME. This is also a convenient way to test monitors out with known good signal sources.

Atari Audio Regulator 1

Notice the Audio Regulator, it's an AR2, though an Asteroids cocktail needs an AR1. The AR1 was producing the correct voltages until it was under load (connected to the other board), then the +5V supply dropped to about 1V, which isn't going to work. I remembered I had an AR2 laying around, and it's pin compatible with the AR1 (though much larger and produces more voltages from different molex connectors). This brought the board right up.

My next step was to hook up the scope and see if the Asteroids board was indeed working. After looking at the 6MHZ test point (good) and seeing good stuff on XOUT and YOUT test points, I opted to set the scopy in XY mode. I could see a very crude Asteroids display. Next step was to plug in the 19V2000, and Asteroids was alive!

Now I'm not out of the woods. I have to get the AR1 working, and the cocktail doesn't fit a 19V2000, I need to get the 15 inch monitor working. But a lot of things are working.

I think the AR1's problem is the 2N3055, that's the big power transistor on the heatsink. The LM305 is regulating voltage, it's just when load is applied that the voltage drops, so hopefully this will be a simple fix. Before I compose an order to Bob Roberts I'm going to snoop around and see what else I might need so I can make one order. For now I can use the AR2 (though sadly I don't have any sound), and the 15" monitor will now be my main electronics focus.

I should mention I have two Asteroids mother boards, and one of them is not working, so at some point I'm going to need to work on that problem as well.

Asteroids Cocktail

So I've started the restoration of the Asteroids cocktail. I purchased the cabinet with no mother board (and I didn't notice at the time but missing the Audio/Regulator board as well), with the assurance that it all worked. I had no belief it would work given a new board set, and regardless I want to strip it down, clean it up and do a proper, if not exhaustive, restoration job on it.

Above is a view of the inside of the cabinet. Now that I have boards this is "parts complete", so the work that needs to be done is to tear it all apart and then clean things up. I will need to get everything working, but I'll do that outside of the cabinet so I can have more control and access to the components. This means pulling out the power supply. I have to decide how far I'm going to go with this restoration, I'm thinking of stripping the power supply apart and refinishing the metal.

Thankfully the outside of the Asteroids cabinet is black so I won't have to search all of Christendom for matching wood grain contact paper like I had to for the Pacman restoration.

Starting from scratch!

It finally happened, the herd has been thinned. I posted in various forums that I was giving my collection away. The state of the hobby is such that I received very few takers, and only one that said he'd come straight away and take all that I would give him. Jim Melcher (see www.melchman.net) was eager to help me out and showed up at the appointed time with 3 helpers. They made quick work of the loading up the games and assorted spare parts. Here's what they got:

• Defender
• Stargate
• Lunar Lander
• Breakout
• Space Invaders
• Battlezone
• Missile Command (cocktail)
• Space Duel (cocktail)

In addition I threw in (all for free!) a G05-802 vector monitor and a color XY monitor. Jim also took the Fluke raster TV pattern generator off my hands. I also had two Lunar Lander mother boards (working!) that Jim got to haul away. And I even gave them some of my home brew beer. I better get accolades in his blog. I'll keep in touch with Jim and see how he progresses getting the games fixed.

There are only two games I kept, a working Pacman cocktail (which I restored), and a non-working Asteroids cocktail. So with only two games in the herd, and one of them fully restored I can focus all my attention on Asteroids.

Back from a long hiatus!

I just realized it's been over a year since I posted anything. Things got busy at work and I became engrossed in my latest hobby - making home brew beer. Now that this hobby has about run it's course (I'm still brewing), I need to get back to working on some games.

The problem is that I've gotten in over my head. I have 9 games in various states of repair, and I really can't get to all of them. Right now only one game works well, the Defender that I restored. The Stargate is a close second, but there's something minor wrong. I don't count the Pacman game as I gave that to my daughter, but it's still working fine.

So what about the rest? Well Missile Command stopped working and needs attention. The Space Invaders is a mess, mostly because of the cabinet. Battlezone is in pieces, there was a display issue (or an issue with the vector generator driving the display) but the rest of the game is fine. Breakout is in disrepair, with pieces all over the garage. My pride and joy, Lunar Lander, needs some TLC, and finally, the Asteroids cocktail table is not working at all and needs a lot of work.

I made a simple decision, I need to thin the herd, I'll cut back to the Asteroids cocktail and the Lunar Lander (I just can't bare to part with that game), which means here's a good opportunity to pick up games, on the cheap, from a distressed seller. Let me know if you are interested, I'm in the Norther NJ area.

Getting back into the game

It’s been hard, I haven’t really touched an arcade game since summer of 2010. I have an Asteroids cocktail that I want to restore, it’s a complete wreck. The monitor is shot, the CRT tube is of no use. Fortunately I ordered a 15” b/w CRT from Richards Electronics that I have sitting in a box, waiting for me to resurrect the display.

Of course getting a vector CRT display working again is no picnic. Without an existing game that works to drive it, what is one to do? The answer is using a Zektor ZVG, I can drive test patterns to any vector display. Since I have the appropriate harness (I use the Zektor ordinarily to drive a 19” b/w vector display), I now have something to generate known good signals to test against.

The ZVG (Zektor Vector Generator) is an amazing device. To think that someone would create a product that can drive 30 year old vector display technology using modern computers is amazing. While the ZVG is no longer manufactured, if you were lucky enough to get your hands on one you are blessed. My ZVG allows me to play old vector games using VectorMAME, a version of MAME specially modified to drive the ZVG. Since I have a 19V200 (a 19” b/w vector monitor that was used in the Atari vector games), and the necessary cables and power supply – I can play the old vector games on a real vector monitor! Now I just need to make a cabinet for the system.

I drive my ZVG using a micro-ATX board (about 5” x 5”) and boot to DOS from a flash card. No moving parts, highly reliable, and modern electronics (except the monitor).

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!