My new addition to my personal Arcade

[Twincharge]

I decided that since I had a spare hour, I would remove the monitor from the cab. The monitor shroud needed to come off first so I could access the bolts holding the monitor in. The shroud was stapled in at three points on each side, but these had perished badly with rust, still it made my job easier;



The shroud was in good shape considering its age;



The monitor as expected had some screen burn, but I was not expecting two small chip marks to the glass surface of the tube;



Once I had unbolted the monitor housing, the complete unit lifted out quite easily from the front of the cab, although removing the control panel does help;





Transistors bolted to the chassis;



The dag on the top of the monitor has really suffered, it is literally flaking off;



A light dust off just made matters worse;



Luckily, I do have a new tube with is waiting to go into the Asteroids cab;

[Twincharge]

I decided this morning to pull off the deflection board from the monitor chassis;



At first glance it seemed to be in good order, except a bit dusty but then this is 30 years of dust accumulatiion, not too bad I think in that respect.

First thing I did was to check the fuses, and found that fuses F100 and F101 were open;



The only thing that concerns me is to why these fuses blew, I have yet to read the manual to determine what these fuses are for.

I then remembered reading somewhere about the header pins suffering from cold solder joints, I was absolutely correct. In fact, I was suprised to how bad these actually were, the HV header pins were particularly bad but all had suffered;





So, I fired up the soldering station, and reflowed the solder on all the header pins;







The header pins look sooo much better now, there was no way the board would ever run in the condition it was in before.

I have yet to replace these fuses, Im not sure if I should just replace them and see if the board now fires up??

[Twincharge]

Since I had to remove the control panel in order to remove the monitor chassis from the cab, I thought my attentions would turn to this.

Although in fairly good shape, some rust has attacked the control panel after 30 years and the result was some flaking and bubbling paint, so I rubbed these areas down ready for re-painting;





I masked off the area's which I did not want to re-paint (graphics) and set about painting using Hammerite Hammered Black for the initial coat (to create the texture) and then finish off with Hammerite Smooth Black which is a truer black than the Hammered variant;



Because I wanted to save the graphics, the painting had to be done in stages, now the final stage is completed and waiting for it to dry;



I decided to totally strip the monitor section down and clean it up, while I was there I also replaced the deflector transistors courtesty of Bob;







It was time to re-assemble the monitor and fire her up, this is what I saw;





Next up is to install the new tube;



Anyway, swapped the yolk from the old tube onto the new tube;



Re-assembed the new tube into the chassis and fired her up, expecting some yolk adjustment but none needed!



I removed the masking tape from the control panel today, it turned out real nice, quite pleased with the results;





The original buttons were pretty shot, new ones needed!


Control panel re-installed with new buttons;

[JonEp]

Got to be one of the best posts IMHO so far on DF this year !

My father was an electronic engineer when I was little so I grew up with a soldering iron in my hand and know how to use a scope.

Just looking at the boards in your pictures bring back so many fond memories. Thanks for that !

[reverend]

That is awesome, I wish I had the skills to do what you've done here!

It will be like new by the time you're all done!

[Freddy]

Fascinating write-up. Thanks for sharing.

[ant3b]

Some people will pay some good money for your skills mate..

Brilliant write up

[jw_2000_uk]

That is incrediable mate.. Way beyond me in the skills department..

Just out of interest, how much are these things worth in todays money..

Could u make a living repairing original machines and selling them

[Twincharge]

Thanks guys

It has been quite a journey and learn't lots, I had picked up the cab from an old pub, it had been in storage for about 15 years. I paid £20 for it, in todays climate it is worth around £700 in it's current working condition, the cabaret's are much rarer than the full sized uprights or cocktails but I intend to keep this baby, Asteroids is a favourite game of mine and no emulation can re-create the vector images and brightness of the original.

I really do not want to profit from this kind of thing, I do it for the love of these video games to keep them alive. I would be happy to help anyone of you guys where I can.

More to come, now moving onto the cab cosmetics.

[Twincharge]

I found an asteroids board set years ago in an entertainments company junk box. I got it up and running on an oscilloscope, but not before fucking it up (and repairing) with wrong A/C voltages.

Good luck mate, I loved playing with stuff like that in the past.

Currently I own

Star Force cab
super off road 3 player cab
track and field mini cab
turbo outrun cab, with original outrun boards in

also a shit load of pcb's including pacland, cobra, hunchback etc.

Hi Maltloaf - great collection dude, Star Force is my favourite shooter and one of my top 5. Awesome game, while in Japan I discovered that they still hold Star Force tournaments yearly. The Star Force PCB is hard to find and worth a small fortune.

You still have that Asteroids PCB? I have gotten quite good at repairing them, since got another non-worker which turned out to be an easy fix - will serve as backup!

[us]

feckin brilliant post mate, really enjoyed reading it, thank you.

[tombott]

Excellent read Twincharge, and good work!