Monthly Archives: August 2023

Repairing and Retro-Modding a Vintage Ms Pac Man Arcade Game

Posted on by
Reply

Lately I’ve been doing some arcade repair work and here’s another project I’m messing with.

Today in the club I’ve got a beat up, original Ms Pac arcade game from a local bar. The owner of the bar wants it fixed and back online for people to play. So this is not a “restoration” as much as it’s a basic “repair”. I go over what the client wants and what we’re going to do. There are also a few surprises as you’ll see… in the next part, I end up retro-modding the game to make it even cooler.

One correction: on the Bitkit2, you do need to separately connect the power supply to the converter board. That converter board does not pull voltage from the Ms Pac harness to the Jamma side – it gets power from the molex .156″ connectors instead.


And here is Part 2:

A great upgrade for lighting arcades & pinballs

Posted on by
Reply

As work continues repairing this Frogger video arcade, I was planning to do a video on retrofitting the 18″ T8 fluorescent bulb that lights the marquee with an LED (and removing the ballast wiring) which is also used on some pinball machines from the 2000s, I discovered an even better lighting option you can probably find at your local Lowes. Check it out.

Here is the bulb in question:

Link: https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-Color-Correct-Technology-15-Watt-EQ-18-in-Daylight-Linear-LED-Tube-Light-Bulb/5000762911

Repairing a broken Frogger arcade game

Posted on by
Reply

I was asked by a friend to help get his Frogger arcade game back in shape. This may be a controversial video series for some because what I was asked to do a lot of “arcade purists” might not agree with, but this is the best way to take an old vintage game and bulletproof it. This game goes back out on location in a bar in New Orleans’ french quarter.

Bally Theater of Magic: Fixing a broken trunk and bulletproofing

Posted on by
Reply

I’m finally getting around to fixing my Bally Theater of Magic pinball. In this case, as is typical, the trunk stopped working. The trunk is not working at all, so let’s find out what’s wrong and I’ll also go into replacing the trunk opto board with a new and improved, German-made board. Will this fix all the problems? Watch and see….

Part 2: Work continues on the Bally Theater of Magic pinball – in this case, we’ve figured out why the trucnk wasn’t working even after installing a brand new, improved, aftermarket trunk board. The motor driver controller was shot! Now, while we’re bulletproofing the game, this is a good time to install the special Cliffy Protectors around the trunk to make sure there’s no damage to the plafield. In this video I go over how to lift the trunk out to be able to do this, among other things.

We finally got everything working on the Theater of Magic pinball – here’s a summary of everything that’s been done, along with an odd problem I had with an aftermarket proximity sensor.