This is an ongoing series of videos showing my progress on rebuilding all the electrical components of a vintage Atari Star Wars arcade game. This includes rebuilding the power supply, the audio power board, the audio board, the MPU board, the display controller, the deflector board, the high power CRT board and other items.
NOTE: This is an ongoing series and more videos will be added to the playlist so be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications to receive updates of more progress.
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:
In this video designer Stephen Silver shows us the inner workings of the P3 system. It’s a very interesting and efficient design that makes the game surprisingly easy to service, with lots of features not found in typical pinball machines.
This is a very interesting game I had a chance to pick up and couldn’t resist. A 1980s System 80 game – one of two very rare, low production hybrid pinball/video game machines Gottlieb made. Let’s take a “first look” at what I have… more videos to come of the restoration!
Galaga is one of the most popular video arcade games of all time, but unfortunately the way the boardset was produced, it doesn’t seem to stand the test of time and last very long. The production used poor quality sockets and various hard-to-find chips that had a tendency of corroding and becoming brittle. It’s a real challenge to get an original boardset operating reliably without doing a ton of work, and even then, you’re never 100% sure.
As a result, this is probably one of the games that benefits the most from a “resto-mod” approach of adding a modern emulation board. I demonstrate in the video below how to do a non-destructive mod to an original Galaga game to replace the problematic logic boards with a 60-in-1 multi-card. The game can be restored to 100% original if desired because this doesn’t alter any of the core components. You can also add some extra games that use the same control scheme like other versions of Galaxian, Galaga88, space invaders, etc.
This is a quick walk-thru of the 2018 Houston Arcade Expo (HAAG) before the show opens. To give you an idea of how much work is involved in getting everything set up. I apologize for the shaky camera. And it looks like YouTube has disabled their video stabilization ability (boo!) so I can’t stabilize it online. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this short video!
I take a bit of a break from working on pinball machines in this video and do some work on a Tempest video game I pieced together from various parts. The monitor started smoking and fizzing on me and then went completely out — which signaled a good time to completely rebuild it.
For additional information on working on these monitors, here is a good resource:
http://www.pinrepair.com/video/wg6100.htm
I get my parts from http://www.therealbobroberts.net/