Restoring the classics…
Archive for year 2008
No Time For Restorations
Nov 27th
There hasn’t been much progress with the arcade restorations as of late. I’ve started a new project which has been eating up most of my free time. This new project is somewhat arcade related as I’ve started to finish my unfinished basement. The new, finished space will include a family/TV room, a wet bar and an area specifically for the arcade games.
The previous owners had painted the foundation walls white and put down some berber carpet but not much else had been done. I wasn’t fond of the carpet so before any construction could begin, I decided to remove it. Unfortunately, the carpet was glued to the concrete floor. I initially thought it might just be edge glued, but no such luck. Every square inch of the carpet is glued to the floor. More >
A Brief Update
Nov 7th
Well, there’s not a whole lot taking place with the arcade games right now. I still need to finish the Golden Tee control panel, but I’m having a blast playing it, loose control panel and all. I’ve also been playing Donkey Kong quite a bit lately and have raised my high score to 173,500 (without pressing for points). I’m shooting for 200,000. Things are beginning to slow down a bit so maybe I’ll be able to get some work done over the next few weeks.
Golden Tee: Control Panel Progess
Sep 26th
I’ve made a great deal of progress on the Golden Tee control panel. I had a spare piece of 3/4″ plywood that appeared to be about the right size for fashioning a control panel base. I took the control panel overlay that I purchased, placed it on top of the plywood and traced the outside edges, button holes and trackball opening. I cut the straight areas of the control panel base with a circular saw and the rounded corners with a jig saw. The button holes were cut with a 1 1/8″ hole saw. Plywood was not necessarily my material of choice but it was available and saved me a trip to the home improvement store. More >
Vertically Challenged
Sep 16th
This biggest challenge in the conversion of the All American Football to Golden Tee has been the monitor orientation. All American Football made use of a vertically mounted monitor while Golden Tee requires a horizontally mounted monitor. My initial thought was to simply rotate the entire monitor, including the frame, in the cabinet to achieve a horizontal orientation. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out so well as the metal frame stuck out the back of the cabinet. On to plan 2, which is going to be difficult to explain. More >
Golden Tee: Progress So Far
Sep 12th
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures for today’s post, but I’ll provide a brief update on the status of the All American Football to Golden Tee conversion. I’ve created a “mock” control panel to test the fit on the cabinet and have temporarily wired the trackball and buttons to the jamma harness. While the control panel fits on the cabinet, it’s going to need some modifications to look good. I’ve verified that the trackball and all of the buttons are working. I’ve wired the coin inputs up and have verified that both are working.
The game now passes the initialization screen (thanks to a new hard drive) and works great. I still need to wire up the speakers, the service switch and find a way to mount the monitor horizontally in the cabinet. I had a plan for the monitor and started working on it last night. About 10 minutes in, I realized that may plan was not going to work. Back to the drawing board. That will be my main task for this weekend. Stay tuned.
