I made the decision to proceed with the conversion after striking a deal on Monday to acquire a Golden Tee 2002 board set from another collector. The board is on it’s way and will hopefully be here by week’s end. I spent some time last night ordering the needed parts to begin the conversion: a 3″ trackball, a trackball to PCB harness, a trackball mounting plate with bolts and a jamma wiring harness.

I’m going to try and maintain the original appearance of the cabinet so it can be converted back to an All American Football at some time if necessary. This will probably require that I construct my own control panel and design my own control panel overlay. If someone has a nice, clear picture or scan of a Golden Tee control panel with fly-by and backspin buttons I’d love to get a copy. Also I’d be interested to know the measurements of an original Golden Tee control panel. I’ve found several spots to purchase an authentic overlay but I’m not sure how it would fit on my particular cabinet. The original would also require me to change the angles on the front of the control panel to a straight piece.

I’ve also given considerable thought to the monitor. I’d love to throw a 25″ monitor into the cabinet but right now that’s cost prohibitive. I’m going to use the 19″ monitor temporarily and hopefully, down the road, upgrade to a larger monitor. I’ll need to rotate the monitor in the cabinet and will probably construct a new mounting board to accommodate the new orientation.

Right now, it’s just a waiting game for the parts to start arriving. I still have a few other things to order but I’m going to spread the cost out over a period of time. I’ll have plenty to work on once things begin appearing on my doorstep. Meanwhile, I’ll be looking for a additional games to add to the cabinet. My most wanted right now: World Class Bowling and Shuffleshot. Stay tuned for updates.

Edit:  I’ve been told by another collector that the original red & blue version of the Golden Tee Fore control panel is 25 7/8″ wide at it’s narrowest point near the machine, 31 1/4″ wide at it’s widest point where the controls are actually located and 15 7/8″ from front to back.  Thanks for the info!

One thing has kept me from doing that…the huge control panel. Playing a game like Frogger on that monstrosity of a control panel just wouldn’t seem right. I started thinking about games that could make use of the huge control panel and could only come up with a few alternatives. 4 player fighting games, which aren’t really my cup of tea or trackball games like Golden Tee and various bowling games which require lots of real estate for “rolling”.

I’ve come up with a plan and if I can find all of the right parts I intend to convert it to a Golden Tee and a World Class Bowling combo cabinet. Both games would be installed in the cabinet at the same time and be controlled by a multijamma controller. If I can aquire at least one of the board sets, I’ll probably start the conversion fairly soon. It will be a fairly detailed project: completely rewiring the cabinet; possibly installing a new, larger monitor or at least changing the orientation on the current monitor; and completely reworking the control panel. Stay tuned…

As stated previously, the cutouts were all made with a sharp x-acto knife. I changed blades every two holes just to make sure it was nice and sharp. A few of the sticks, particularly on the right side of the panel are slightly off center with the markings, but no more than the original sticks were.

Once the control panel was reattached, I was finally able to enter the diagnostics mode of the game.  If you look at the last picture, you’ll see that the image doesn’t look that good.  I also noticed in attract mode that the end zone areas were black, something I thought was not right.  I fired up the game in MAME and confirmed this (one of the benefits of having a MAME cabinet).  One of the diagnostic modes shows red, blue and green swatches and I noticed that the red was not present.  I found the red drive on the monitor turned all the way down.  I spent about 20 minutes perfecting the red, blue and green drives and the game now looks great.

All that’s left for this game is new t-molding.  It’s going to be a few weeks before I get any ordered so stay tuned.

The marquee retainers and control panel frame were spray painted with 3 coats of Rustoleum semi-gloss enamel. The marquee also got a good cleaning to remove years of dust, dirt and cigarette stains:

Although I did not repaint the piece, I also reinstalled the coin door. I had a spare coin door that was in better shape than the coin door originally on the cabinet, so I used it instead. Sometime down the road, I will probably end up stripping it of paint and repainting, at a minimum to ensure a consistent color match on the cabinet. I installed some new t-molding in a few areas that would be inaccessible once the control panel was reattached to the cabinet. The area is clearly pictured below, however you’ll notice that the molding on the left side is not finished. I still need to route a slot where I did some corner repairs.

You’ll notice in the picture above that the monitor bezel and plexiglass have also been reinstalled. I cleaned the plexiglass and bezel with soap and water. The plastic monitor cover then received a quick wipe down with some Armor All to give it a nice shiny appearance.

Finally, time to install the new control panel overlay. I “primed” the bare metal of the control panel with flat black Rustoleum spray paint. “Why”, you ask?  First, if I make an error trimming one of the joystick or button holes the black underneath will be less glaring than bare metal. Secondly, the control panel, prior to sanding, had a considerable amount of rust. The Rustoleum paint should help retard any further rusting of the panel.

I knew from my test prints that the control panel overlay needed to be installed with the left hand edge and top perfectly aligned to the metal control panel. I intentionally made the overlay 1/8″ too long on the right side and bottom to make sure I had an accurate fit. I set the overlay in place and then taped it to the control panel using masking tape.

Once I was convinced that it was properly aligned on the control panel, I removed all of the tape from the left hand side and about 2 inches of tape from the left hand side on the top and bottom. I then peeled away the backing from the adhesive vinyl and working in a diagonal pattern, adhered the overlay to the control panel. Once the overlay was adhered, I ran a J-roller over the surface to elimate any air bubbles. The process is then repeated util the entire overlay has been adhered.

You can get a pretty good idea from the middle picture above how much of the control panel overlay I adhere at one time. The folds you see in the backing material, about every 2 inches, is all I adhere at once.  Once the panel was completely adhered, I trimmed the outside edges of the overlay, removing the intentional extra material, using an X-acto knife and the metal control panel as a guide. I also began to cut out the joystick and button holes, again using an X-acto knife and the metal control panel holes as a guide.

You’ll notice that a few of the holes don’t appear to be aligned exactly right. This concerned me but then I started looking at some pictures of the original control panel overlay. It appears that Leland wasn’t too concerned with exact centering so I guess I shouldn’t be either:

Overall, I’m pleased with the appearance of the cabinet so far. I did apply some t-molding to the control panel frame, but realized the 3/4″ molding that I had was not big enough. I’m going to have to order some 1″ t-molding for the control panel frame and some 3/4″ for the rest of the cabinet. Once it arrives I should be able to finish this project off. I’ll be reinstalling the joysticks and buttons later this week. Stay tuned!

The marquee retainers and the metal control panel surround were also stripped of their paint, again using my palm sander and Dremmel. I make a habit of stripping all of my metal parts down to bare metal. A “rough” sanding would probably be adequate, but it only takes a few more minutes to get down to bare metal, ensuring a nice clean surface for new paint.

Here’s a few shots of the progress, hopefully some new paint will be applied sometime this week:

Stayed tuned for future updates.

The biggest difference between this cabinet and the others I have done so far is the painting technique.  The Dig Dug cabinet was sprayed with a HVLP sprayer, both primer and final coats.  I decided to try some fine, white foam rollers on this cabinet and used flat black latex paint.

After stripping the vinyl off the entire cabinet, I sanded it down using my palm sander and 120 grit sand paper.  I repaired a few gouges on the cabinet with wood putty prior to sanding.  I then rolled two coats of latex primer on the entire cabinet, sanding between each coat with 220 grit sand paper.  I then applied three coats of the flat black latex paint, again sanding between each coat with 220 grit sand paper.

I’m going to take a different approach with the pictures here and show both a before and after shot to give you an idea of the difference in the cabinet’s appearance now:

You might notice some “swirl” marks in a few of the pictures. Those are not in the paint, I wiped the cabinet down with some dusting polish prior to taking the pictures and didn’t allow it time to fully dry. The other thing you might notice is the base of the cabinet under the coin door missing. Look closely at the before and after photos of the cabinet front and you should be able to spot it. The base was actually cracked and pulling loose from the cabinet, so I cut it off. I’m going to recreate the missing piece, reattach it to the cabinet and fill the gap between the two base pieces with some wood putty. In order to hide the putty, I’ll probably end up painting the underside of the base black.

Finally, I recapped the monitor. The monitor had some fold over on the left hand side which can usually be cured by a cap kit. Forunately, the new capacitors fixed the problem and after a bit of adjustment, the image looks pretty good. I still think the colors need to be tweaked a little bit, which I’ll have to do once I can get into diagnostics mode. Keep in mind, it’s difficult to get good pictures of an arcade monitor with a camera (all of the images in this post have also been added to the photo gallery):

So what’s left for this cabinet? Obviously, the base repairs mentioned above. The marquee retainers need to be sanded and repainted as does the front, metal portion of the control panel. I’ll be applying all new t-molding and the new control panel overlay once it arrives. Stay tuned for further updates.

Speaking of the control panel, I finished the vectorization on it and placed an order with Mame Marquees to have it reproduced. It is probably going to be a couple of weeks before I receive it. Everything lined up well on my last test print.

I spent a bit of time with Missile Command swapping out all of the EPROMS, the 6502 CPU and the pokey (a custom sound chip) and still get the same results after powering it on. There are two RAM chips that have quite a bit of corrosion, my guess is they are the culprit. Unfortunately, my soldering abilities aren’t good enough to solder in new RAM sockets so the board is being mailed out today for repair. The turn around is going to be around two weeks.

Hopefully, I can get some pictures of the painted All American Football cabinet in the next day or two and post a “visual” update for everyone.

I decided to make a cardboard template of the control panel. I taped a piece of cardboard to the control panel and then flipped it over. From the back side, I cut out each joystick hole, spring stick hole and button hole with an x-acto knife. I also cut the template to the actual size of the control panel. I then printed a copy of my vectorized control panel overlay to actual size and placed the template on top of it. If the hole openings on the template matched the black circles on the printed copy, everything was golden. In the end, I had to go back and tweak the locations of about 5 of the openings. When I put the template on top of the printed copy now, it’s an exact match. The black circles pictured below will not be printed in the final print.

Here’s a picture of the actual control panel overlay and the new one that will be printed and applied:

I have no idea how many hours went into reproducing this overlay. Because there isn’t any demand for this overlay, I really had no choice but to spend the time and reproduce it myself. I also don’t have a whole lot of options for printing. The overlay will likely be ink jet printed on self adhesive vinyl and laminated. I’ll have more photos once the overlay is installed on the control panel.

Edit: I just realized that there are two yellow arrows in the upper right hand instruction box, near the fingers, that I haven’t included. Those will be added before the final print is made. Fixed!

I also started work on the control panel overlay this weekend. If you recall, there was a big chunk missing from the lower right hand corner and an adhesive sticker that had been placed over a portion of the control panel at some point. Continue reading via the link below for a look at the process I use to recreate the control panel.

The first thing we need is a good scan of the control panel. I removed all of the joysticks and buttons from the panel, carefully labeling each on so I can put them back in the proper place. I then cleaned the top of the control panel to remove any dust and debris.

To scan the panel, I had to remove the top cover from my scanner. Using the edges of the control panel as guides, I scanned the entire panel in multiple passes, making sure to overlap each section slightly. There were a total of 9 separate images files which I then imported into Fireworks and “stitched” back together to get a complete scan of the panel. Here’s a picture of the scans after being “stitched” together:

The rest of the process is fairly simple. I created a new file in Illustrator with the exact measurements of the control panel, which is 26 1/8″ by 15 3/4″. The scan is also sized to those exact measurements. The scan is placed in the illustrator file as a base and then you simply hand trace the elements. Here is my progress so far:

The easy parts are done, now for the helmets and trying to match the fonts. The helmets should be fairly easy, as they are all duplicates except for color. Once I get one helmet done, it’s simply a matter of recoloring them, and moving them to the correct orientation. There’s probably about 3 hours of work into this so far, I would guess another 4 or 5 hours of work before it’s close to completion.