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…

I’m on the hunt for a replacement game….something along the lines of PacMan, Ms. PacMan, Galaga, Frogger, Centipede, Asteroids, Space Invaders, NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, a budget Golden Tee or a decent pinball machine. If you’ve got any of the following for a decent price and are within 150-200 miles of central Illinois, drop me a line.

This isn’t my first experience with errors on the 360. Not too long after I purchased it, I received a E 86 error. This was fixed by removing the hard drive and cleaning the contacts. In early June of this year, just 3 months after the warranty had expired, every disc that I put in indicated it could not be read. I disassembled the 360, cleaned it out thoroughly, and reseated the magnetics on the optical drive. Problem solved and a working 360 for another month.

After researching the E 74 error code it appears to be either a problem with the video cable, scaler chip or GPU. A co-worker had a spare video cable so I swapped it out with no success. The problem is definitely hardware related and probably needs to be sent in for repairs. I don’t feel like doing a hack repair job only for it to work a limited amount of time.

So why the frustration? I can honestly say that the XBox 360 is most unreliable piece of electronics equipment I have ever owned. I have an original NES, a Playstation, Playstation 2, Sega Genesis, GameCube, and Nintendo Wii all older than the 360 that are still fully functional to this date. The 360 has quit working 3 times in one year! Hell, my father in law still has a working Atari 2600.

Taking a cue from my good friend Patrick, who likes to write letters to Senators, Presidential Candidates, newpaper editors, etc. I fired off an e-mail to Steve Ballmer, expressing my frustration. Surprisingly (tongue in cheek), I haven’t heard anything back. The decision now..to repair or opt for a $400 paper weight.

I’m also working on acquiring another non-working game. I haven’t committed yet, but the price is right and it’s not too far away. The only problem is working out the details of a pickup as my calendar is pretty full for the next few weeks and I’m not sure how long the current owner would be willing to hold onto it for me.

For those that are interested, there haven’t been too many updates to the site as I recently attending a week long conference in Florida and just returned Sunday from a week long vacation in South Carolina. In Tampa, I briefly visited the local GameWorks. I was pretty disappointed in the game selection. They had a couple of Madden showcase cabinets, a ton of sit down racers, a few redemption games and 3 pinball machines. They were all Stern machines including a Nascar machine which was out of order, a Family Guy machine and one other which I can’t recall the name of. Not one classic game in the joint.

In South Carolina, I took my kids to a mini-golf/go karting place one evening after dinner. They had a decent arcade with about 5 pinball machines (the only one I can remember is a Williams Funhouse), some sit down racers including Need For Speed, Fast and The Furious, Mario Kart Arcade GP (which my kids think we need to own), some skeeball machines, a few redemption games, Tekken 3 and 5 if memory serves correctly and even a Ms. Pacman/Galaga 25th anniversary game.

That’s all for now….I’ll save my brush with death with a shark for another day. I might have to stretch the facts just a bit to make it sound more impressive than it actually was.

Anyway, last week, my long time friend and good buddy Patrick was in town.  Patrick is a frequent commenter on this site and lives in Hawaii, so we don’t see each other too often.  About a week ago, we developed a great plan…Saturday would be “game night”.  Patrick would show up around 5:00, we’d cook some burgers on the grill, have a few beers and then head to the basement for some serious old style arcade gaming.

I knew the game of the night was going to be Track & FIeld and that’s the way it turned out.  We started playing the game the correct way, by pounding on the buttons with our hands.  Patrick was no match for me and quickly decided that he needed to cheat, like we did in the old days.  I showed him the wooden dowel that I used as a cheat mechanism and he quickly began searching the basement for his own cheating device.  For those unfamiliar, back in the day, we used to use pencils, combs, etc. to quicken our running speed.  The device was placed over the middle finger with your index finger and ring finger on top.  With just the right amount of pressure, you’d create a fulcrum and tapping on one end of the device would yield great speeds.

After a few minutes of searching (with my help) we found a small 6″ plastic ruler for Patrick to use.  It took a few tries for him to get the hang of it, but once he did, it was game on.  Patrick consistently kicked my behind in the 100M dash.  The long jump, javelin and hammer throw were toss ups as either of us could top one another given a perfect run and jump/throw.  Patrick was no match for me in the hurdles as he tried to perfect his use of the ruler while trying to press jump at the same time.   Each game boiled down to the high jump and as luck would have it, Patrick sucked.  He failed to beat me once at the high jump and the margin was so great that I always regained the points lead.

Frustrated by Track & Field, we eventually hit every game in the collection.  Patrick whooped on me in Missile Command and All American Football.  He was no match for me in Donkey Kong, Dig Dug and Omega Race.  The real battles of the evening took place in Track & Field.

I promised Patrick that if he broke any record, I would reset the top scores the following day after he left.  Sure enough, during the course of the evening, Patrick topped my records on Track & Field in the long jump and placed second in the javelin.  I still can’t beat the default high score in the javelin and neither could Patrick, but he ranked higher than me.  This left me with a dilema….reset the scores or try to beat the record.  I decided for the later, chucked my wooden dowel to the side and decided to try the ruler.  On about my third game, I regained the record on the long jump (sorry Patrick).

Patrick has promised that he’ll be back in August.  Here’s to another great night of gaming…perhaps there will be a new game in the collection by then…..

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 game is fully working but does have one minor issue. When the game is playing there is some “blooming” present on the screen. What does that mean? The image moves in and out slightly only when the game is playing. This is not present when the game is in attract mode. I have replaced the high voltage diode but that didn’t solve the problem and I haven’t tried to diagnose it any further.

Use the contact form to contact me with any offers you may have. I’m located about 2 to 2 1/2 hours from Chicago and St. Louis and about 3 hours from Indianapolis.

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!