I started working on the basement again in October and have made pretty good progress. New recessed lights have been installed to replace the hideous ceiling fans that the previous owner had installed. I still need to run the wiring from the switches to the lights. Most of the insulation has been put into place. All of the wiring to the outlets is in place as well as Cat-5 cable and cable for the satellite system.

I decided to put down a sub-floor just to eliminate the feeling of being in a basement. I found a product locally which is a 24 millimeter membrane with dimples that you place on the concrete. It acts as a moisture barrier and air gap and allows the concrete to breathe. On top of the membrane, you lay normal plywood just like you would any other sub-floor. This is the product I purchased. Because of a lack of storage space, I can only work on half of the flooring at any given time. I have half complete. I’ll need to move games and a few other items around to finish the other half. Before I move the games around, I’m going to go ahead and install the drywall on the half with the sub-floor. If mother nature cooperates, I’ll hopefully be picking up a load of drywall on my way home from work tonight. Unfortunately, it’s supposed to start raining and snowing sometime today. I’ll have some updated pictures after the weekend.

On the arcade front, I really haven’t done anything but I have been stockpiling parts in hopes of resuming some projects after the basement work progresses. Here’s what I have lined up, in order of priority:

Centipede

I have all of the parts to completely restore this cabinet. Phoenix Arcade had a Thanksgiving sale on Centipede side art, so I picked up a set. I picked up a marquee from a fellow collector. Another collector was parting out a Centipede so I grabbed his speaker & light assembly to replace the one from mine that was covered in mouse excrement. Finally, I have a new trackball and control panel overlay ready to be installed. The only thing this game really needs is a new monitor tube. I’ve been looking, but no luck yet. Centipede will be getting a complete restoration similar to my Dig Dug restoration.

Donkey Kong

This one will also be getting a full restoration. I still have the new control panel & joystick that I received last Christmas. It still hasn’t been installed. I have cap kits for both the monitor and audio board to install. I have two NOS coin mechs for the coin door. All I really need for this one is the side art. I’m considering a new new monitor bezel and marquee as well.

Donkey Kong Jr

A full restoration lies ahead for this Donkey Kong cabinet, converted to Jr. I really don’t have any parts for this yet, but do have a high score save kit to install on the board. It will be getting a new coat of paint in Jr orange, new marquee, control panel, bezel and side art.

Golden Tee Conversion

This one will get the hole repaired where the bill changer used to be, as well as a few other minor cabinet repairs, and be good to go.

Missile Command

Nothing major with this one. I’ve got a multigame kit to install on the board which allows you to play both Missile Command and Super Missile Attack. It saves high scores too!

That’s all for now. Hopefully some work actually gets accomplished this year! Finally, hats off to Jeff Rothe at Rotheblog for the new, free WordPress theme. I’m diggin’ it!

Prior to shipping the board, I had already replaced several components. While inspecting the board, I discovered that one of the EPROMS was missing a leg. Instead of repairing it, I decided to order a new pre-programmed set. Stephan from Hobby Roms quickly sent a new set out to me, although shipping from him takes a bit longer as he is located in Canada and the package had to clear customs. Just to be on the safe side, I also ordered a new 6502 processor and a pokey chip. These were obtained from Mike’s Arcade.

I was a little nervous testing out the repaired board. If the game didn’t work, it meant more troubleshooting, more replacement parts and more money. Fortunately for me, I was greeted with a perfectly working Missile Command machine:

I’m going to do very little to this game. The bottom left hand corner of the cabinet has a little damage which will get repaired. I’ll probably put some new t-molding on it, clean it up well and that will be it. Special thanks once again to Arcade Solution for the timely repair! I highly recommend Andre’s services if you are looking for relatively affordable board repairs.

If you’re looking for more cool information, atarigames.com has a great collection of official Atari documents and memos available for download. To download the original three page Missile Command proposal document, click here. Wondering how much it cost to build each Missile Command upright? Click here for an official cost sheet.

The cabinet has a serial number of 13473. There are two coin door counters, one for each side. The left hand coin counter shows 34,493 plays while the right shows 14,398. Keep in mind that these are not always accurate. The cabinet currently only has one of four leg levelers on it, so if it looks crooked in the pictures, there is nothing physically wrong with the cabinet.

The lower left corner has some small damage but not near as much as the Dig Dug corner. Fortunately, if I decide to fix it and butcher the side art, reproduction side art is widely available for Missile Command cabinets. The coin door has a pretty cool “License On File” tag which will probably remain. The control panel is in great shape. There are three areas that have chipped away but touch up paint was applied and looks pretty good.

I was only able to spend about 5 minutes looking at the machine last night. The biggest challenge with this game is not going to be the cosmetic repairs, but getting it functional again. I tried to throw it into test mode last night with no luck. The screen just flashes a white/gray screen and a garbled tone is heard.

All of the pictures can be viewed by clicking on the “read the rest of this entry” link below. The photos are also located in the photo gallery.

Now the bad news, the game in it’s present state is not working. Other than plugging the machine in, I haven’t run any tests on it. All I get is a flashing screen of multiple colors. I haven’t even thrown the game into test mode yet to see what it reports back. Hopefully tonight I’ll get a chance to dig a bit deeper and try to figure out the cause.

The image to the left is not my machine, but is a stock image from the Killer List of Video Games, where you can read some of the history of the Missile Command game. I should be able to get a few photographs of my cabinet later tonight. As usual, all images will be posted to the photo gallery and a dedicated category will be set up to track all of the progress on this machine.

I’ll post an update tomorrow.