After several back and forth conversations, using my father as a middle man, a deal was struck and I picked the game up on Sunday. All I knew at the time of purchase was that it was not working. The owner believed it had a monitor issue. When I got the cabinet home, I plugged it in and confirmed that it was not working. I took some quick measurements and found that the switching power supply was not putting out the proper voltages. I stole the power supply from my All American Football cabinet, which has quickly become the bastard cabinet…one that I swap parts out of when needed. With the new power supply in place, I confirmed that I was now getting the correct voltages to the cabinet.

Once I was getting proper voltages, I could hear the game playing blind. In essence, the game was fully functional except for the picture on the screen. I could coin it up, hear all of the game sounds and operate the gun but just couldn’t see anything. I suspected a bad monitor so I pulled the monitor out of the cabinet and put it in my Dig Dug machine to test.   The Dig Dug screen came up perfect, so I new the monitor was operational.  I began tracing wires and found a few loose pins on the header that goes from the game board to the monitor.  After jiggling the pins around, I finally got a nice stable image on the monitor.  The header pins will eventually need to be replaced, but for now, the game is working.

From conversations with fellow collectors there are two common issues with Operation Wolf cabinets.  Both involve the gun on the cabinet.  There is a cool recoil effect when you shoot the gun, controlled by a motor.  That motor is prone to failure and is difficult to repair.  The recoil effect works perfectly on my cabinet.  The second issue is the optical sensor in the gun which is used to register hits.  The sensor is also prone to failure and difficult to repair.  My cabinet works flawlessly.  I should have some pictures posted tomorrow.  In the meantime, here are the scans of the original marketing flyers for Operation Wolf, courtesy of ArcadeFlyers.com:

Yesterday, I picked up a non-working Centipede.  This one is in very rough shape and needs a lot of cosmetic repair.  It’s going to get a full restoration eventually, similar to Dig Dug.  I’d like to get the game working first before committing a lot of time to the restoration.  Pictures will be forthcoming.

I also made an offer last week on a non-working Operation Wolf.  I just got a call that they accepted the offer.  I will probably pick it up sometime this weekend.  Again, pictures will be forthcoming.  In summary, I owe you pictures of three new cabinets.  Stay tuned.