Back at it today on repair work...
Spent some time in the game room today tackling repairs with a friend of mine. We got through about half of my "to do" list:
* My Tutankham has been down for a while now with graphics glitches and no sound. Suspected the original Stern 1200 linear power supply had gone bad, which is not at all unusual for the Stern 1200s as they were a crap design much like the linear power supplies in Taito games of the same era. Ordered a new Suzo Happ switching power supply with Konami/Stern adapter from Arcade Shop and we installed it today, only to see absolutely no change whatsoever. So the problem is definitely on the board set. Posted a "Want to Buy" on the KLOV forums and already have a lead on another board set. Hoping it tests 100% working and I can get it. Really want to get this game up and running again.
Acquired another
Tutankham board set via KLOV and installed it today. It is now back up and working 100%. Will try to get my original
Tutankham board set repaired to keep as a backup.
Things I wanted to do but we didn't get to today...
* I wanted to pull the essentially brand new Betson Imperial monitor out of Kicker and swap it into my Qix 412-in-1, and put Qix's original G07 with some Qix burn into Kicker in preparation for selling Kicker, but pulling the monitor out of Kicker proved to be a bigger ordeal than we anticipated (it's in a converted Scramble cabinet), so we tabled that for now. The Electrohome G07 monitor doesn't do so hot with JAMMA boards, so with it hooked up to a 60-in-1 or 412-in-1 (or any newer board, really) you will see the curl on the left side of the screen that the G07 is infamous for, sometimes even with the curl mod implemented. The G07 seems to work beautifully with golden era games but anything newer it doesn't really like. We'll get these monitors swapped next time, and then I can sell Kicker to make room for my new Stern Rescue.
Tried this monitor swap today. The G07 that came out of
Qix couldn't be mounted in
Kicker since the G07 frame's bolt holes don't line up, so we installed a spare K4600 I had on hand. The newer Betson Imperial from
Kicker wouldn't fit into
Qix since its horizontal mount frame sticks out too far in the back and you can't close the back door. We're going to transplant the Betson's tube and chassis into a vertical mount frame so it can be installed in
Qix later.
Pulled the
Circus Charlie board set out of
Kicker and reinstalled my
Kicker board set, only to find it wouldn't boot at all. I had a second
Kicker board that worked but had sprite issues. Swapped two ROMs from the dead board to the backup board to fix the sprite issue and that fixed the backup board. Backup board installed.
Kicker is now ready to be sold. Will try to get the original
Kicker board fixed so it can be sold as well. Will probably keep the
Circus Charlie board for now, but will likely sell it on KLOV when I find someone doing a
Circus Charlie restore who needs a board set.
* Rescue needs its marquee light fixed. Probably a bad FS-2 starter or bulb, or both.
Turns out the fluorescent bulb was missing entirely. Installed an 18" 15-watt bulb I had on the shelf and it fired right up. Installed new locks and set the game up for free play, and
Rescue is now ready to rock.
Moved
Centipede and
Tutankham back into the game room. Moved
Kicker and
Qix out into the bullpen (hallway).
Still need to rebuild the K4600 monitor in
Alpine Ski. Also need to rebuild the Sanyo 20EZ I recently pulled from
Donkey Kong so I can swap it into
Mario Bros. Also on the "to do" list is the installation of the VectorLabs
Star Wars / Empire Strikes Back multi kit into my
Empire Strikes Back upright. Also need to install new locks in
Black Widow and do some minor cabinet repair on it. That's pretty much it; the rest is minor stuff or mostly cosmetic, like removing the very noisy back door fan from
Congo Bongo and installing repro side art on
Donkey Kong.
Bagman could use a control panel overhaul; it needs a new repro overlay and a proper 3.5" Wico 4-way leaf joystick.
