Raiku's World - Ku's Arcade

Ku's (former) Arcade

All of these goodies are sold now, save perhaps a single Galaxians board, but I'm putting this back up for nostalgia's sake. Current projects involving video games are in the works, however, and will be post if I ever get some free time.

Ms. Pac-Man

I noticed a Ms. Pac-Man arcade machine in my neighbor's yard a few years ago, 1998-ish I think. I had been wanting to get a real arcade machine for about a year, thanks to many nights of reading rec.games.video.arcade. I frantically called my neighbor, as it was about to rain. "Its about to rain!" I pointed out. "Yeah, but I'm cleaning up, and she's broken, I don't know what to do with it". "Sell it to me!", I pleaded. That, perhaps, was not the best negotiating tactic. I clearly let on that I wanted that machine... so he wanted $150. A bargain, considering the excellent shape it was in (other than not working), but considering she was headed for the trash... that was a high price to pay for trash! He was a former operator who had saved that machine for his kids... 25,000 on the counter, kept indoors, nice and clean. I forked over the $150 and carried it home. He didn't believe me when I said I'd have it repaired that afternoon. Someone had plugged the PCB in backwards, blowing some fuses. It also had a bit of corrosion on the edge connectors, and the infamous fuse block problem. After some cleaning of the various connectors, new fuses, and tightening the fuse block up... she worked, except for the backlit marquee! She plays great, and the side art, marquee, bezel, everything is original and in really nice (but not perfect) condition. As soon as possible, I picked up a new fluorescent tube and starter. I had to wait a week because the home improvement store I frequent for such things said "oh, yeah, some arcade guy came in here and bought every single on of that size that we had... it happens frequently". At this point, the purists might want to stop reading. Yes, I realize she's valuable and a classic, and I was quite careful with what I did next. I wanted to be able to play other games. I decided to limit myself to vertical games, as I wouldn't want to flip the monitor. I also decided that jamma was the the best way to go. So, I made a harness. I ordered a couple of large rolls of wire, an edge connector of the proper type, and some molex connectors. I gutted an old 386 Zenith PC I'd been given (it demanded parity memory and even then wouldn't boot), and used its power supply for the new jamma harness. It is plugged into Ms. Pac's auxillary outlet, so no irreversible damage there. I connected the new harness to the old one, by carefully sliding the stripped wire ends into the original edge connector and melting a bit of solder down it. Therefore, the new harness can be easily removed if anyone ever wants to restore the game to completely original condition, and no one would ever be able to tell it was there. For the control panel, I did something different. I made a harness tapped onto the old control panel connections, with a molex connector. The new jamma harness has a matching molex. I documented all the pinouts, tried to make them logical, and with expansion possibility. Therefore, I can play my jamma games with the old control panel without installing any additions, letting the start buttons double as fire buttons (I could never bring myself to damage this original control panel by installing more buttons), or I can remove the original panel and install one of my own design with tons of buttons on it. This way, Ms. Pac can serve as a cabinet for any and all vertical-monitor games.

Vertical PCB's

So far, the vertical game boards I've collected include 1943, Mr. Do!, Galaxian, and Pengo. 1943 was the only one I purchased in working condition. The other boards I deliberately bought "bad", which translates as "cheaper, and fun to fix". Pengo only required a Jamma adapter, and a new Z-80 processor to bring it to life. Mr. Do! had a bad TTL logic chip in the clock section, I can't recall now if it was a 7407 or 7404. He required more work than any other game board so far. A jamma adapter had to be be constructed. Universal vertical games had their monitors rotated opposite than everyone else, so I installed a couple of DPDT toggles on the monitor yoke to flip the picture to the correct direction. Universal also made a fair number of game boards that required an external audio amp. I installed another molex connector on the Mr. Do! jamma adapter harness, and installed an audio amp that I ripped out of a clock radio I was given. It was a stereo amp with one side bad, so this seemed a good use for its mono-ness. The connector on the harness runs power to the amp, feeds the audio from the game into the amp, and feeds the amp's output back to the speaker connections on the jamma harness. The amp stays mounted in Ms. Pac (gently, with cable ties, so no new holes) but the harness unplugs so the game board can be easily removed, jamma adapter and all. Galaxian had three issues. One was a bad ROM board, so I replaced it with a single large EPROM (plus this lets me make it a multi game). Second, Galaxian almost but doesn't quite match up to the Pac-Man pinout, the speaker output is different. I jumpered the board to compensate for this, but made a mistake first time around, and this is probably the reason the audio amp on the board is dead. Therefore, issue three is, bad audio amp chip. I've not had any luck finding this chip or a suitable substitute, so Galaxian remains soundless for now.

Jungle Hunt in disguise

I just acquired this game at the beginning of December, 2003. I happened to spot it in a thrift store, a painted black cabinet that was obviously a 1943 conversion, but otherwise at first unidentifiable (to me, anyway). It had a note that said "$50, needs repair". Sounds like a good project to me! I asked the cashier if I could "poke at it", she said fine. I almost plugged it in, but the plug was hanging a bit apart and I could see that someone, who we can only hope didn't get injured, had wired the green ground lead to the hot side of the plug... oi vey! I just opened the back door instead, and saw that it seemed to be complete, monitor, isolation transformer, standard arcade switching power supply. I noticed the "Jungle Hunt" switch option card stapled to the back door, which gave away its original identity. The thrift store was glad to be rid of it, after they had my money they said "we thought that thing would never sell" :P They were kind enough to provide a bit of, well, something... some kind of cloth strip that approximated "rope"... and they helped me load it in the back of my 4X4, partially hanging out the back. My wonderful fiance rode in the back seat and made sure it didn't tip, just in case the bungee cords and "rope" didn't live up to expectations. We got it home and in the door, and of course I had to tear into it right away. Both ends of the power cord needed repair, it had been mangled up near the cabinet, and the plug end of course needed to be correctly wired! I found several random objects inside, including nail polish, pennies, an arcade token revealing this machine's probable original location, and some child's report card. I assume this poor thing was taken home by an arcade employee for his kids, and that the employee in question was not technically inclined. I vacuumed all the dust out, and powered it up. Partial success, we have sound! It even coined up, but nothing on the monitor. Eventually I discovered that the monitor itself had been disconnected, and the plug that selects voltage on the isolation transformer had been disconnected. Finally, 1943 was on the screen :) Now I coined it up, pressed start, and... the joysticks and buttons didn't work. Hmmm, lets look under that control panel... Yikes! Half of the wires seemed to be ripped off where they were soldered, and no disconnect to remove the panel for servicing was provided. I traced and resoldered all the wires to their correct locations. Two of the leaf switches had been damaged, with one terminal broken off flush with the plastic. I didn't have any switches to spare, so I repaired them with a little trick I dreamed up... I took straight pins, like the kind that come in a new dress shirt, and I heated them with the soldering iron, then pushed them into the soft plastic against the metal leaf. Then I soldered the pin to the top of the leaf. It worked really good! I also had to extend a few harness wires that were cut off way too short, maybe someone just cut out some wire to use for something else? Who knows! I played a couple of games of 1943, and began to think of what I wanted to do with this cab. I already have a vertical cab (Ms. Pac), so I put its monitor back to horizontal. That was a bit of a job, since the person who put it vertical had no concept of how to do the job (or any job, most likely) properly. One side of the monitor frame was horribly mangled, looks like they used vice grips or possibly a hammer to mangle it. The bottom of the monitor frame, with the circuit board, had been unbolted from the sides, and was bolted to the cabinet by its end, with big wood screws thru the cabinet side. I can only guess that perhaps they couldn't slide the monitor past the door stops on the sides, and weren't bright enough to realize the stops come out with one simple bolt. *sighs* I reassembled the monitor properly and put it in horizontally. Later I'll fill the holes with wood putty. The Taito bezel was butchered to fit vertically, one side is missing an inch or two, and the light assembly is long gone. One of the plastic brackets that the plexiglass slides in to is missing, I think I'll replace it with real glass and the appropriate hardware, use some black poster board or photo matting to overlay the bezel, and forget the lights. I don't see any reason to fully restore its original Jungle Hunt appearance, as I've decided to make this a horizontal-jamma-anything and MAME cab.