I finished up work on the Donkey Kong last night.  I re-capped the monitor, hooked up the coin door, and rebuilt the original joystick.  Nintendo joysticks are definitely odd beasts.  The joystick that came with the DK was rusted out and pretty much beyond repair.  Luckily I had two Nintendo VS joysticks that I pulled out of another cab.  They were similar enough that I was able to combine the nicest parts from all three to make one good DK stick.

So now my Donkey Kong is pretty much back to her original 1981 glory.  Every single piece of her is either from an original DK machine, or using exact replica parts.  I still have a few odds and ends I need to work on, but I’m to the point now where she’s 100% playable.

Finished cleaning up the inside of the DK cabinet this weekend.  She was stinky, but thanks to some advice on the KLOV forums I managed to get it under control with some Clorox Clean-Up.  After giving her a few hours to dry off I stuck on the new side art that came with the cabinet.  All she needs now is some new t-molding and a DK marquee and she’ll be a Donkey Kong again!

Cleaned up the Donkey Kong last night.  Used a heat gun to take off the side art and only had to do a little scrubbing with some Goo Gone to get the adhesive residue off.  Magic Erasers are awesome.  Made cleaning her up way easier that I thought it would be.  Scrubbed the whole thing down afterward with Simple Green and she’s looking pretty nice.  There’s some fading on the cabinet and you can definitely tell where the old side art was, but the new side art should disguise that pretty well.

Next up, gutting the inside of the cabinet.  Gonna tear everything out, clean up the insides, then put in an original Donkey Kong board, power supply, and wiring harness.

My Christmas present came a little earlier than expected.  A Donkey Kong cabinet!  I was supposed to go pick it up on Sunday, but the guy was making a trip to Lincoln and was nice enough to bring it along.  She’s in very good shape for a 28 year old machine.  Right now it’s got some crappy Data East game in it, but the guy gave me almost everything I need to turn it back into a Donkey Kong, including new side art,  a control panel, and a monitor bezel.

She’s really dirty and full of mouse nests, but should clean up nicely.  Gonna try to take the old Nintendo VS side art off tonight and get the outside of the cab cleaned up.

I finished up my Multi-Williams cab just before Thanksgiving, so I thought I’d post a couple pictures of the finished product.

I got the marquee and control panel from arcadeoverlays.com.  The monitor bezel is from arcadeshop.com.  You can’t tell in the pictures, but the buttons are translucent.  I put LEDs under the control panel so all the buttons glow when the machine is on, which looks pretty cool.

Other than Joust and Defender, I hadn’t really played many Williams horizontal games before.  Bubbles and Splat didn’t do much for me, but Stargate, Sinistar, and Robotron are all great.  Robotron in particular really has me shoveling the tokens into the machine.  I’m also becoming quite the Defender addict.  It was always way too hard as a kid, but as an adult I can navigate it’s crazy button layout without as much trouble.

I spent the last three days doing a little arcade restoration work.  I don’t have enough room in Lincoln to store them all (up to 9 machines now), so I tend to wait for a long weekend to do any major repairs.  The ones that aren’t at my house are in my brother’s shed in Hampton, which has plenty of spare room for me to work.

This weekend I focused my attention on gutting and repainting a Midway and a Williams cabinet.  Both machines had been converted at some point in the past.  The Midway was a Final Fight by the time I got it.  The Williams was converted to a Robocop.  Both were in working order, but pretty beat up.

Step one of the restoration process was gutting the cabinets.  I removed all the electronics, monitors and wiring, then removed the t-molding and anything that was bolted or screwed onto the cab.

Once I was down to just the wooden frames I attacked them with a random orbital sander.  I was very surprised (and saddened) to find the original arcade stenciling was still intact on each of these cabinets under several coats of paint.  Of course, once someone paints over a stencil, there’s not much you can do.  Still, I wouldn’t touch an original Pacman or Sinistar if I ever came across them in the wild, even if they were a little dinged up.

After I had both cabs down to bare wood I used bondo to fill in any major imperfections.  These cabs were originally put into service in the early 80s, so they had quite a few battle scars to patch up.  The Pacman had some significant water damage to the top of the cab, and the base of the Sinistar was pretty banged up.  The bondo worked wonders, though, and after a finishing pass with the sander it was time to paint.

I put on two coats of Kilz primer, then a top coat of Rustoleum satin black.  While using a spray gun would be the optimal method, I don’t have access to an air compressor with enough volume to do a whole cabinet in one go.  Instead I just used a foam roller brush.  This gives a slightly textured surface instead of a smooth one, but it’s a big improvement over their original condition.

After a day to dry I put on some new t-molding and both cabs are ready for the electronics to go back in.  The Pacman will be getting a 48-in-1 board that I’ve had sitting around for a while.  The Sinistar will be getting a multi-Williams board.  So in a roundabout way, they’ll be a Pacman and Sinistar again!

After a chance visit to an old, run-down warehouse on the outskirts of Lincoln, I’m back in the arcade building/restoration business.  My first trip didn’t yield anything except a pair of completely stripped Lost Tomb and Express Raider cabinets.  However, the guy having the sale turned out to be a treasure trove of old and abused arcade hardware.  After several trips between his house and my brother’s barn, I now have three Bally/Midway cabinets and a Neo Geo, all in complete working order.

The three Midway cabinets will all become 48-in-1/60-in-1 machines.  I’m keeping one for myself and restoring it to look like a Galaga machine.  The other two will go to my brothers, who will each be deciding the level of effort/expense they’d like to put into the restoration.  The Neo Geo needs almost no work at all, and will also be going into my personal collection after it gets cleaned up a bit.  The two “junk” cabinets will be used to test restoration methods (painting, sanding, etc) and might turn into working machines to be sold off at a later date.

Stay tuned for some step-by-step details of the restoration process.  In the meantime, here are some crappy camera phone pics of what I have to work with.

In my various DIY experiments I often find that I need special parts created.  That part could be a control panel, circuit board, special bracket, or an endless number of other things that have to be custom made for a particular project.  Usually these custom parts are the most expensive aspect of the the DIY hobby.  Circuit boards and engraved control panels can cost anywhere between $30-$100 each.  Custom machined parts can be even more ridiculous, unless you can find a fellow DIY-er with better equipment to help you out.

Every time I spend a chunk of cash on one of these one-off designs I end up wishing I could just buy the tools to build them myself.  Up until recently those tools (usually some form of computer controlled drill or mill) cost $2,000-$3,000 for anything close to the accuracy I would need.  Thankfully, that has finally changed.

The fine folks at Lumenlab have recently unveiled their latest robotic manufacturing workstation, the micRo.  Now for a fraction of the cost I can have my own computer controlled drilling/milling machine to make circuit boards, cut and label control panels, and do hundreds of other cool things.

After a week of obsessing, I finally placed my order.  Unfortunately, the micRo seems to be so popular that it may take a month or two until I actually get my kit.  In the mean time, I’ve scored a cheap Dell PC that will serve as my new robot’s brain.  I should be able to keep myself busy getting it set up and learning about all the software that I’ll need to make this thing work.

Look for some more micRo/CNC posts in the future!

Due to a hectic work schedule earlier this year I haven’t been able to use up much vacation time.  For the last two months I’ve been taking every Friday off to burn up some vacation days.  Instead of spending my time playing video games or working on my various other projects, I’ve been dedicating Fridays to beer.

Brewing isn’t a very demanding hobby.  In fact, you can go weeks at a time without doing anything but stare at fermenting buckets.  Since I never do anything small and I had a weekly “free day” on my hands, I decided to see if I could brew a new batch every week.  I also started to reserve Fridays for doing the maintenance on my previous batches.  This basically consists of transferring beer between containers, taking readings, taste testing, and cleaning equipment.

With two batches in bottles and four batches in various stages of fermentation I’m amazed at how little work it takes to keep it all up in the air.  Even with the extra work of juggling multiple batches I can do all the maintenance and brew a fresh batch in four or five hours. Most of that time is spent sitting around watching TV on my Laptop and making sure the beer doesn’t boil over.

Unfortunately, there is a dark side to brewing large quantities of beer…bottling.  Cleaning and delabeling bottles is no fun.  Bottling itself isn’t so bad with my wife helping out, but I’d hate that as well if I had to do it solo.  To remedy this problem my parents got me a mini fridge as an early Christmas present which I promptly attacked with power tools and converted into a kegerator.  Now instead of making sure 50+ bottles are squeaky clean, I only have to worry about one five gallon keg.  Kegs are also cheap at about $25 each, so I can always get a few more if necessary.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep up the turbo brewing schedule, but it’s nice to know I’ll have plenty of tasty beer on tap for the next few months.

Last month I decided to start brewing my own beer.  I’ve had the idea (and the necessary reference material) for a few years now, but there was always one reason or another for holding off.   Now that I finally have the space and resources to keep several batches going at once, I decided it was finally time to take the plunge.

After reading a few books to get an idea of how the process works, I picked up a brew kit and some recipe kits from Midwest, an online home brewing store that has received a lot of praise in the homebrew community.  Lincoln has a decent homebrew shop, but even with shipping costs I ended up saving a ton by going with Midwest.  I did buy a few things from Kirk’s Brew, like a brew pot and a few other odds and ends.  I think Midwest will probably be getting most of my business while I’m still in the kit brewing phase, but I may go to Kirk’s if I start designing my own recipes.

Beer making isn’t a fast process.  It takes 4-6 weeks before the beer is drinkable, sometimes longer if it’s a complex beer and the flavors need time to mellow.  I worried over a few minor mistakes on the first batch (a brown ale), but yesterday was bottling day and and a quick taste test proved I didn’t make any horrendous errors.  It pretty much just tasted like flat beer.  I won’t know for sure for another few weeks, as the bottles still have some aging and carbonating to do before they’re truly ready.

While the brown ale was fermenting, I went ahead and whipped up a batch of German apfelwine, which is a dryer-tasting version of hard cider.  That has another week or two until she’s ready to bottle.  I’m also planning to brew my second batch of beer tomorrow afternoon (an English bitter).  If I stay interested (and my concoctions actually taste good) I’m going to try and crank out two batches a month.  Each batch makes two cases, so that should keep me pretty boozed up for the near future.