2013 – July
Purchased a Star Wars ESB kit in anticipation of eventually finding a machine. Also picked up some side art which, at the time, was rumored to be hard to get since licensing rights were blocking further printings. This apparently turned out to be a false alarm as the side art has continued to be readily available. The machine I ended up getting had side art that was so good that I never used the reproduction. I ended up selling that side art to a fellow KLOVer in 2021.
2015 – January
Purchased machine. A mint condition amplifone unit from a seller in Dallas.
2016 – September
Purchased the Amplifone Rack service from www.classicarcaderestorations.com and was thrilled with the results. Sent off all boards and they came back bullet-proofed. The services is not cheap but the results are worth it. Picture is steady and vibrant.
2017 – May
Had the yolk controls powder coated.
2019 – January
A few of the components in from the rack service got fried so I sent the boards back to Jeffrey Matthews at www.classicarcaderestorations.com and had them repaired.
2022 – October
Installed an Easy Coinup on the Star Wars because, the ESB kit, while acknowledging free-play during Star Wars, does not seem to acknowledge it for Empire Strikes Back. The only way to play ESB is to insert a quarter. Today’s kids do not seem that familiar with using quarters (all their modern fancy arcades take cards loaded with credits and dispense tickets) so they jam dimes or whatever they find into the coin slots when I’m not looking. I found the right coin entry bezel was jammed so I took it apart and discovered nearly $3.50 in mixed coinage crammed into the coin slot. I also found that, for whatever reason, somebody at Atari decided to use #6-40 screws to attach the entry bezels and return bezels to the coindoor rather than the MUCH more common #6-32 screws. I stripped a few getting the door apart so now I have to wait for these specialty replacement screws to arrive to get everything back in place. UPDATE: It turns out the #6-40 were also not correct. When they arrived, they did not fit either. To add to the confusion, when I screwed the original screw into my thread sizer, it fit not only the #6 size (a screwed all the way in unlike other 6-32 screws I had; odd…), but it also fit the #5 and #4 holes. I have no idea what size is correct. I ended up putting a #4 screw from another set into the coin door screw hole and it worked so I just accepted it and moved on.
I noticed that the left thumb button was not registering reliably. It was picking up about 75% of the presses so I opened up the hand grips and inspected the buttons. Both sets of buttons have springs and depress microswitches. However the thumb buttons actually have the spring sitting between the bottom of the button stem and the top of the microswitch. It is fairly easy to press the button at an angle so that it does not make clean contact with the microswitch button. I swapped them out with a similar microswitch that had a more rounded contact button that, for whatever reason, seemed to register presses almost every time. I swap both thumb microswitches out with the other style and it works great now.
Purchased but not used
- Bob Roberts cap kit