Bill White

PaperBoy – Repair Log

2015 – January

Even though I did not have an actual PaperBoy cabinet, I knew I would eventually find one so I jumped at the change to purchase a NOS CPO overlay for $158. I’m glad I did since it eventually looked awesome once my machine was restored.

That same month, I also purchased original blue Hunt-Wilde bike grips. These were very rare at the time and did not come up for sale very often so I thought nothing of dropping $128 on them. The exact same grips now routinely sell on eBay for $23. That one hurts.

Finally, to wrap up my phantom Paperboy cabinet that I would not actually acquire for another 2 years, I purchased the custom PaperBoy sideart from GameOnGrafix. While this is not original or even authentic, it is 1000x better to look at than the original System 2 generic sideart they originally came with.

2017

A fellow local collector had a PaperBoy that I had played at his place off/on for 3 years. He was finally willing to part with it for a reasonable price. It was in someone rough condition, but these games are hard to find and even harder to find locally so I gladly made the deal. I managed to get the thing into the back of my wife’s Ford Explorer and brough it home for immediate and total restoration.

I had to bondo parts of the cabinet to fix missing chunks and I used new laminate to smooth out the sides. I washed the video board and cleaned up the interior. The PCB’s on this game are absolutely huge.

I installed the revised plastic screen bezel (again not original but so much better to look at) and some diamond plating on the foot rest which I had seen in another restoration.

I powder coated the coin door and had the handlebars completely rechromed and installed a new handlebar stick from ThisOldGame in its place.

The NOS CPO looks awesome. It was so old that the curved section started to crack a bit when I installed it but wasn’t too bad and never really got worse over time. I’m thrilled with that purchase.

This is probably my favorite game in the entire collection. The re-play-ability of this game is epic. It never gets old.

2018 – October

The screen started slowing going in/out of focus during game play. It seemed to be the flyback and there were simply no replacements available for sale anywhere because PaperBoy used an improved medium resolution chassis. I sent the chassis to The Arcade Buffett who is the best in the business for fixing these chassis. He replaced the flyback and the picture looked great. One flaw was that the new flyback left a few very very very faint lines on the left side of the screen. They are so subtle that you’d have to have them pointed out to you to notice. Buffett said this was an unavoidable side effect of using a modern flyback on a K7000 chassis.

2020 – December

A K7000 Paperboy Chassis came up on eBay for sale. Hoping to finally get rid of the faint vertical lines, I purchased it for $324. It worked and had no lines but for some reason, the focus knob had to be turned the extreme as far as it would go to get it to focus and even then, it was just not as clean and sharp as the Buffett repaired chassis so I ultimately went back to that one, keep this one as a spare.

2022 – October

I’ve been bothered by the fact that I, when I restored the cabinet, I got the Player1 / Player2 wires reversed in the handle bars. I decided to do something about it. Opening up the handle bars is a nightmare as the wires inside are 40 years old, very thin and frail and stretched very tight between the soldered connections. Instead, I purchased a molex release toolkit which lets you push the connector pins out of the connectors. I used my multimeter in continuity mode to identify the P1/P2 buttons (touching one end to the ground pin and then finding the corresponding pin that beeped when the P1/P2 buttons were pressed. I pushed those 2 pins out and switched them. I suppose that, if the wires are color matched on the other side of the connector, they would now be out of sync color-wise but I have no plans to mess with them anytime soon so I’ll risk that (although it does bother my OCD mindset 🙂 )

Track and Field – Repair Log

2019 – May

Purchase this fairly rare cocktail Track & Field (along with a Galaga) from a guy in Colorado. He had purchased it in 2009 from a seller in Billings Montana. The sale also included a HyperSports PCB. The game was in really good shape. He had replaced the control panel overlays but everything else looked and worked great.

2019 – May

Purchased a Konami 2-way PCB switcher and a right angle bracket. I mounted the HyperSports board inside the coindoor (had to remove the coin bucket to make room) since there was just not enough room for it next to the existing PCB.

Galaga – Repair Log

2019 – May

Purchased machine (along with a Track & Field cocktail). Really really nice shape.

2019 – May

The machine had some with a 60-in-1 emulator card which I wanted to replace to make the machine more authentic. (more on the irony of that position in a minute). I purchased a PCB off eBay for $265.00 but when it arrived it would only show characters on the screen. I took it over to a friend’s house to test it in his machine and exhibited similar problems there too. The seller gladly took it back which was nice.

I purchased a second PCB which was a JAMMA board for $91.00 so I grabbed a Galaga PCB to Jamma adapter ($16) as well as an original Galaga PCB cage holder/bracket ($8.50).

For whatever reason, I then ordered yet another Galaga PCB for $217.50 which would make a single explosion noise on startup and then run with all kinds of graphic corruption. Not sure if I fixed it or went with the Jamma.

2021 – September

Purchase the Galaga High Score Saves kit which lets you do things like tweak the firing rate etc. So much for keeping the game authentic but whatever. 🙂

Ikari Warriors

2014 – February

Purchased Ikari Warriors dedicated cabinet off eBay.

2014 – March

Purchased Heavy Barrel PCB
Purchased Guerrilla War PCB

Since those are both rotary SNK games, I figured I’d create a multi-rotary system. Purchased a “6-in-1 MultiJAMMA Switcher PCB w/ Wireless Remote” from jammaboards.com to allow switching between the games. Ordered Jamma extension cables from Bob Roberts. Purchased NOS SNK joysticks (don’t recall where).

Had to build a custom wiring harness to allow SNK rotaries to map correctly to each individual PCB board. I got the boards in August of 2015 described this thread; a KLOV’r named Ghostnuke sold me a pair from an old batch. Building the harnesses to connect each PCB to that board and then connecting the joystick to the them took a few weeks and was very tedious. However, I now can play Ikari Warriors, Heavy Barrel and Guerrilla War on the same cabinet now. All use the original PCBs so this is no MAME cabinet…….well sort of….

I wanted to play another rotary game call Top Gunner (also known as Jakal). It was one of my favorites and I had heard that there was a bootleg ROM version of it where the guns in the jeeps actually were able to be rotated using the rotary joysticks. The production game did not have this feature (and I figured out why later on). I couldn’t find that bootleg ROM nor a usable PCB so I went another route: I purchased an ArPicade and a Jamma adapter which allowed me to run the ArPicade emulator. I then found a .rom file with the bootleg version and now I can switch over to the Jamma adapter connected to the Rasperry Pi.

So now I can play that very rare version of Top Gunner! However, it turns out to be much more difficult to play while rotating the machine gun in the jeep than you might imagine. It’s fun, but I think they made the right call by leaving that rotation part of the game play out of the production game.

2022 – October

I installed an EasyCoinup on this machine since, while the Ikari Warriors PCB had freeplay setup, the Heavy Barrel and Guerilla War PCBs do not. This will make it easy to coinup for those games when they are used via the JAMMA switcher I have installed in that cabinet.

I noticed that Guerrilla War was not rotating when I turned the SNK joysticks for either player; all other games worked fine. Some of the JAMMA edge connectors were loose but re-connecting them didn’t fix the issue. I plan to recap that board today to see if that’s the problem. (SEE UPDATE BELOW)

I also have an ArPiCade installed in this cabinet. I thought something might be wrong with it since, when I booted to that from the JAMMA switcher, the ‘ArPiCade’ logo would appear (sideways) but then a blank screen would appear. It turns out it just takes a very long time to load; I left it unattended for 5-10 minutes and it was working fine when I returned.

The P1 button was not working but it turned out that the wiring had just become detached from the leaf switch inside the CPO so that was an easy fix.

Update: It turns out the Guerrilla War board was not broken at all. I examined the wiring and quickly realized that, back when I installed the ArPiCade in the cabinet, I did not have a set of SNK rotary cables made up to test it with (using the adapter). So I apparently just yanked the rotation cables off the Guerrilla War board, leaving it in a semi-disabled state and forgot about it. I reattached those cables to the Guerrilla War PCB and I’ll have to make a new set to connect the ArPiCade permanently.

Also, I swapped the connectors to the CPO buttons for gun/grenade so now the Heavy Barrel, Guerrilla War and ArPiCade games will all match up correctly. Only the Ikari Warriors has those buttons reversed now. I’ll just tweak that one set of wires later on to get it aligned rather than work to fix those other 3 games. I still have no idea why the JAMMA pins do not align the same for all those different PCBs. Perhaps it is because, while the Heavy Barrel and Guerrilla War PCBs are true JAMMA boards, the Ikari Warriors is an older, non-JAMMA board and required a custom adapter.

Operation Wolf

2022 – August

Purchased machine off eBay.

2022 – September

Full restoration underway. Read about the details here on KLOV.

Fixed all issues; installed easy coin up since there is apparently no free-play mode on this game.

Parts purchased and not used

3x optical boards
2x guns
2x motors
Extra auxiliary gun transformer
Extra glass lens to replace bad one (plus one more that came with the gun)

Powder coated entire gun:

Star Wars – Repair Log

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.

(pre restoration image) Grip internals showing old microswitches

Purchased but not used

Bob Roberts cap kit

Exidy Cheyenne – Repair Log

2013 – June

Purchased from a seller in Seattle.

2013 – July

Purchased an original pistol grip gun (likely from a Chiller or WhoDunIt)

2014 – February

Purchased a wood-stock gun that was fully restored.

2018 – August

Full laminate sides

Full new side art

New CPO overlay

New Bezel, textured vinyl on front, new t-molding, powder coated gun, bell housing and coindoor

2022 October

NVRam battery continually dies; replaced multiple times and each lasts only 4-8 months so I’m assuming there is some continual drain being put on that chip. Rather than continuing to replace it, I purchased an updated version of the kit from High Score Saves.

Parts purchased but not used:

Chiller short handled Gun w/ extra optics tube
Replacement Metal Shotgun
2x original Exidy multi kits (one came with the game, the other was purchased as a backup)
Extra bell housing
Kept original bezel

Spy Hunter Repair Log

2007 – February

Purchased machine

2016 – February

Replaced entire PCB (to fix sound issues?); purchased on eBay from ParadiseArcade shop for about $250.

2016 – March

Replaced cheap squeak board for $140

2018 – September

Full restoration including sand, smooth and repair minor water damage, replacement glass bezel, full laminate on sides, full side art, powder-coated control handles and texture paint on exposed wood surfaces.

2018 – October

Replaced battery with NVRAM:

2018 – November

Installed Free Play ROM from http://www.hobbyroms.com (Stephan)

2022 – October

Loud hiss/static noise coming from speakers. I replaced the ‘amplfiers’ that look like transistors coupled to heat sinks on the dual amp board (I suspect this was cauing the static noise) and I also replaced the two suitcase caps (56000uf and 100000uf) in the bottom of the cabinet and I did a full rebuild on the MCR linear power supply, replacing the potentiometers, heatsink caps and the transistor, electrolytic caps, some chips (swapped out with socketed replacements) and the 3 legged silver caps (the kit did not include the replacements for the 6 legged caps). After doing all this, the hiss/static were totally gone, but were replaced by a fairly low hum. This is not the infamous ‘Hum/Buzz’ you read about online; instead it was much much lower and is drowned out during game play by the sound effects and music. I was not able to get the to completely go away, but I did notice that the hum did disappear when I took the Cheap Squeak board connector off. While it could be that board, I’m suspicious that it might be coming further up the line from the harness that feeds into that board.

2022 – October

I noticed the right thumb button seemed to be shorting out; during game play, any major movement with the right hand would trigger it. I took the right handle apart and found I had previously almost stripped out the alan screws when originally putting them in back when I restored the machine and reassembled it; I got some of them out using a flat head driver which I wedged into the semi-stripped socket. A few of them gave me more trouble but I was able to use the “swiss-army” style multi socket tool with SAE sizing (slightly bigger to it fit the stripped head) and it gave me the leverage to get them out.

Taking apart the handle, I had forgotten just how fiddly these are constructed: the wires run between the screw contact points and it is incredibily easy to pinch the wires between them while trying to put them together, while hold in the trigger button and simultaneously trying to tighten the screws. Also, the screws drive into the barrell that the handle connects to so it is possible to break wires with too long of a screw. I replaced most of the screws with much shorter 1/4″ length cap screws, re-did the wiring to remove the pinched portions and got it all back together. I noticed the left handle also had a seam where it comes together that was slightly open indicating it too had a pinched wire so I took it apart and got that sorted as well, replacing some of the screws with the shorter ones. Now it’s all working 100%.

Purchased by not used:

ThisOldGame Spy Hunter CPO overlay with Fluorescent inks; saving for a rainy day
Still have original glass overlay
Multiple cheap squeak boards; one just plays the music over and over without regard to being signaled to do so by the system; the other doesn’t seem to play anything at all. (Oct 2022)

NOTES:

It is the SSIO board that tells the Cheap Squeak when to play the Peter Gunn theme. It should play anytime you press the reset button on the Cheap Squeak. The next time it boots without playing the theme, hit the reset on the cheap squeak and see if it plays. That would mean your cheap squeak is fine.

Have you checked the SSIO board yet? You can set the DIP to a diagnostic mode to tell you if it is having any issues. Set SW3 at D14 #1 to ON. Then #2 ON will give you a RAM/ROM test. #3 ON will give you an oscillator test. #4 ON will give you a filter test. Check the manual (page 3) for details.

Since the problem is intermittent, I would guess it is an intermittent signal going from the SSIO to the cheap squeak. Check the voltage on the SSIO across a ROM chip – should be around 5.1V. Maybe check the header of J5 of the SSIO for cold solder joints.

I’ll check those things, thanks.

Question: Is it also the SSIO that tells the board to “boot up” at power-up and cause the LED to flash a few times? My problem seem to be that at power-up the board does not initialize on rare occasions.

Arcade Repair Logs

Because Arcade games are constantly needing maintenance and repair, I’m continually having to open the games up to replace a capacitor or re-seat a chip. I often forget what repairs I’ve previously done or forget steps I’ve already taken since there is usually a 1-5 year gap between repairs, which is enough time to forget everything you’ve learned.

I’m going to create some repair log entries on the blog for my own records but I figured I’d post them publicly in case they end up helping someone else out.

Arcade Games – 2021

I’m a nostalgia junkie at heart. As a kid, I could never waste a quarter on an arcade game, no matter how badly I wanted to play them. Having a full sized arcade game in the house was something 99.9999% of kids could only dream of at the time. I always dreamed I would get one if I ever got the opportunity. Nowadays, it seems silly since a phone can out perform any free standing game ever made. But there was just something about being there in front of that big cabinet, grasping those custom made controls that really took you into the moment.

Back in 2008, the opportunity arrived. I bought a Spy Hunter (in rough shape for about $900) and had it delivered to my one-bedroom apartment. I caught the fever, and over the next 13 years, I slowly added games from friends or sellers online. I’ve become quite adept at learning to diagnose and repair these machines. I’ve even fully restored several of them including the PaperBoy, the Cheyenne and the Spy Hunter to like-new condition. Here is how it looks today:

The collection includes: Galaga, Star Wars (with the sought after amplifone monitor), a PaperBoy, Cheyenne (which I loved to play at Six Flags back in the day), Spy Hunter, Ikari Warriors, Asteroids Deluxe, Lunar Lander (the most prestine example in existence), Midway’s Gunfight (the first game to ever feature a microprocessor), a 1956 Chicago Coin Steam Shovel, a fairly rare Track and Field cocktail, a Haunted House Pinball, and a 1989 Black Knight 2000 pinball machine, along with it’s 1980 predecessor, The Black Knight. The red and blue machines in the back are 1971 Computer Space machines. These are the first arcade games ever made and sold to the public (by Nolan Bushnell, who would go on to create Pong and then found obscure companies such as Atari and Chuck-E-Cheese). They are 2 of less than 100 surviving examples, and 2 of about 60 known to still function.