I have taken a break from fixing arcade games for a while.  At the moment I now fix Bose Wave Radios and Bose Multi-CD players.  I will be taking photos and showing how I do some of those repairs in the near future.

New game to be fixed

Well, it appears to be darn near 3 years since I have posted.  I have been pretty busy due to work.  I think I will try to post a little bit again in the near future.  I recently picked up a Williams Base Hit pinball game that needs repair.  It is one of those old pinball games with a baseball theme.  It has the runners that pop up and go around bases in the backbox of the game.  Very cool.  I have always wanted one.  Found this one on Ebay and got it for a decent price.  So, I will tear it apart and do the necessary cleaning to all the switches.  This is an old electro-mechanical game which means it has no solid state parts in it....only switches, motors, and boatloads of wire.

Once again....it's been awhile since I've posted.  Let's get back to having fun!  Last week I purchased a non-working Roku M1000 for $15.  Roku is known for making devices for streaming music and videos from the internet to your home devices.  This item will stream music from the internet to your stereo.  Lots of radio stations from around the world now broadcast over the internet.  Very cool!  The seller listed this only...no power supply or remote control came with it.  When the Roku was delivered, the box was smashed.  I opened up the box and found the unit was jumbled pretty bad.  The endcaps of this thing are known to be pretty brittle.  Sure enough, the clips that hold them to the unit were broken. I heard something rattling when moving it around.  I emailed the seller and made mention of the problems.  I asked if I could tear it apart to see what was rattling.  If it was something major that broke off, I wanted to send it back.  He had no issues with me opening it up and checking.  Turns out one of the endcap clips had broken off and found its way into the main unit.  While I was in the guts of the Roku, I looked around to see if there was anything else noticeably burnt or broken. All looked good.  So, I put the unit back together and plugged in the jack from a power supply of my own.   I'll be darned if the thing didn't come right up.  Plugged it into the internet and it found stations.  I love it when things work out!   I think I will keep it and hook it up to my main stereo in the living room.  I just need to get a spare remote for it.  Plenty of those on ebay....

For the past few months I have been working on Donkey Kong arcade boards.  Value has really skyrocketed on Ebay so I figured I better try and capitalize on it.    I had around 7 or 8 boards that I was not able to repair from years ago.  I decided to move on to other boards.  When you get frustrated with repairs, sometimes it is just better put them away and come back to them later.  Well...later is now.  All of a sudden things clicked and I was able fix them all.  I sold them at prices ranging from $150 to $250.  KaChing!!  Now I have some Donkey Kong Jr's I will start working on.

I also had a few Cook Race arcade boards that had been sitting for years.  So, I thought I would give those a quick look see and try to fix them.  Cook Races are pretty much BurgerTime clones.  I have three of them.  Once again, things clicked and I was able to repare two of the three.  The third I was able to diagnose but need parts for the repair.  I doubt I will get a lot of money for them, but I only bought them for the fun of trying to fix them anyway.

I had a few Atari Crystal Castle boards that had been sitting around too.  Found that the issues on those seem to be memory chips going bad.  Replaced those and I now have two working boards.  I sold one on ebay to a guy that had a bad board.  He plugged mine in and said it would not come up. He sent it back to me.  I plugged it in and it fired right up without issues. The buyers original board would fire up in his cab. I built a jamma adapter for my boards to run in the cabinet I have.  I may have to find an original Crystal Castles cabinet to test my boards in.  I can't picture why my board would not work in his cabinet.

On a different note....Congratulations to Bo Pelini and the Nebraska Cornhuskers on their win over Michigan yesterday. 

It's been a long time!

I forgot I even had this blog. I will try to keep it updated more frequently. As this is mostly about my hobby...here is the latest & greatest: I recently bid on, and won, a couple of DLP projectors. Just wanted a new, fun, project different than the normal arcade stuff I work on. Got these for less than $50 for the pair. They were advertised as "non working" so I expected the worst. When they arrived, I plugged one in and it came right up. Sweet! I plugged in the 2nd one and the power and lamp lights came on. Nothing else. I swapped the lamp with the good unit and it tested ok. That tells me that something else electrically was wrong. So, naturally, I tore into the unit looking to see if the power supply was good and if anything else looked bad. I had parts all over the place. Could not find anything wrong. I attempted to put it all back together. Luckily, everything was back in its proper place. Still had the same issue when plugged in. My next step was to do research on the web (probably should have done that first!) I found a forum where someone suggested resetting the lamp timer. I figured that would be fine if I had just replaced a lamp...after all, it's only a timer to let folks know when to replace the lamp. I found the service manual for the unit online and downloaded it. It mentioned that if the lamp light was on and a known good lamp was in the unit, then there was a lamp circuit failure and the unit should be sent in for service. It also mentioned that you should reset the lamp timer. I figured, what have I got to lose. I reset the lamp timer and I'll be darned if the thing didn't fire up. Perfect picture...nice and bright! So now I have two working projectors with great pictures. I tested it with my cable box to see how nice the pic would look on a wall. It filled up an 8 foot by 10 foot section of the wall with a fantastic pic. Once again...sweet!!! I love it when things work out! I will most likely keep one and sell the other on ebay. Hopefully, I can get some good $$$ for it. A new lamp alone runs $150. On to the next project.

New Member of the Family

Welcome Joshua to the family! He is a 4 year old rust and tan doberman pinscher. He was adopted by me from the Doberman Rescue of Nebraska group. Same group we got Shine from. He is a sweetheart that also does not have a mean bone in his body. Loves everyone! I found that after Shine's passing I really missed having a dog around the house. So, after a month, I caved and adopted Joshua.

Joshua was rescued from the Humane Society somewhere in Arkansas. He was scheduled to be put to sleep but, at the last minute, was saved by a Doberman Rescue group member. He was then transported here to Nebraska and was kindly fostered by a local resident until I saw him at one of the stores I was volunteering time at. Took me all of five minutes to fall in love with him and adopt him. It was a great choice!

-- The passing of Shine --

My dog Shine passed away, due to old age and failing health, on May 30th 2010....Memorial Day. Not a happy day for me. However, I feel blessed to have had him be a part of my family for 9 years. His estimated age was about 13. Kris picked him out from the Doberman Rescue Society and has never let me forget about it! He was such a great dog. Smart and loved everybody. Kept the rif-raf away from the house as most are scared of Dobies. If ever you want a great family pet, please consider a Doberman. They are called "velcro dogs" cause they always stick by your side. Check out the current adoptable Dobies at Doberman Rescue of Nebraska. I am volunteering some of my time with them now. Those people really work with the dogs on their socialization and obedience skills. They don't have to work too hard cause they are naturally sociable and easy to train.

Let the fun times roll....

The company I work for is moving data centers from Denver to Omaha. We have been doing dry runs this week on some of the equipment I help maintain. Been quite a few late nights. Should be a nice weekend though. Plan on going over to Kid Guzzi's house early Saturday morning to help troubleshoot some electronic issues with Robert's (Kid's brother in law) Moto Guzzi. Hope I will be able to help fix the issues.

I haven't been able to do any arcade work lately so no news there. Hopefully, soon.