Vectrex is Florida Bound!

My friend Chris moved to Florida a few years back and left his Vectrex with some friends to play with. The Vectrex is an Atari-like game console that plays vector games like Asteroids and Rip Off. These consoles are known to have a loud hum to them. I offered to try a fix for it before sending it back. The fixes I found for it did not work so I tried my own fix. Voila... the hum is drastically reduced and makes the game much more fun to play.

This is the Vectrex console.





This is the guts of the Vectrex. I found the sound cables had the ground connected on one end but not the other. Stupid... So, I wired the ground on both ends and noticed a considerable reduction in the hum. Yay!! The Vectrex is now packed and ready to ship back to its owner.

If anyone is interested in finding out more on the vectrex, click here: Vectrex

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas everyone! We had a great family gathering at my parents house. My brother and his family could not make it as every one of them got sick the day before. Didn't stop the kids enthusiasm this morning opening gifts!

Shine is watching over the gifts to make sure nobody takes them. Good boy!! Notice the festive covering he put on his kennel so Santa would show!









Here you can see that Shine was good this year and got some of his favorite treats.... Beggin' Strips and T-bones!

Winter is here....

First snow of the season. Got just under 2 inches in my neighborhood. The high temperature today was 8 degrees...not including wind chill. Here's a pic of the neighborhood. Still snowing a bit. Very pretty and serene ... until you have to shovel it.

Frogger Arcade Board Reborn.....

Some days ya just got to love the moment! I had a guy call me and ask me to work on his arcade monitor and do a cap job (replace bad capacitors). The caps will sometimes skew the picture or do other weird things to it. Over time they dry out and need to be replaced. Usually, I'll charge $35 to do that...about an hours worth of work. However, he said he had a Frogger board that wasn't working and wanted to know if I would trade for the work. I agreed.

A pic of the Frogger board. (Has a top and bottom board)













A pic of what was showing when the Frogger was powered up. Doesn't look like Frogger to me!






















Frogger bottom board with bad 2114 ram chip. The chip is circled.




















After replacing the bad ram chip and checking the board again. Life is good!!

Riddle me this....

A friend from another blog " Wisdom....mine and others " has some neat riddles on that site. I submitted one for her but can't post the file there that will tell you if you have the correct answer. However, I can do that here. First, the riddle....

There is one bus with seven girls in it.

Each girl has 7 backpacks and each backpack has seven big cats.

Each big cat has seven little cats.

How many legs are there all together?

Not as easy as you might think. Took me awhile to get this one... The answer can be found in the following Excel file. It is locked with a password. The password is the answer to the riddle. So, if you found the correct number of legs, you will be able to view and add your name to the file.
Click here for the file.

Monitor News

Woohoo!!! Got one monitor fixed so now I can work on my game boards again! It was the vertical raster that was messed up. Found a fried resister that was the issue (R433 - a 2.2k resistor for those with a similar issue). This is the monitor that goes to my Japanese candy cab (see pics on posts below). It uses a Nanao MS8-26 monitor chassis. Took forever to find some schematics for it. If any other arcade enthusiasts need a copy of it, just let me know and I'll send you the link.

Camera Day

Yesterday was spent repairing digital cameras. The two models that I mainly work on are the Casio Exilim series and the Olympus FE-280 series. Most issues are lens issues from people either dropping them or bumping them pretty hard. The lenses have pins that slide in grooves. A little motor will turn the lens frame one direction or the other to extend or retract the lens. If the pins jump out of the grooves the lens will jam and you will get a plethora of errors when turning on the camera. These "thin" bodied cameras seem to be easy to work on. I always tend to destroy the 1st ones I ever work on just so that I can familiarize myself with how they work. So far, so good. I am able to fix about 95% of the camera's I buy. Now to throw a few on ebay....

Look out Florida...here I come!!!

Nebraska vs Clemson on New Years Day!!! I have my plane tickets and bowl tickets and will be heading down to Florida to watch the Gator bowl with my good friend Chris aka the owner of "The Life and Times of CWPG" blog and our friend Paul from Ohio. I can hardly wait! Most airline tickets were going for upwards of $800. I got very lucky and found some for $250 round trip. Amazing!!! Fortunately, I have relatives that will house and dog sit for me. Go Huskers!!!

Video Monitor Blues

I'm still having issues trying to fix the candy cab monitor. The issue is that it has a vertical line running up the middle of the screen. Nothing else. I assumed it was a horizontal deflection issue and was chasing that for awhile. Then it occurred to me that the monitor can be swiveled in the case so it can display properly for verticle raster games. Duh... sure enough...the monitor position had been changed. The vertical deflection is not working. Tired of chasing that around today so I will stop for the night and will restart in a day or so.

Another one of my recent hobbies is repairing digital cameras. I have it down to 2 models that I like. The Olympus FE-280's and the Casio Exilim 7.2 and 8 megapixal cameras. Pretty well have those figured out and am able to repair most of them. Fixed two of the Olympus camera's tonight. Takes about an hour each to do. Most issues seem to be with the lenses not working from people dropping the cameras. They turn them in under warranty and they eventually work their way to me. Repaired and back on ebay for resale. People love these things and spend crazy amounts of money for them. God bless those folks!

Ok.....Hobby time.....

Today I get to work on my arcade games and am very excited as I haven't had time to do so in awhile. Time of the year where you have to do a lot of yard cleanup from all the leaves constantly falling from the trees. First on my agenda is to fix my monitors on the games that I use for test beds. In other words, I use them to view the pictures from games I am working on. I have two, and for some reason, both have fried. Can't fix games if I don't have a picture.... The pic to the left is my workbench. Lots o' parts!

I used to buy up complete games (cabinet, monitor, game board) but found I don't have the space in my home for too many. So, I now just tend to buy the game pcb (board that runs the game) and will just repair those. Once repaired, I will put them up for auction on Ebay. Fun hobby and I get a little extra cash out of the deal. My true love of games is Pinball! I love working on them and love playing them. If only I had more room in the house!

My current projects are:

• A Seawolf video game. Repairing that for a friend. Click here for a pic
  
• A United shuffle bowling game.
• An assortment of boards to fix...Pacman, Galaxian, and Donkey Kong to name a few.
  
• A Take Five cocktail pinball game (rare). Click here for a pic

As I do repairs, I will try to take pictures and document what I had to do to repair the item. May not be totally exciting for most, but will be to those that love the arcade games and do repairs as I do.

Far left pic is the back of the Seawolf game I am repairing.

The next pic is a bunch of Pacman / Ms. Pacman boards that I have yet to repair. A few months ago I repaired 13 Ms Pacman boards in a week for a local arcade company here in town. Boy...was I burnt out after that. Rush job....












This is my "Candy Cab" that I use as a test bed. Came from someplace in Japan. Can you tell by the sign over the monitor? Hope to get this baby working today so I can continue on with my game board repairs.

Ok....enough for today! Time to hit the games!!

Congratulations to Bo Pelini and the Nebraska Cornhusker's for their victory over Colorado 40-31! Scary first 3 quarters but an exciting finish in the 4th quarter. Amazing field goal from Sophomore Alex Henery ... 57 yards.... longest in Nebraska football, and Memorial Stadium, history!








My dad came over to watch the game with me and ended up with his best buddy, Shine, watching with him!