Current state of gameroom - infested by kids and dragons!

Someone just asked about gamerooms on Jeff's coinopspace.com site, and I thought I'd post a video that shows the current (pitiful, but fun) state of my gameroom. I have all the games moved in a row under the stairs. I've also now finally got all the moving boxes and file cabinets out of the way.

From left to right in the background...
The Candy Cab (Still currently with RushNAttack/GreenBeret board) fits up under there so you can sit under the steps.
Then I've got the Top Score pinball starting out the row.
Then the Lock N Chase (needs a cap kit at least, but possibly has lost a gun or two).
Then my working Jail Break (hopefully to be rotated to vertical to run TimePilot84 and my other vertical Konami's).
My Sega Turbo (working mostly blind), and hopefully soon to be cap kittd).
Not visible, but will go in eventually where the Christmas Crap shelf is - The boards and CP, etc of a Roadblasters and a monitor that I'm going to make into a dual kid/adult sized sitdown.
Barely visible - A fake kiddie pinball (the kind they sell for $75/$100)

In the foreground is the cheap ($40 at Kmart last year), but amazingly fun air hockey machine.
On the right, you can barely see the side of the castle (with blue fabric) I'm framing in for the kids.

Where the heck have I been?

Let's see, where have a been? Since my last post, I took a bazillion business trips, smashed my car, lost a grandmother-in-law, landscaped my back yard, tried (in vain, but had fun soldering) to fix my inlaws TV, done a lot of rearranging of the basement den/arcade/shop/kids castle/Dreamcastland/etc and started coaching my daughter's soccer team.

Zap.

There goes 8 months.

Had some good pinball and arcade on my business trips. The best was probably GamesNAt in Pittsburgh, and the bowling alley next to the Pinball Parlour in Earlington, PA (Philadelphia area).

This week, I helped turn a fellow member of the awesome Yahoo EM pinball group onto Fitz's in St. Louis. They only have a LOTR, but it's well shopped, and the Rootbeer and Cream Soda are to die for.

I got the fever for it so bad that I took the wife and kids there before the Trout Fishing in America concert at the Library.


In other news, Jeff Rothe has got his great new website called coinopspace.com up and running. He calls www.coinopspace.com a "Classic Arcade Game Forum". Sounds about right. It's like KLOV or RGVAC or RGP, only with great graphics and (so far) lots of friendly "hobby" folks. (i.e. not a lot of jerks/egos).

They've helped me out with some cap kit questions, so I'm ready (I hope) finally to tackle my cap kits this winter.

The return of the 15 year old Mullet...

Went to St. Pats the other weekend back at school. Didn't see many folks from my era. But, I did snap this picture of me circa 1993/4. Wow, that's some bad hair! LOL Hmmm, I wonder why Jenny had no interest in going out with me back then?

Where the heck have I been?

I've been to Rome and back.

Here's me ordering a couple of veggie burgers at the Pompeii Burger King (this is not a joke... it's one of nearly 100 fast food joints found on the main streets of Pompeii.)
Here's me towering over the tiniest real care I've ever seen!Here's some of the fun they used to have at the brothel in Pompeii (kids, close your eyes!)

I've only got about another 400 or 500 pictures and a bunch of videos. So, you're lucky I'm sparing you. :)

In the basement, we've been progressing along fairly well. I put the Top Score on Free Play using Marvin3M's method for Gottlieb EM halfmoons. Works like a charm.

I've got all the games moved into place, and it feels good.

Made it to Lowes last weekend to finally give my daughter her castle. So, I've started framing in the walls in the corner. More pictures as it goes up. Should be fun.

And, tonight, we had a great walk in the neighborhood where William skipped and played drums on each electrical box and cable box... Then, came down stairs and played a few games of air hockey, pinball, and Green Beret. I beat Julia 9 to 8 in air hockey. She took it pretty well. I meant to let her win, but it didn't work that way. Oh well, she's doing well.

Then, Julia played Green Beret and William pretended to play Green Beret. Both of them were sitting on my lap. She scored 4700. Not bad. It was, for a daddy geek... awesome. Then, Julia played pinball on her own. Jenny had played pinball earlier.

It was a lot of fun, and a great family night.

What have I gotten myself into??? Cap hellllllp?

Disclaimer: Any dirt on the board is a combination between Nicotine and fried dog hair.

NOTE: All pictures are bigger if you just click on them.

I told my in-laws during the New Years weekend I'd try to fix their TV for them. Ah, smart Jon. I have a 32", 7 year old TV sitting upside down on a card table in my garage. Where my car should be. That was 3-4 weeks ago. Kids suck the time out of you. Putting a heater in an uninsulated garage when it's 20 degrees out - that takes the oomph out of you. Finally got into it this weekend when it hit 60F out.

Anyway... symptoms were that it started snapping to a horizontal line, then now it's down to just the power supply "clicking".

So, I got it open, reflowed what I could get to on the neckboard. (On the left)

No help. So, I decided maybe I could reflow the main board. But, I had to take it out. Took me a bit, and here's my reward... I think it's a slightly bulged cap. This one's big. Almost 2 inches high. It's in the powersupply section.




On the right side, there are two parallel traces coming down to some leads pointing up and then down (about 1/3 of the way down, under the "+" by the words "HOT\COLD")). That's where the big cap goes through.

Here's the detail on it. The "flashes" of brown are nicotine stains I haven't cleaned yet. But, on the left (the very left of the white line down the center), is where I think the capacitor "goo" is.Even worse, on the lower left side of the shot above, there is even more "goo". (I can't find the cap this would have come from. None of the others look even slightly "bulgy".)

So, this is where I'm at. I have never seen a blown cap before. I assume this is what it looks like, but I'm not sure. I don't even know if fixing a cap would fix the TV. Or, even where I'd buy the cap kit.

What have I gotten myself into? LOL *sigh*

Where have I been?

Okay, so, it's been a while since I've posted. When I've been in the basement, I've been working on rearranging my game room. I got the entertainment center and the 31" Gateway Destination monitor moved with only one (near) Achille's tendon severing fall. I've gotten all my games moved, and finally, have gotten the rubber tile back down in the corner where my daughter's Cardboard Castle is going to go.

Phew.

Got the farthest I've ever gotten in Jail Break last night before litter duty. "Only" scored 110,000 (not my high), but got past the ships on Scene 3 and into the town. Dang, now I gotta learn the pattern for the SUV's on a part I've only been to once. Grrrreat.

On my pinball, I've been having some monster first balls lately. Racking up a 10 ball bonus, and clearing them, and starting over. (On Top Score, the backglass animation gimmick is a loading up of a bowling ball for each bonus point. The one rule of the game variation wise is, once you've loaded up 10 balls, you then go for the "bonus" hole to score them and start collecting more bonus points.) But, for some reason, ball 2 and ball 3 like to drain on me, so I've gotten 30k on the first ball, and then 5 k on the 2nd and 3rd. No where near a high score.

I'm beginning to wonder if the new spot I put the machine in is slower than the other. I haven't leveled it yet, but when I checked, it seemed to be right as is. Hmmm.

The other cool thing is that I've finally scored a Tiger Heli PCB. Sure, it's not JAMMA. And Sure, I don't have a cabinet for it. BUT, it's a minor Holy Grail of mine, and it was only $20 shipped. I used to play the heck out of Tiger Heli both in the Aladdin's Castle in Minot, ND as a kid, and on the Nintendo when I was in college. I even used a flight stick for it on the Nintendo. So, I'm happy.

I'm thinking about putting an Ultimarc Magstick 4/8 way onto my Lock n' Chase once I've done the cap kit, and using it for vertical 8 ways, not just 4 ways.

Next blog - my fun "project".