Well, well, well. The kids and wife left to go to see a friend for the weekend. My son is now potty trained, so so it was the "Magical Train Ride" we'd promised him. That's a picture of him waiting for the train. I wanted to go, but Jenny's friend has 2 kids too, and they didn't have enough space in her car for 4 car seats and 4 adults. So, I stayed at home.
Spent about 5 hours total working on the Lock n' Chase. Had to figure out how to get it out first (see my last post). Turns out that once you take out the odd "metal frame" daughter card, you CAN get to the one nut you can see through the metal triangle shield part of the frame. Don't take off the two long ones.
So, for the Wells Gardner k4600, with the weird rails in the Taito cabinet (maybe cause it's vertical?), here's the take-apart steps. (I won't document taking off the wires. That should be self evident. I also won't document snipping the little plastic ring ties that are EVERYWHERE on the factory (I assume) setup.
1. Take off the 2 daughter cards. (xy and rbg I think are the names?)
2. Take off the black plastic bar. (You press in, and it pops off the pins.)
3. Pull up the black plastic knob and the white plastic nob.
4. Pull up the metal frame with the 3rd mini daughter card.
5. Where the black and white nobs where, and looking through the triangle sheet metal of the frame, you'll see 2 1/4" nut head screws. Take those out.
6. Pull the motherboard towards you. There are still 2 tabs in the back, right lined up with the tube. Tilt out, and it should come free.
7. NOW, you can find the 4 screws which hold the backing metal plate onto the 2 black plastic mother board holders.
8. Phew! That's it. Except that you might want to slip off the holders to get at some of the capacitors.
9. Note, the Bob Roberts kit instructions don't tell you that 2 of the capacitors are on the daughter card that on the metal frame. They are numbered correctly, but don't do a mini panic when you can't find 2 of your caps! :)
Here's me with my Hakko. Damn that thing's sweet.
I did my work in place, because there were too many things soldered to the monitor, and I 1. didn't want to take my monitor out and 2. didn't want to splice and solder wires later.
2 cardboard boxes (one flat, one raised) a flourescent light on a stick, and a rolly chair worked pretty well. I'm not saying it was a perfect experience for my back. But, it worked for me.
I probably spent an hour on adjusting it. Couldn't get it to come in at all at first. Tried hooking it up to the Turbo, got it a bit closer, but something wasn't syncing. Switched it back to the main boards, and it worked fine.
Feels so good to have everything plugged in now. With 5 machines in a row, it's nearly an arcade feel. I spent way too long with a dead machine in the row. Sure, sure, the sound went out (I know it works cause I bought the machine playing blind), and the joystick and control panel need some work. But, it's playable, and -most importantly- it's a 4-way vertical. Which means I can start working on wiring it up to be a switchable to the Amidar board I bought way too long ago.
Of course, I went to the Superauction in St. Louis on August first with my good friend Justin. And, I got a new idea for a project. Someone had a custom 48-1 mini pacman set up that went for $650. It had a tiny LCD VGA monitor on it, and it looked really sweet. I think I want to build one for the kids! Maybe someday, eh?
