Big Progress & Can See Finish Line...

Well, I decided the coin door needed a little paint so I took out the red coin buttons, taped it up and gave it a few coats of flat black spray paint. I think it turned out pretty well actually. I have some new red push buttons coming anyway as the other ones looked really old and dingy. (picture is a little blury)



I had the whole thing up and running for the last 2 days running on the original monitor from when this arcade cabinet was built in 1987 and while it worked it looked awful. There was burn-in in the screen and the picture just wasn't very crisp. Plus the colors were a little off at different parts of the screen. So, starting today I decided to rip out the old monitor. Here it is after I took it out. The thing had 20 years of dust on it and was disgusting. You have to be careful working on monitors because they hold charges even after they are unplugged. Like 20,000 to 30,000 volts. Enough to ruin your day and even can kill. Luckily I know what to touch and what not to touch and I didn't have any problems thank goodness.


I made a bracket with some extra wood I had left over and mounted the monitor to the piece of wood. I then was able to use 4 carriage bolts to bolt this piece of wood to the supports that were for the old monitor. A little ingenuity and about $4 dollars in hardware later the new 19" LCD screen was mounted and starting to look pretty good. All the games require the monitor to be mounted vertical instead of horizontal so that is why it may look sideways. Oh, and may have noticed the new Multicade marquee I installed. I had to get rid of the old Arkanoid one which just didn't make sense anymore.


Here is the view from the back of the cabinet. As you can see there is soooo much more room back here now that I have the LCD monitor in there instead of that old nasty CRT monitor. You can see the board that the LCD bracket it mounted to and how the board is bolted to the frame.


So.... What's left to do? Well, just a few things...

• Install new red push buttons in the coin door
• Run power to the coin door for back lighting for the new red buttons so they light up.
• Replace black T-molding running along the cabinet. I have some new green T-molding coming which might give the cabinet a little more "pop".
• Run power to the flourecent light behind the top marquee. It also will light up to highlight the Multicade marquee.
• Clean up my mess. I'm surprised Christy hasn't killed me yet with the mess I am making. :)