Night Rider – Puttin’ the hammer down

Picked up an aftermarket MPU and got this one going again real quick.

Besides the new MPU and some cleaning and rubber, the only thing it really needed was a lot of connector rework, and clean up on a few old splices.

For the smaller .100″/2.54mm pitch KK 254 connectors, Molex 08-50-0114 contacts were what I used. For the larger .156″/3.96mm pitch KK 396, Molex Trifurcon 08-52-0125 contacts.

Series of reference pictures I took of each connector before I repinned it linked below:

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Besides Night Rider I’ve been digging up a bunch of long dormant projects in the shop, including a Williams Defender. I’ll post more about that one as I get deeper into it.

Project updates part 1

Got a bit caught up with other aspects of life so I haven’t been doing much with the blog lately. Got a lot done with the games in the last few months though!

Cleaned a terrifying amount of goop out of the coin door to the Defender cabinet and made that sucker shine again. It also has a monitor bezel now, and by pure happenstance the inner monitor surround too. Snagged the bezel for ten bucks on eBay, and found out after a little bit of comparison with Internet pics that I got three of the Williams style monitor surrounds in a pile of them I picked up a while back.

Got reaaaaally lucky and picked up this lovely thing for $150. Spent a night retrieving it from Hood River, all in all I’d still consider it a killer deal. It comes complete and loaded with Dr. Mario and Super Mario Brothers ROM sets.

While it was supposed to be working as of my purchase, I never got to test it in as found condition. While loading it onto a dolly to bring it in I dropped it on its side. Seems to have caused some damage to the monitors, hopefully that’s the extent of it. Was super bummed about that. Definitely don’t try to move one of these things solo, the size is deceptive… Two monitors and a steel cabinet mean it’ll get away from you in a hurry if you’re trying to muscle it around.