Changing the lineup

Today I traded my way into an unidentified but very nice cabinet that is set up with Do Run Run sans monitor.

It’s covered top to bottom in neat but generic space themed art. The only identifying mark on the entire thing is ‘FF’ in the middle of the top marquee hold down bar.

Control panel is kinda interesting, with another possible clue as to what game originally occupied it. It’s got markings and a cut out on the back for one more button, though the control panel overlay is uncut.

Oddly, the wiring harness is also provisioned for a second button, even though it seems to have been made for Do Run Run from the start.

I dropped in my highly specialized test display and played a few rounds. Pretty fun game, but the controls need some attention. The buttons and joystick are some of the cheesiest components I’ve seen in a while and stuck with enough frequency to kill me about once every other round.

The cabinet itself seems designed for multiple possible games, and includes provisions for switching between horizontal and vertical monitor orientation. That means I can put the original Mr. Do in it too, and I took it as an excuse to rid myself of the rotten Megatack cab the Mr. Do hardware I have came in.

I won’t miss moving that waterlogged heap of MDF.

Bonus pic of the interface board pinout sticker on one of the monitors I traded for the cab, a Wells Gardner K4600 series. Label on the sticker is 69X0984-100, not sure if that relates to what type of interface card it corresponds to. The card itself was missing its identifying sticker when I got it. Figured I’d post it up regardless, since there seems to be precious little information about the different boards for these monitors available on the net.

Mr. Do’s Failing Capacitors

The board set from the $25 Mr. Do works in spite of the deplorable condition of everything around it. I pulled out the guts of the cabinet to test it in friendlier and less spider infested conditions. Ended up being able to run through diagnostics once and get a game to start before the Videomaster 13 I had the board attached to started to go dim, droop on one side, and start making some awful noise from the flyback transformer. It looked nice while it lasted!

I tried to hook the board up to a VGA adapter but can’t get the thing to sync for more than a second or two before it goes back to claiming no signal.

Next step is rebuilding some monitors I guess…

Nothing should have that many legs

The gross bracket situation put a stop to any work on Mr. Do, but I still had the G07 to drop into Centipede. That one went in easy since the cab is as it came from the factory and the Atari engineers actually gave a damn about ease of service. I brought the machine up and the monitor showed nice picture. Unfortunately, it was a picture of total garbage.

I cleaned up the PCB edge connector with some Deoxit and removed all kinds of grossness there. Still nothing. Reseating the ROMs on the PCB was next. That got some results!

Still need to adjust the monitor a bit and do a proper rebuild of the trackball. I cleaned it up a lot but the rollers and bearings were neglected long enough to have rusted and the movement is quite rough.

Said to be playable with that crust on the rollers. Must have been a way tougher game that way!