TAF almost finished
This has been a busy weekend. All of the rest of the parts for TAF came in on Thursday night. Spent the better part of Friday, Saturday and Sunday reassembling, soldering, screwing, banging and sticking stuff back together. Unfortunately, I was lacking two crucial parts to complete the job...
Apparently, Williams in their never-ending quest to cut costs made the decision to just do some light tack-welding on a couple of ball eject assemblies. Well, TAF has a chronic problem with these welds breaking. I gave them to a buddy of mine to fix, and got them back today, so I hope to get them installed tonight and get to troubleshooting the electronics. Once I get that done, I just have some clean-up to do, wax the exterior of the game and post it for sale.
Oh, a couple of crucial details I missed: while I was assembling the Jet Bumpers, I managed to twist off one of the threaded rods, so I'm going to have to order one of those (freaking $5.50 part!), and I also discovered that the book case is supposed to have a rubber pad in the back of it to absorb impacts (I was wondering how the engineers expected the thing to last long-term). Naturally, I can't find the pads anywhere domestically, so I posted a request to the newsgroup and someone came back with a suggestion that I use the bank door pad from Stern's Monopoly and cut it down. I've sent a message in to Marco to see what the dimensions are. Hopefully it'll be big enough. If not, I'll have to go to Pinball Heaven and wait two weeks to get the part. Christmas is coming and I'd rather not wait that long...
On a personal note, I just negotiated a deal with a great guy in Southern California on a Theatre of Magic. This'll be a personal machine that will (hopefully) live up to my expectations. I've been a great fan of ToM on Visual Pinball for quite some time, and have even gotten the wife interested. The whole family is anticipating a great time with this machine.
Now that I'm just about done with TAF, I need to start looking toward getting that Pac-Man cocktail straightened out. I think I mentioned that the Electrohome G07 was the source of the blown fuses. I've decided to try pulling the Wells-Gardner display out of my Galaga and moving it over to the Pac. It's currently non-functional, but it should be much easier to fix than that Electrohome, which looks like someone poured Coke on the main board with it powered up. My main concern is the interface board. It looks like the Pac has more pins being used (possibly H/V both +/-), which is different than my experience with Defender. I may be screwed if the interface board on the W-G in my Galaga doesn't support all of the pins.
Apparently, Williams in their never-ending quest to cut costs made the decision to just do some light tack-welding on a couple of ball eject assemblies. Well, TAF has a chronic problem with these welds breaking. I gave them to a buddy of mine to fix, and got them back today, so I hope to get them installed tonight and get to troubleshooting the electronics. Once I get that done, I just have some clean-up to do, wax the exterior of the game and post it for sale.
Oh, a couple of crucial details I missed: while I was assembling the Jet Bumpers, I managed to twist off one of the threaded rods, so I'm going to have to order one of those (freaking $5.50 part!), and I also discovered that the book case is supposed to have a rubber pad in the back of it to absorb impacts (I was wondering how the engineers expected the thing to last long-term). Naturally, I can't find the pads anywhere domestically, so I posted a request to the newsgroup and someone came back with a suggestion that I use the bank door pad from Stern's Monopoly and cut it down. I've sent a message in to Marco to see what the dimensions are. Hopefully it'll be big enough. If not, I'll have to go to Pinball Heaven and wait two weeks to get the part. Christmas is coming and I'd rather not wait that long...
On a personal note, I just negotiated a deal with a great guy in Southern California on a Theatre of Magic. This'll be a personal machine that will (hopefully) live up to my expectations. I've been a great fan of ToM on Visual Pinball for quite some time, and have even gotten the wife interested. The whole family is anticipating a great time with this machine.
Now that I'm just about done with TAF, I need to start looking toward getting that Pac-Man cocktail straightened out. I think I mentioned that the Electrohome G07 was the source of the blown fuses. I've decided to try pulling the Wells-Gardner display out of my Galaga and moving it over to the Pac. It's currently non-functional, but it should be much easier to fix than that Electrohome, which looks like someone poured Coke on the main board with it powered up. My main concern is the interface board. It looks like the Pac has more pins being used (possibly H/V both +/-), which is different than my experience with Defender. I may be screwed if the interface board on the W-G in my Galaga doesn't support all of the pins.
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