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Happened to glance at
the local paper in the classifieds looking for a job that pays a bit better.
Noticed Arcade Games in the for sale section. The following were for sale:
Rastan, Afterburner and Golden Axe. Didn't care for any of them but for
the heck of it I gave the guy a call and networked a little, asking if
there was anything else. After telling him that I restored old arcade
games he said 'funny you should mention that, the Golden Axe is in a Berzerk
Cabinet!'
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After setting up a time
and evening, Brent graciously invited me to his home to take a look. What
I found was a Berzerk cabinet in good condition.
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Original coin-door and
mech unit. Not much wear on the lower cabinet.
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Looks to be the original
monitor, CP will need some work to restore it to single joystick and to
fill the extra holes. This cabinet was converted to a Golden Axe.
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Control Panel will need
a little work to restore it to single joystick and to fill in the extra
holes
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Original Stencilled artwork
in good condition. Some minor scuffs to the sides of the cab. Total outlay
for the game this evening was $20.00.
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Regulus PCB from the
Tron Project being shipped out to Mark
Haysman of Great Britain. A collector of Sega Boards. This Regulus
will pay for the remaining Berzerk project balance.
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On our way to pick up
the Berzerk cabinet/Golden Axe conversion. It's about 9:30 am Saturday
morning 12/28/2002.
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Arrived to a snow-covered
driveway. Had a snowstorm hit about 3 days ago.
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Tried to back the van
into the driveway but didn't get too far before getting stuck. Steep incline
looks like it could be dangerous if one of us were to slip bringing the
cab out.
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No problems though. We
got it loaded up with a minimal of contact between snow and cabinet. Special
thanks to Brent for being so accomadating and for holding the cab for
us with just a 20 dollar bill. He was ready for us when we arrived and
had the cab sitting right near the doorway in.
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Looks like some bubble
gum stuck onto the top of the marquee retainer bracket. Probably been
there a long while. On our way back to the shop with our treasure.
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Arrived safely and unloaded
the cab. Powered it up to ensure everything still worked ok even though
it's all coming out. Now it's a question of finding space to place this
cab. It's getting crowded in the shop.
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My friend Bruce getting
the last game in of Golden Axe before the deconversion.
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Removing the.. ahem,.Marquee
light assembly. It was a plastic fixture with a power cord running out
the rear of the cabinet not fastened down and just laying in there.
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Glass Bezel and Artwork
removed. Was sorry to find no Berzerk artwork underneath.
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Rear of the cabinet after
removing the spaghetti of hacked up wiring. Looks like they hacked the
old wire harness up in the conversion to GA.
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Golden Axe PCB being
removed from the cabinet. Seeya fella.
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Underside of Control
Panel. Removing all the controls from it.
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Used the heat gun to
remove the old CP overlay.
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Shame. A real shame.
The screenprinted artwork didn't hold up under the previous CP overlay's
glue. I don't believe it was the heat that did this during removal but
it could have been. Doesn't much matter anyhow since it's been drilled
out for Golden Axe. Going to be hard to replace this artwork since it's
screenprinted directly onto the stainless panel.
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Removed the PCB slider.
Cleaned thoroughly with Gunk and watered clean. WD-40 used to cover the
entire surface area of the metal. Lubed bearings with grease. Wrapped
part in newspaper awaiting re-installation.
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Uh oh. Looks like somone
hacked up the wire harness pretty good. Clean cut of all the frontal harness
components.
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Looking down from the
Control Panel area.
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The coin-door interlock
switch facing opposite direction and disabled.
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For posterity's sake
in re-assembling the cabinet after I go to work on it. The locking mechanism
for the side panel which holds the main circuit board panel.
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Picked up some Avery
labels as a few of the EPROM chips were exposed to light. Picked these
up at Office Max before taking any flash pictures of the ZPU-1000 rev
D board.
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Placed label over each
exposed EPROM.
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Time to get that corroding
battery off of there before it (hopefully crossing fingers) creates any
damage.
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While there is some evidence
of leakage, the PCB doesn't look too bad at this stage. May have caught
this just in time.
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3.6v GE battery removed
with a soldering gun. Heavy soldering joints occasionally require more
heat than with a 15 or 30 watt soldering iron.
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A little white vinigar
to the rescue in removing any traces of acid from the battery. This area
of the board then rinsed in water.
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The old lamp assembly
looks like they used electrical tape on the connections to and from the
transformer.
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Cutting all solder joints
off and installing caps at all connections.
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Completed the Marquee
wiring task.
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A little Novus #2 used
to touch up the plastic monitor bezel.
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A before shot before
starting on the coin-door.
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Pretty rusted, aged and
worn.
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Lots of hardware here.
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This isn't going to be
fun. There are so many loose parts here and with very little in documentation
or pictures it'll be hard to reassemble.
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This whole assembly has
some signs of rust. I'd like to paint it but like I said if I don't come
up with extra parts it'll be a real accomplishment.
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Novus #2 used to remove
scratches on the plexi coin labels. This really spruced up those coin-labels.
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For some odd reason there
was scotch tape on the backside holding these in place that didn't need
to belong. During careful removal it peeled some of the red screen printing
off the 'Quarter'. Used a bit of Goo gone to remove all the adhesive left
from several years. Cleaned the surface up nicely.
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Originally picked this
up for some work on Star Wars sideart. A Testors airgun.
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The testors airgun worked
great. Thinned the red paint quite a bit so as it didn't block too much
light.
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After stepping over this
monitor time and again (and saying to myself the whole time that I've
got to get it up off the floor) I finally ticked the neck board with my
shoe and busted the neck tube. A crying shame. It lasted 20 years until
it met me. Have to come up with a new tube from somewhere. In this shot
I sprayed her down to get years of crud off.
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Possible replacement
tube. Old 1983 Zenith TV.
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Ok, not the typical red
tube. Has a Zenith sticker on the tube. Definitely a Zenith tube.
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Pins don't match up very
well with original tube. This tube has 9 pins the original G07 has 10.
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Berzerk metal parts returned
after being powder-coated by Buckeye Custom Coating..
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Looking for a Stern Berzerk
replacement coin-door label.
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Coin-door restored. Shiny
and new as day one.
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Coin-Mech portion of
the coin-door restored. All parts accounted for and looking brand new.
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After having to go to
Paypals Safe Harbor Jason Forster finally ships the monitor.Picked up
the G07 for $40.00 shipped. The packing material is newspaper. I was told
to remove his name from this page or he'd throw the UPS insurance paperwork
out.
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Proud owner of TWO GO7
busted monitor neck tubes now. Apparently the seller didn't want to make
it right with me as it's been something like 3 months later without a
word from either UPS or Forster. So back goes his name. Jason Forster.
This event convinced me to decide to open a bad seller page.
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Looks like I'm going
to have to find a resource to some G07 tubes. Something does not want
me to put a monitor in this berzerk project.
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Great! The glass artwork
bezel arrives. Won this on an ebay auction described as Decent condition
, Some Flaking Of Paint On The Right Side But Not To Bad Considering ...
7 Out Of 10. Auction won from doughboycraig for $15.00 plus $10.00 shipping.
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Oh no. NO! This is considered
SOME? This is just the left side. The artwork was pouring off of this.
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Right side in same shape.
I sighed and started cleaning. it by running some water over the surface.
Front cleaned up ok. But when I started the rear, the artwork began washing
away further with the water! Quickly stopped that and let air dry. This
shot was from before cleaning.
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What a disaster. I masked
off all the unscreened areas of the glass and applied 2 coats of Krylon
Triple Thick. That seems to have halted any further damage. Going to try
some acrylic paintmatching. The condition of this was more a solid 3 of
10.
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Acrylic back-painting
of the screenart. There were about 5 different colors. Color matching
was very troubling.
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An added step. Repainting
the entire back surface area. Be sure to let the acrylic dry well beforehand.
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Removed the masking tape
and newspaper after drying.
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As you can see it turned
out pretty good. Didn't intend on restoring the glass screened art however
in this hobby you have to be ready for just about any challenge.
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Closer look at the restored
artwork. Mixing and matching of paint proved very difficult to get an
exact match.
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The red and blue appeared
to change pigments as they dried. But this is close enouph for me. At
least until new screenart glasswork is reproduced for Berzerk.
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The right side of the
cabinet after a wash-down getting rid of years of crud. As you can see
the cabinet is pretty scraped up. Yea for 20 years old it's not real bad,
but it shucks, it looks 20 years old. For the purest you may want to turn
away now.
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Left side not as evident
from this shot, but it's got a very dulled finish.
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Readying for some cabinet
work. Layed her on her side for some cabinet work.
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Cutting some feet.
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Hadn't noticed this before,
but this front bottom has been kicked or something. It's cracked pretty
good.
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The plywood is separating
on this rear bottom as well. Way too much skooching around on carpet.
I guess the use of Leg Levellers hadn't occured to Stern in '79. Both
front and rear sections have been removed for replacement.
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Cutting new 3/4"
ply for the front and back supports.
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Both ends needed a divot
cut to match the originals and fit the cabinet properly.
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Pine blocking used to
add further security to the front and rear supports held with.staples
and glue.
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Feet secured with 1-1/2"
screws and glue. Also countersunk the screws and added a 3/4" diameter
hole for the leg levelers.
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Finished off the woodwork
on the bottom of the cabinet. I'll add a coat of paint for some wood protection.
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Bondo applied to the
bottom quarter of the left hand side. There's been some damage to this
cabinet as no leg levellers apparently were installed or used.
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Close up of some of the
damage after the first coat of bondo.
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Front bottom quarter
had alot of splintering and cracking going on.
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Towards the rear of the
cabinet. You can see there were some chunks missing.
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Now have all the materials
for stencilling. Artists Adhesive, painters tape and what I thought was
Acetate. The Cellophane proved too thin a material to use for stenciling
as it'd be way too flimsy after cutting. The advice was found on #rgvac
on usenet by someone recommending Walmart gift wrap. I tried it. The thin
and flimsy cellophane just wasn't going to do the trick.
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But anyhow, here's the
red being outlined by a sharpie.
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May have a winner here!
While dropping off a Top Gunner project Tony Etzler brought along this
tube. I'll have to look more into this to see if it's a match. While clearing
out his garage he came across this tube and just gave it to me. Thanks
Tony! After examining the tube it has a decal that reads WG 790292 I also
counted up the prongs on the neck tube and came up with 9 total. Not a
good match as the original Berzerk monitor has 10.
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Tony also donated this
old chassis that perhaps came with the tube. I'll need to research it
to find out which chassis it is. After further examination all I could
find was a number on the backside of the board that read 2061433-055 but
it looks almost identical to the WG 19k4915 chassis.
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Candidate #2 was on a
run down to Sears to pick up more ratchets that keep dissappearing here.
Came along this laying alongside the road. Have to crack the case to find
out.
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While this RCA tube was
manufactured in 1985 you can see it's got a very different neck tube connector
and won't work with a G07 chassis.
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An order to Brian Jones'
Oleszak Creative and I now have
a gleaning set of Berzkerk stencils. Packed neetly and even included a
pacman wall sticker. Thanks Brian!
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Both left and right sides
sanded down to the wood. Now starting on the front of the cabinet and
top with a belt sander.
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Stumbled across an incredible
deal on Ebay. Purchased the original Berzerk stick from a guy in Mexico
for around $10.00. Amazingly complete stick and in good condition.
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New leg levelers and
brackets purchased from arcadeshop and installed.
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The new marquee arrives.
Purchased this from Arcade Grafix.
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Cabinet completely sanded
down inside and out.
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I used both an orbital
disc and pad sanders and it took quite a while to get to this point. Lots
of bondo was used to for many patches, especially towards the bottom of
the cabinet, where the most damage was.
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Sanded down the monitor
retainer board and the PCBt front access door front and back sides. Both
these parts remain to be bondoed.
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Last but not least, sanded
down both sides of the back door. This still needs bondoed.
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Cabinet primered with
Kiltz2 primer. I rolled this on with one of those 'smooth' surface foam
rollers.
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Primer applied. No sanding
for any smooth surfaces here. Were looking for a rough texture.
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Again, I used the 'smooth'
surface foam roller. This roller works really well for a rough textured
look. Rolled on 2 coats of semi-gloss latex black paint for the texture.
The final coat was applied with an air gun to the inside and outside of
the cabinet.
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Only the bottom remains
to be painted.
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And this is the resulting
texture I achieved. I had considered Prok's idea of applying wallboard
compound mixed with a little paint. Thevery thought of it just didn't
appeal to me. May be a good idea for wallboard joints or small patch jobs.
But the next restorer would play hell getting it back off.
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A better lit sample.
Not bad. The last spray coat contributed a bit of orange peel. Getting
near ready for the stencils. Going to let this paint dry for a week or
so before applying the stencils. Not good to mix paints, water and oil
based.
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Bottom of the cabinet
receives some preservationist painting. Removed the Leg Levellers and
brackets for this.
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New stencils as purchased
from Oleszac's Creative, Inc.
Were going to work on the left side of the cabinet first. Applied the
Red stencil first as that has the registration blocks marked in the upper
left and bottom center.
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Rustoleum's Sunburst
Red as pointed out by Eric on #rgvac is a perfect match. I found this
spray paint Home Depot.
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I used 3 coats and waited
till they were somewhat tacky in between coats.
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The following day I then
applied the blue stencil and aligned it with the registration blocks.
I forgot to tape over the registration blocks , so be sure and do this
with yours before applying any paint. In both cases I used a roller to
remove any air bubbles before painting. Here I used Rustoleum's Sail Blue
as found at Home Depot as well.
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A Thanks to Eric for
the color and paint information. They were spot on. I let the blue coat
dry for about 11 minutes before pulling the stencil. Yes impatience. But
it worked out fine.
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As for the upper logo,
this was problematic for me. The upper portion of the logo was adhering
to what normally gets thrown away. I quickly reapplied the top stencil
portion to the bottom wax paper and emailed Prok at Oleszak for guidance
on how to proceed.
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After some correspondence
I ended up touphing it out and just peeling from the front and back of
the label, taking an exacto blade as I went to release the portions that
I needed unstuck. Masked off the bottom, sprayed 2 coats red, masked the
bottom, 2 coats blue.
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Left side finished. Due
to the Rustoleum paint, and it's drying time, this was an all day affair.
Going to give it a week to dry and cure before laying her down and starting
on the right side.
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Right side stencils applied.
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Hmm, well I'll have to
let Prok know about the centering of that logo. It's a little off center
with the cut. Right side finished.
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Routing out the T-Molding
channel with a dremel and sanding disc. Fresh paint will interfere with
the placement of the T-Molding.
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Inserting Leather T-Molding
into the channel on both left and right sides. In this step a rubber mallet
is used to lightly tap the T-Molding into the channel.
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Found another television
candidate for tube replacement. After cracking open the housing again,
the wrong type of neck tube connector. Pitched this set.
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Air drying the freshly
rolled on paint to the front access door, rear panel and monitor housing.
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Original speaker placed
and the speaker grill secured to the cabinet using freshly sandblasted
and painted carriage bolts.
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The CPU board rail is
then fastened to the sidepanel with freshly sandblasted and painted original
carriage bolts.
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Going to have to do something
about these wheels. They are riveted in place.
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The newly restored coin
door assembly is fastened in place.
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The freshly painted CPU
door is placed on it's restored hinge bracket and fastened in place.
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Complete wiring harness
arrives from an ebay auction I'd won from Stefan Adams at a cost of $25.46
+$10.00 shipping.
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Was going to get the
wiring straight with the marquee lamp. As you recall the previous owner
used a plastic plug in lamp in the conversion. I found the wires were
way too tight to get the lamp sockets in front. The wires were too short
on the fixture. So I replaced it with a new fixture.
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The wires are now plenty
long enouph and the sockets have been moved back to the front.
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Sockets fastened loosely.
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15" bulb found at
Home Depot. $7.00 for 1 freakin bulb.
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The bulb has been inserted,
turned and the sockets have been fastened down snugly.
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Now for the wheels. Used
a drill bit to drill out the rivet.
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After that a hole punch
was used to remove the rivet entirely. A couple taps with a hammer and
it came right out.
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The current hardware,
nice original wheels that have metal bushings. Will try to find rivets
of this type.
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The hardware has been
sandblasted clean.
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Went on a run to North
Olmstead Ohio after winning this Ebay auction. I paid $50 for it under
the presumption it contained the original moniter. All I was after really
was the G07-CBO monitor.
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Perfect! Just perfect.
A Defender monitor. A Wells Gardner 4600.
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Well I suppose I have
a Defender project so I could use this monitor in that cabinet. Perhaps
I can use some of the other parts to this cabinet and hopefully resell
it for what I have in it.
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Not sure how this back
panel could ever fit again. The bowing is really quite pronounced.
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Picked up some new rubber
weatherstripping for use with the Marquee. The original has been removed.
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New material placed,
adhered and stapled as original.
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A trip to Fastenall to
pick up OEM replacement Marquee screws.
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Also picked up some screws
at Home Depot for the upper marquee bracket. All secured. The marquee
portion of this project is now finished.
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The completed latch assembly
for the pull-drawer hinged front door after restoration. Sandblasted clean,
primed and painted. Placed back into service.
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This gem was removed
from the cabinet that came from North Olmstead as it was in mint shape.
Selling the other on ebay that I had rescued earlier.
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The cabinet is coming
along nicely. A few parts here and there a little sandblasting, painting
all done in my spare time. Granted I hadn't had much of that in 2006.
And in 2005 I had all the time in the world and no money. Go figure. Just
gotta get it while ya got it.
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Here I am removing every
single oxidized aluminum pcb retaining bracket on the PCB pull-drawer.
Sandblasting and recoating. One board at a time. While I'm there I am
also cleaning 20 years of collected dirt from the aluminum sheet underlayment
with a soapy damp cloth.
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Christian Moores' beautiful
Control Panel reproduction finally arrived at my door. This thing is just
gorgeous. Hey and it even came with a freebie Berzerk Keyfob. Thanks Chris.
I had bought this Aluminum Control Panel as part of a pre-order at around
50.00. Not a bad deal.
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Test fitting the new
CP. Like a glove.
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Actually had a chance
to take a look at the original CP beside the new comparing the two and
I'd found to not just my surprise, but that the original CP had some screened
white in there whereas the reproduction had none. Sent in a pic of the
old bird as Chris was investigating it in a state of shock. It was found
that in later versions apparently they had removed that color entirely
from the screened artwork of the control panel. Had I been asked for input
early on in the project, I could have easily sent a pic before the actual
production run was made. As you can see though, one doesn't look a gift
horse in the mouth as the new reproduction CP really was needed badly.
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Adding the wood offsets
onto the new CP with new hardware. Removed the old beat up hasps, sandblasted
and painted them.
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Reassembled restored
hasps.
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2 red buttons and 2 White
butons, all shorts with 4 leaf switches arrived from Mikesarcade.com.
I had a stock of stamped nuts from a previous order with Mike. If you
know your going to have a continual use for a selling product it's always
best to keep a supply on hand.
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The first red button
went on a little hard, but the rest all went into place quite easily.
Everything gently tightened in temporary place as it'll probably all have
to be moved when a wiring harness is created by hand.
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All buttons in place.
Now awaiting the main joystick placement.
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Brand new barrel locks
installed on the front and back doors from R&D Lock & Key.
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Checked at Mikes Arcade
to find if there were any reproduction Berzerk joystick springs. It was
suggested Ebay was the best place to look. A quick trip to Home Depot
and I found some good candidates. I recut and shaped the spring to the
desired tension.
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Placed the spring into
service with the reconditioned joystick.
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New 8-32 nuts and star
washers installed for the housing cover.
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A little elbow grease
and some Never Dull for the aluminum plate.
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This item just arrived
via http://www.bigdaddy-enterprises.com. Very faithful reproduction Stern
decal for the coin-door. I was just going to order 1 for $5.00, but the
shipping was something like $14.00, so I went ahead and picked up the
5 pack for $20.00. In for a penny, in for a pound I guess.
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Looks better than the
old original. Didn't know if I was going to be able to find these anywhere.
Thank goodness I came across it.
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Ordered this brand new
VisionPro 19" monitor on Ebay from Seller twistedquarter, which appears
to be a direct replacement for the Electrohome G07-CBO. I'm hoping it
fits the wood frame and installs ok. With a dead board it makes it real
hard to troubleshoot. Can't find any Stern Berzerk repair techs either.
Had I not busted the original necktube this whole project would have gone
much easier. It would also help to find a repair technician familiar with
Stern Berzerk.
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Game instruction card
printed on photo paper and applied it to the rear of the glass with scotch
tape. You can download the card here
and trim as necessary.
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yay! The monitor works.
Unfortunately this is with the Z80 chip removed. I seem to have misplaced
some beeps somewhere. I had beforehand been getting 3 beeps but then nothing
but the led staying lit.
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Contacted Mark Capps
of www.arcadechips.com to get a Z-80'B' replacement. Really hoping this
gets me back on track again tracking down the beeps.
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Z80's arrived from Mark.
Slipped one into socket with no result. Hrm. Ok well back to checking
voltages. Now the LED doesn't come on at all and there's no video. Dug
out the multimeter to run some further tests.
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I'm missing +5 voltage
and the adjust pot for the voltage has no effect. I've got good +12v and
-5v. So apparently the PSU took this time to crap out. I ran a continuity
check on the C1 cap and it appears to be shorted. I'll try finding the
15000uf16v capacitor locally and install it to see what happens next.
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That's a negative on
the Power boards' C1 cap. The problem was a loose wire on the Amp. And
a no go on ANY 15000uf16v caps available these days. At any rate I'm getting
good voltages now from the power board. +15, +12, +5 and -5. I find it
difficult to measure a cap in circuit apparently.
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Pulled alot of things
back out of the attic and setup a more compact area for my bench.
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Ok, power supply board
tests out good. Moving on to the ZPU. Built a power harness to the board.
I'm now getting a steady red LED light always on.
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Looked over the traces,
everything appears fine. I came across C3 22uf16v cap that is shooting
5.23 volts off into the negative direction. Reverse polarity?? C1 and
C2 are firing in the opposite direction on the plus side, as they should.
But C3 here, I'm mystified about. This is wierd at first glance. Never
seen a cap shoot voltage off in the reverse direction, and it's an original
cap on the board.
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Come to find out it's
actually wired differently than what the board indicates. So everything
is ok here.
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I decided to rule out
completely the reset button. So I had to pull the Bookkeeping button to
replace it with as there are none available on market as an adequate replacement.
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The reset button now
operates and tests out with ohm readings from the multimeter.
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This battery acid really
is horrid. Even on a relatively clean board, when you get to this closeness
you can see just how badly it tore up this board.
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Brand new Z80 processor
purchased from Arcadechips.com
and installed. This did not fix the problem and the board remained in
the same condition.
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Replaced Q1, Q2, Q5 transistors
with 2N3904. Q3, with a 2N4403. Tested this out to see how much further
I needed to go. Still board stuck high.
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Just a shot of the option
dips while I'm in the area. All off except for the last two of the first
bank.
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Down to the last possible
culprits. The 7406 and 74LS00 integrated circuits.
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Removed both chips. Unfortunately
two pads also came off on the underside of the board during desoldering
and removing the old pins. I found that cutting the legs closest to the
IC works best. It's a real bug-bear getting tiny fragments out if you
cut too close to the board. You also risk injuring the board if you cut
to close. And these ZPU's have a bad enouph problem with traces vanishing.
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Ok, well this was the
worst experience in soldering I've ever had. I found it VERY difficult
to get solder to adhere to the old pads due to the previous acid damage.
At any rate, socketed and brand new IC's installed. After this last step
I no longer had an LED. But finally got my 3 beeps back. So, satisfied
just to (for the love of God) get past the ZPU I moved on to the next
board and found a bent Ram pin. Still nothing with the game. Started swapping
ribbon cables. Lost my 3 beeps while cleaning header pins and of course
didn't have the LED to fall back on. Ok, time to take a sledge to this
zpu. Thoroughly disgusted with it. I'm considering just picking up a clean
ZPU that is working. It was probably a trace underneath. But the more
you work on these ZPU boards, the more they just disintegrate. On to another
project I'm sick of this for a while.
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Ok, a fresh start. I
found out that, being this was a conversion to Golden Axe of all things,
Somone had actually sliced the center portion of the wood from the CP.
Leaving just the two edges because they were attached to latches that
secured the CP to the cabinet. I kept the wood on the metal just for measurements
sake. The cut was 21-1/2" long 3/4" ply. I believe original
was pressboard but this will actually work better as ply is lighter than
pressboard yet more durable. Coupled with the weight of the stick itself,
this could be a beefy CP.
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The two edge pieces have
been removed and the ply placed underneath and the assembly placed in
the cabinet to ensure it fit well. At that point, it's time to start marking
where all the holes are.
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1-1/4" Forstner
bit used initially at almost flush depth on the 4 button holes.
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Followed up by a 3/4"
Forstner. I probably could have gone with a 5/8" but this leaves
me some room for play when mating wood with metal. But I'm stuck now as
I don't know what the main Joystick's diameter hole is. So waiting to
figure that one out.
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Ok, I CAN DO THIS! Pumped
up on caffeine. Once more into the breach. I must have a broken trace
or some reason there is no LED and no beeps. I check the LED with another
LED on the contacts. Nothing. I then review the schematics. Run continuity
checks of pin connection and trace it out. Started with 7G and traced
out all pin connections with continuity tests. 7G (the 74LS00) is fine.
The problems started with 8G (the 7406) pin 10 - the connection to the
LED. no voltage at all getting to destination. Come to find out, after
all the previous work, and all the battery corrosive damage coupled with
the board being 1980 a pad had lifted that leads to the bloody LED.Pin.
Battery acid and age tends to make the solder less desiring to melt or
flow, so you have to stay on it longer and more often with the Desoldering
tool. Doing this can and will lift pads quite easily. Ok so ran a line
connecting the two. Whalla I have 3 flashes from an LED, and 3 audio beeps,
which clears the ZPU
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Still a scrambled mess
on the screen and only 3 beeps. Looking over the VSU board and documentation,
I flip dip 1 off. I flip dip 4 on from off. Yo I got an additional beep
or two! Yay! Ok, flip 3 to on - and more beeps! Still not there yet, but
getting close. . Flip pin 2 and we have all 8 self test beeps and LED
flashes. Holy SMOKES!
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It Lives!
But it's giving 86 free credits. Well
that makes sense, it has no batteries installed yet so it apparently
starts off giving away free games when the battery dies. Thanks to Level
42 for documenting the process
of resetting everything.
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First things first though,
now that were making good progress, it's time to hook these batteries
up. I opted to utilize a 3.6v 650mAh Nickel Cadmium cordless phone battery,
except the idea is to mount it as far away from the boards as possible.
Soldering two leads to the back of the board and wrap the wires around
each other. Following the main harness on inside the interior of the cabinet.You
want to be sure you have plenty of wire to accomodate the drawer pull.
Both in and out.
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Then I wrap a tie-down
to the battery pack that has a hole in it for screw mounting with a wood
screw. Tug it tight and cut off the excess.
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This is going to be the
best location to place the batteries, it's away from the boards and tucked
under the coin drawer.
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Tested the pull of the
drawer to ensure it won't pull at the wires.
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Now that the battery
is taken care of, it's time to get everything reset and listen for 'Coin
Detected in Pocket'. First have to hit the test switch just on the inside
of the coin door. It takes me a couple pushes but it pulls up a Credits
86 on screen. Have to hit the fire button to clear it. Matter of fact
I have to scroll through about 10 resets and hit the fire button on each
- without a fire button or control panel.
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Ok, I have to short the
shoot wire with ground, but it clears the86 credits to 0. I go to hit
the switch for the next option and nothing happens, well the test switch
has had it. It's dieing after 30 years. I'll have to find a replacement
for it. So basically I'm shorting the test switch, then shorting the shoot
wire to clear out random information.
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Now that's an interesting
Score, perhaps in binary language. Everything has been brought to 0. It
should now store this info. Powering Berzerk down for changes to take
effect. I'd read that you have to play one game, put a quarter in for
it to begin talking in attract after that moment. But it has thusfar only
said it when the machine powers up. I was hoping for an attract mode,
I could swear in the arcade there was noone standing in front of berzerk
when it would just say 'Coin detected in Pocket' But apprently it only
does it just after a game is played.
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Finally time to put the
plastic bezel on as the monitor has shown that it actually works. However,
I am having an issue with the horizontal width. I've got vertical adjustment,
but no horizontal, so the left and right playfield doors are a bit off-screen.
I'm sure it's a cap-kit issue.
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Plastic bezel in place,
it only required like a total of 6 staples. 3 on upper and 3 lower support.
There were three times that amount. And those little boogers didn't like
coming out of the plastic one darned bit. A pair of needlenose plyers
did great to push them out, and then pull them from the other side. Some
were a bit of a pain because they were in behind the bezels' rubber strips
that sit against the bezel glass. Time to put the glass on. Were finished
here.
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The monitor is a Wells
Gardner 4915. I'm going hunting for a cap kit for it. Hopefully that takes
care of the playfield problem. I actually attempted adjusting the horizontal
width coil and it began crumbling. I'm going to need to find one. A horizontal
width cap kit is probably needed also.
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After a couple messages
on KLOV forums for help in finding the diameter hole needed for the CP
I got no replys. So I looked over the stick carefully and found what I
needed right in front of me. I measured the corrosion. I came up with
a diameter of 1.625, which means the hole would need to be approx. 3.25".
Now thats' a big hole. I asked for someone to check me on this on the
forums and once again, no replies.
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So I measured once, checked
twice and remeasured. If I mess this up I have to start from scratch with
new ply, button holes, screw holes and essentially all the work that's
gone into this control panel. This has to be right, with essentially the
little tidbits of information that I've collected.
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Now THATS a big hole.
I found it hard to stay within the lines with a handheld jigsaw. Freehand
that's the best circle I could make following the template I'd drawn out.
I also took a dremel with a sanding bit and smoothed it out a bit.
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Mounted the joystick
in place. PERFECT!! Yay!! Note that the connectors for the harness go
towards the front of the CP that faces the cabinet bezel glass. I was
also careful to just snug the nuts so as not to dimple the metal cp. Take
it easy on the tightness of all carriage bolts. The carriage bolts that
work with this cp are 16x1.5. A little long as the total thickness is
about 1" with the 3/4" ply but I also had to go through the
joystick plate. So all in all, they were pretty much spot on.
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It took a while just
to get to this stage. Perhaps I'll draw up something with all the measurements
for the next guy that has to build his own wood backing for the CP.
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At least I have one template;
the former control panel edges that had been cut off for an ugly conversion.
I fit them on top of the carriage bolts. This gave me the holes I needed
to predrill for the latch plates.
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Both latch plates installed.
I'm hoping not to repeat an incident on my Stargate where, when I was
fastening the latch it pulled on the cp so hard, the latch pulled clean
out of the cabinet's internal pressboard side, leading to a bondo repair
and repaint of the inside area. Mistakes in this hobby are costly in time
and occasionally money, sometimes big money. I've heard on more than one
occasion the praises of attention to detail, but it really is a necessity
to do a job right and not have to come back and redo it later for all
the problems a quick fix created.
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Once again, I don't have
the proper leaf switches that stand tall on the underside of the Control
Panel. Pulled out a nice thick paint stir stick and cut to the dimensions
of the leaf switches to add thickness to the base.
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Control panel leaf switches
mounted. Next up is the wiring of the cp harness. I'll need a 12 pin molex.
Going to use 22awg wire here.
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Start plugging away on
the CP wire harness.
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Printed out the Joystick
pinouts and got that all hooked up.
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Almost finished, wire
ties applied, needing one last component, the 12 pin Molex. I searched
all over for a standard molex locally. I searched online and couldn't
find anything that wasn't keyed. I would have to pull all the wires out
of the old cabinet molex in order to put a new connector one the CP.
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Just your average everyday
12 pin molex. Don't need no keys. I can't find just a plain molex 12 pin.
Molex offers only keyed connectors. Plan B was to purchase an advertised
Harness and stick from Mike
Sandwick. No response from emails, so I went ahead and ordered new
molex connectors. This will have to be unpinned and replaced with along
with the mating connector.
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CP clasps fastened to
the cabinet. Attached the CP to cabinet to check for fit. Like a glove.
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Ok, you don't want to
make this mistake when ordering parts from Molex. You can't just find
connectors at the store anymore, you have to mailorder everything. This
is what happens when you look at pictures and don't have calipers. On
the left is a 12 pin .093 molex. On the right is supposedly a .145. I
won't know until it actually gets shipped again.
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After a quick call back
to Molex I was able to get a couple samples of a 'like' connector with
mate of a .145 12 pin molex. If I had calipers I could measure from center
of hole to the next hole and this would tell me what the dot pitch is.
Otherwise all I have is pictures to look at. This costed me probably an
additional 2 weeks in shipping wait times. And I'm running short on hair
to pull out anymore. So when ordering molex connectors for 80's arcade
games. Order .145 pitch.
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Slightly smaller than the original,
the Molex connectors finally come in, for the second time. I attempted
to use a molex tool to punch the old wires back out of the connector,
but it didn't work. So we had to do it the hard way. Grabbed a stool
and sat over the CP portion of the cabinet and went wire by wire, snipping
each and attached 10 new crimp connectors.
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Ok so that completed
the cabinet side of the harness. Now I could put the stool away and head
over to the bench. Here were just finishing 10 pins into the CP molex.
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All ready to test. No
fire, I can't return fire - RUN. Come to find out the crimp connector
needed pulled and tightened to complete the circuit. Hadn't played Berzerk
in probably 30 years. I'd forgotten how much a man's game it is, or it
could just be the beefiness of my spring applying tension to the stick.
There's a couple things I'd like to wrap up but essentially this completes
the Berzerk Project. It's been a very long haul since December 2002. I
can honestly say that the most fun part of it was actually restoring the
cabinet. The blech part for me was the 3 beeps ZPU from hell, LED light
going out with no audio, interconnect ribbons. I definitely feel a sense
of accomplishment though. As I said, at point I'm willing to call her
done. However there are some loose ends I'd like to wrap up. I'll probably
need to pick up some Ram chips just to be on the safe side. Get the horizontal
width adjustment running with a hwc and a tantalum hw kit. Cap the monitor
and do something with that weatherstripping on the front door that the
front switch indents and causes the cabinet's power to become disconnected.
Perhaps a self adhesive rubber foot.
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Well, the reason you
always see the coin door open is because regardless of what kind of weatherstripping
I put to provide a bumper for the interlock switch, the pressure from
it always sinks into the material after a day or so. Trying something
a little different, some hard rubber with an adhesive backing. I found
just the thing I think here at Lowe's, back towards the hardware section,
furniture feet, sliders and such. It's called Bumpers.
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Being the manly machine
it is, we went with the largest bumper. This thing works fantastically.
Just be sure you get it zero'd in exactly where the interlock touches
the coin door.
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Service switch arrives.
Mouser part #540-E69-30A. Mfg Part #E69-30A. SPDT 10A Panel Mount. Cherry
Electrical Pushbutton Switches.
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Service Switch installed.
I cut the soldered ends and placed crimp connections if this ever needs
replaced again. Tested and runs like a top.
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This cord has been a
bother since day 1. This HUGE jack at the end - you have to clear two
spots on a power strip for it.
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New Jack works great.
If the cord were in worse shape I'd have just replaced it, but being it
wasn't that bad - a smaller jack will make life easier.
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I believe the next stop
in wrapping this up and calling it done will be the removal of the monitor
to run a cap kit, replace the horizontal width coil and probably the HW
tant cap.
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Revisiting the Man-Spring.
I'm getting a good workout from the stick. Maybe my spring is just too
beefy. I'm afraid someone might pull the cabinet down upon them, or worse,
back away and let it crash to the floor. Now you see my priorities eh?
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