Very nice looking power blocks.
Thanks!
If you can believe it, this is the before and after of the Space Duel block on the right...
I basically striped it bare, sanded, painted, and replace every single part I could. For all three blocks.
If you look at each one, I listed the date and for which game these were for on the "big blue" cap. Tempest, Star Wars, and Space Duel. Almost 12 years ago.
And believe it or not, these were part of the coolest color vector cabinet ever made.
It was called the Atari Vector Cockpit. It had an 19" NOS Amplifone color X-Y tube, with completely rebuild monitor boards, and running Space Duel, Black Widow, Gravitar, Tempest w/Tempest Tubes mode, Major Havoc, Star Wars w/ the Empire Strikes Back kit, all on original boardsets. (the dedicated Major Havoc board that I purchased in a set of 10 untested Atari boardsets for $500 was working!)
I also had near perfect original dedicated control panels for Space Duel, Black Widow, Gravitar. I also restored a Star Wars panel with all new parts from Ram Controls. I also purchased a Major Havoc roller from Ram Controls and made a cool ass custom Major Havoc panel with repro artwork from Phoenix Arcade. You could also play Tempest with this panel. I know Tempest is a vertical game and the rest are horizontal games, but I had the mod done to the boardset to allow you to play Tempest on a horizontal monitor. Yes, picture was smaller, but it was still very playable and looked great on the NOS Amp tube. (I purchased these Ram Control parts back when everyone thought it was a legit operation)
I built the cockpit from scratch, molded after the Star Wars cockpit of course. Under the seat was the bottom two speakers mounted on a board with a small handle on each side. When you removed the speaker board there was enough wire to set it on the seat, and this would allow you to remove the hidden Star Wars control panel below. Inside the back door, above all three power supply bricks, and above all of the boardsets and wiring, was a rack holding three other control panels (Space Duel, Black Widow, Gravitar). The last control panel, Major Havoc, would be on the game. The idea was to have them easily swap able. (swap control panel and the connector, and swap over one of the three wiring harnesses to the board you wanted). The entire back door had custom Rich Graphics artwork, as well as the fully restored coin door, which would be directly in front of you between your feet. I even had Phoenix Arcade Major Havoc side art and the three top Star Wars cockpit artwork. I also had a super nice Star Wars upright plastic bezel with excellent original artwork.
The cab separated into two pieces and was on 4 wheels on each piece. All of the wires had quick disconnects under the cockpit for easy disassembly.
I purchased a Major Havoc converted Tempest from Tim Arnold of Pinball Hall of Fame, and he even delivered it to my house. I used all of the parts from that game and also about 80% of the cab to build the Atari Vector Cockpit. Including all of the side art and back door, smoked glass used as the top so you could look into the cab from above while someone was playing, and lots of the wood.
On the other end of the cockpit were three 4' long double tube fluorescent lights for the marquee's. With super nice original glass marquees for Space Duel, Black Widow, Gravitar and Star Wars. I bought 3 original glass Atari marquee's that were in bad condition paint wise, removed all of the artwork so I just had the glass. I used a repro Tempest marquee and had a custom on made for Empire Strikes Back. I also bought one of the nice Major Havoc translite repros done around that time.
I made the cockpit so you could slide in each marquee on top of the other one with a small black piece of wood in between each marquee. It looked bad ass when all of them were lit up, four feet of Atari Vector Goodness!
With all of the games playable on the kitchen table with all of the needed parts minus the cab, and with the cab 90% finished, circumstances changed and I was no longer able to finish this project. I ended up selling all of the parts. I held the cab for several years, but finally got rid of it when I moved.
I still have a couple of parts from the Atari Vector Cockpit on my Tempest cab right now. It sucks that I never finished it.
The shitty thing is I don't have any pics of it. They were lost in a computer crash long ago.
Here's a couple...
I still have the coin door and the back door on my Tempest...
Here's the Major Havoc/Tempest torn down...this looked to be a factory conversion. Yeah, I know. I did a bad thing...but in my defense I used almost 90% of what you see here.