TK_Monkey
New member
This one's a bit long, but background helps with showing why I'm so excited right now.
I've been wanting to put a Time Killers machine together for a while now. Not exactly the cream of the crop as far as fighting games go, but there's nostalgia with it for me. I've had a board for about 10 years, since I realized you could actually get hold of these things and put them in your house. Around the same time I got the BloodStorm cab a few years ago, I saw an auction up on the bay for a TK control panel, JAMMA harness and marquee. Won the auction, got it, saw the component side without taking it completely out, closed box and dropped it in storage 'till I could find a cab for it. I got an empty cab about a year ago with a TK control panel and marquee on it, missing only the monitor and board. Checked the wiring, saw that the ground leads to the sticks/buttons were all soldered with a bare wire, double checked the component side of the cp in the box, saw that everything was soldered, chucked the spare back into storage.
Since getting a work bench set up, I pulled the CP on the empty cab I have, pulled the buttons/sticks and have been working on refurbing it. The CPO is in pretty rough shape, the decals for buttons are all but gone, the decals around the sticks are totally gone (I didn't realize there were supposed to be any until I saw an auction about 6 mo. ago with them partially on one side) and there's rust on the inside of the panel. I've been sanding out the rust, trying to figure out which microswitches are salvagable when desoldered and trying to file down the metal left from a rushed conversion of this control panel which seems to have originally been a kit Smash TV unless there was another Williams game with 2 players dual sticks only. Got most of the rust (pretty light, really) off the inside, mostly filed down the mangled metal from around the button holes and figured I might as well pull the other one out of storage to see if I can't put together a working one between the two.
I finally pulled it out of the box, flipped it over to the business end and what's this I see?
Holy crap. I've never seen one looking this good. The only issue with the decals is the off center P1 start button, everything else there is pristine. Looks like someone converted the CP to this, put down the decals, and threw lexan or something over top of it. There's some discoloring on the lower left, but otherwise this thing looks like the day it was done. Looks like the protective plastic will be able to come off and I can get scans of the decals, since as far as I know, nobody has scans of them. The sticks are mismatched, as:
The left one is a leaf switch stick. Aside from the fact that the leads are soldered, it looks to be in great shape. Feels really smooth, but these were supposed to be 8 ways, with color of stick and buttons matching, good thing I've got the sticks from the other panel.
A closeup of the soldering on the buttons. There looks to be little enough solder on them that a lot of the switches are probably reusable, though likely I'll still have to put in an order somewhere.
The current wiring mess (and messy bench, including the WG4900 that's going in the cab), with attached JAMMA harness and a few remaining packing peanuts. Looks like some of the wiring on the harness is missing, I'm going to have to go through with the schematic and figure out what's borked.
The only real downside is that the control panel, whatever the hell it was originally, doesn't exactly fit on the dynamo I have. The bottom comes down too far and the sides stick out past the sides of the cabinet. I could probably (feel free to cringe) add a shim on the front of the current cab (only short by an inchish) to get it mounted, as well as something to cover the hole left by the panel sticking past the sides of the cab, though that in the long run would probably look like a hatchet job and be ugly as hell. Not something I really would want, looks-wise.
My dad, being an EE of many years and being into woodworking, had offered to build a cabinet for the Time Killers, when I found the cheap cab wired for Time Killers, I'd switched to an idea of having him build a z-cut slightly modified for a multi-SFIICE I wanted to do as well. When seeing how the TK cp would fit on the existing project cab I actually looked at the cab at one point and said "you may become a street fighter". Please tell me I'm not the only one who has talked to my cabs, heh. Given that the SFIICE machine of my youth which gave me the inspiration to do the multi CE project was a normal dynamo, and given that the TK cp I have would have to be uglified to fit on the project cab, I'm thinking it may be time to go back to the original thought and build a cabinet around this control panel. I've got to figure that much out, but I just had to share my jumping with joy at seeing how great a condition this panel I've had in storage for 2 and a half years actually is.
I've been wanting to put a Time Killers machine together for a while now. Not exactly the cream of the crop as far as fighting games go, but there's nostalgia with it for me. I've had a board for about 10 years, since I realized you could actually get hold of these things and put them in your house. Around the same time I got the BloodStorm cab a few years ago, I saw an auction up on the bay for a TK control panel, JAMMA harness and marquee. Won the auction, got it, saw the component side without taking it completely out, closed box and dropped it in storage 'till I could find a cab for it. I got an empty cab about a year ago with a TK control panel and marquee on it, missing only the monitor and board. Checked the wiring, saw that the ground leads to the sticks/buttons were all soldered with a bare wire, double checked the component side of the cp in the box, saw that everything was soldered, chucked the spare back into storage.
Since getting a work bench set up, I pulled the CP on the empty cab I have, pulled the buttons/sticks and have been working on refurbing it. The CPO is in pretty rough shape, the decals for buttons are all but gone, the decals around the sticks are totally gone (I didn't realize there were supposed to be any until I saw an auction about 6 mo. ago with them partially on one side) and there's rust on the inside of the panel. I've been sanding out the rust, trying to figure out which microswitches are salvagable when desoldered and trying to file down the metal left from a rushed conversion of this control panel which seems to have originally been a kit Smash TV unless there was another Williams game with 2 players dual sticks only. Got most of the rust (pretty light, really) off the inside, mostly filed down the mangled metal from around the button holes and figured I might as well pull the other one out of storage to see if I can't put together a working one between the two.
I finally pulled it out of the box, flipped it over to the business end and what's this I see?
Holy crap. I've never seen one looking this good. The only issue with the decals is the off center P1 start button, everything else there is pristine. Looks like someone converted the CP to this, put down the decals, and threw lexan or something over top of it. There's some discoloring on the lower left, but otherwise this thing looks like the day it was done. Looks like the protective plastic will be able to come off and I can get scans of the decals, since as far as I know, nobody has scans of them. The sticks are mismatched, as:
The left one is a leaf switch stick. Aside from the fact that the leads are soldered, it looks to be in great shape. Feels really smooth, but these were supposed to be 8 ways, with color of stick and buttons matching, good thing I've got the sticks from the other panel.
A closeup of the soldering on the buttons. There looks to be little enough solder on them that a lot of the switches are probably reusable, though likely I'll still have to put in an order somewhere.
The current wiring mess (and messy bench, including the WG4900 that's going in the cab), with attached JAMMA harness and a few remaining packing peanuts. Looks like some of the wiring on the harness is missing, I'm going to have to go through with the schematic and figure out what's borked.
The only real downside is that the control panel, whatever the hell it was originally, doesn't exactly fit on the dynamo I have. The bottom comes down too far and the sides stick out past the sides of the cabinet. I could probably (feel free to cringe) add a shim on the front of the current cab (only short by an inchish) to get it mounted, as well as something to cover the hole left by the panel sticking past the sides of the cab, though that in the long run would probably look like a hatchet job and be ugly as hell. Not something I really would want, looks-wise.
My dad, being an EE of many years and being into woodworking, had offered to build a cabinet for the Time Killers, when I found the cheap cab wired for Time Killers, I'd switched to an idea of having him build a z-cut slightly modified for a multi-SFIICE I wanted to do as well. When seeing how the TK cp would fit on the existing project cab I actually looked at the cab at one point and said "you may become a street fighter". Please tell me I'm not the only one who has talked to my cabs, heh. Given that the SFIICE machine of my youth which gave me the inspiration to do the multi CE project was a normal dynamo, and given that the TK cp I have would have to be uglified to fit on the project cab, I'm thinking it may be time to go back to the original thought and build a cabinet around this control panel. I've got to figure that much out, but I just had to share my jumping with joy at seeing how great a condition this panel I've had in storage for 2 and a half years actually is.