Colorama II LED mod

roothorick

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Our Colorama is kinda sad-looking, mostly because half the lights don't work -- the light rope is about 10% working and the wheel-top lights are missing (the original bulbs were burnt out and we lost the caps -- oops). Both problems are exceedingly common with these games so finding a video of one with everything working is difficult. This is the best I can find. Btw, that multicolor lightrope is only on the new-gen repros; the original ones with the Z80-based boards (like ours) have a normal white 3-channel rope.

I was thinking, instead of restoring it to its hammy "factory" look, I could modernize it with an LED setup that runs on the existing game outputs. My current ideas:
  • Take out the fluorescents in the bottom of the game that light the wheel from below. Replace them and the light rope with white LEDs connected to the rope channels so the wheel is lit in the chase pattern. Put a capacitor on each channel so the LEDs fade in and out like the incandescants they're replacing.
  • Use the wheel top hookups to connect LEDs of each color, that light up their respective color zones when the ball falls in that zone. At the same time, the game turns off the rope light channels, so just that zone will be lit up, and in color.

I think this would be a lot cooler than the factory look and attract more people to the game. Any better ideas? Any thoughts on what kinds of LEDs to use?
 
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