It's Raining Rarities

YellowDog

In Memoriam

Donor 2011, 2013
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Humble, Texas
The last few weeks have been amazing in the variety of rare (and I mean really rare, not EBay *RARE*) items that have been dropping into our Humble home.

First, I won an EBay auction for a very rare Bubbles boardset with Video Lottery ROMs. A GOOGLE search turned up 1 mention of this, in the Williams emulation driver for MAME. Even rarer, it included the hacked I/O board used to drive some hardware device that came with it (alas no mentions yet of what this device is or what it does).

Next, thanks to one of our very own KLOVers I picked up a second Mystic Marathon board set for a reasonable price.

Third, I found and won a Williams Aeroboto board on EBay (untested of course). I will need to build a wiring harness to test it out, but there were only about 200 of these kits made, so getting a board is very cool. To make it even cooler, there was an Aeroboto marquee on EBay as well. It turned out to be a sticker on top of a Stargate Marquee, but that was how they were packaged BITD.

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And finally the coolest thing of all, it was either a Defender bootleg or a prototype that was never built. I hope to know more after I dump the ROMs.

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The daughterboard has the ROM board, the I/O board and the Sound board circuity all smashed onto one board.

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It doesn't have any William logos or copyrights on it, which is why I am thinking that it is a bootleg. The ROM board circuits only have the 4 LED's which is why I am thinking that it is a Defender setup. It is a later Defender because it has 2 video decoder ROMs on the motherboard.

So in the space of a couple of weeks, it's been raining rarities. Now I just need to spend some quality time getting them to run.

ken
 

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This is seriously cool stuff. Dump the ROMs already on that bootleg! :D
 
Nice! That Aeroboto marquee looks pretty sweet. Since you have the board as well, do you plan on creating a cabinet for it?
 
Rav say it aint so! You can't be selling your inferno! (send me your sticks)

What are you going to do with the video lottery? Making up some artwork and putting together a complete cabinet would be kind of cool. Ok, maybe im the only one who would find it cool, but id love to see it
 
I picked a Spinal breakers off eBay a few months back untested worked like a charm except for the sound. That was due to some snapped off caps had to contact one of the five people that own one through VAPS and got the value now it works 100%. It reminds me of NAM 1975 for the Neo Geo game play wise. Anyone got a Marquee LOL? Oh nice finds by the way.
 
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Don't know if it is worth trying, but you could attempt to remove the aeroboto marquee sticker from the stargate marquee w/ freeze spray and then remove the adhesive from it and use it as a standard flexi marquee.
 
Nice! That Aeroboto marquee looks pretty sweet. Since you have the board as well, do you plan on creating a cabinet for it?

That is the plan, if I can get the board running. So far I am battin zero on finding a schematic of it. All I have found is the conversion kit manual which at least has the edge connector pinout. So I can build a wiring harness.

It was a conversion kit & I have several Joust cabinets that need rebuilding sitting in my garage, I'll probably grab one of them and recreate a conversion.

Don't know if it is worth trying, but you could attempt to remove the aeroboto marquee sticker from the stargate marquee w/ freeze spray and then remove the adhesive from it and use it as a standard flexi marquee.

The sticker is on pretty good at this point and since Stargate marquees are not really all that rare, I think I would rather leave it than take a chance on destroying it. At some point, I will probably scan it and post it for reproduction.

ken
 
its funny you mention "not ebay rare"




then say you bought 2 of the 3 items from ebay.

On eBay, Pac-man's are "rare"

Exactly why I said it that way! :D

You can find some truely rare and unusual stuff on Ebay, you just have to really look at it. I looked at the listing for the Video Lottery boardset 3 or 4 times before it hit me where I had seen a mention of it, somewhere. It took an hour or so of digging before I found the MAME info and then verified that it was a Bubbles board set. Sometimes the "unknown PCB board" can turn out to be something unusual and worth picking up. But usually it is just another useless JAMMA game.

ken
 
hey ken - could please scan the marquee sticker before you peel it off ? just in case the removal damages it. i would like to do a repro artwork kit for aeroboto and would need a good quality scan as a starting point!
 
I wasn't planning on peeling the sticker. Stargate marquees are plentiful enough so there is no point in reclaiming this one.

When I get a chance to scan it, I'll let you know.

ken
 
I wasn't planning on peeling the sticker. Stargate marquees are plentiful enough so there is no point in reclaiming this one.

When I get a chance to scan it, I'll let you know.

ken

whoo hoo! oops another project. bugga.

just out of interest, the marquee has a black circle with the words "Official williams survival kit", and i am thinking that the "survival decal" labels mentioned in the williams 1942 conversion kit manual on the page 4 diagram showing placemet of decals and artwork etc, are the same type of label. does that sound right do you think ? and is it a stick on label or part of the aeroboto marquee ?
 
Nice score(s)! I would like to get my hands on an Aeroboto boardset and marquee. I loved playing that cheesy game BITD.

Tom
 
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