Krull Restoration: Definitely Not a Q*bert

i bought an original mint shape marquee few weeks ago on ebay for $89 i was gonna order TOG but guess you snagged the last stock, what the joysticks you used off from? console ?
 
i bought an original mint shape marquee few weeks ago on ebay for $89 i was gonna order TOG but guess you snagged the last stock, what the joysticks you used off from? console ?

Yeah. It looks like I got the last CPO and side art set TOG is going to make. All they have left now is the lower CP art.

Check out posts #11 and #12 in this thread for all the info on the joysticks. They are a combination of new Wico 8-way leaf joystick bases and modified Atari 2600 Wico Command Control bat handles.

If you want to part with that marquee, message me. I'm also looking for a decent original bezel. I have repros for those pieces but am not happy with them.
 
Great to see this being put right.

I have an original Krull power supply I would happily donate to the cause if needed.

Thanks for the generous offer, but I'm covered there. It's got the original monitor, AC harness, and power brick in it. Right now the brick is feeding into a switcher to produce DC, and it's providing monitor isolation. So it's got original AC power, but everything else is missing. I'm working on building a new switching power supply setup for it that replaces the brick, and I'm replacing all the JAMMA wiring as it was poorly done. It will be running a JROK. I know, not original, but very little original is there, and it's all expensive. Plus, using the JROK on this machine should be fun because a majority of the games supported can be played using the twin stick setup.
 
Yeah. It looks like I got the last CPO and side art set TOG is going to make. All they have left now is the lower CP art.

Check out posts #11 and #12 in this thread for all the info on the joysticks. They are a combination of new Wico 8-way leaf joystick bases and modified Atari 2600 Wico Command Control bat handles.

If you want to part with that marquee, message me. I'm also looking for a decent original bezel. I have repros for those pieces but am not happy with them.
Not parting got my own krull cab to restore
 
A Couple of Minor Cabinet Repairs

Alright, alright, alright. I've been working on this cabinet on and off since July and handled the cabinet repairs that needed immediate attention.

The panel above the monitor (with the eyes artwork on it) had separated at some point from the sides of the cabinet. It looks to me like the sides had warped outwards a bit and the glue had all dried out and the staples used to hold it all together had failed. I didn't get any good before pics of this, but I was able to repair it by gluing the cleats on both sides and adding some countersunk screws to them. I made the mistake of trying to repair the damaged side first, and leaving the other side as it was. But as soon as I loosened the clamps holding everything together, the previously good/adhered side popped out. Ugh. Double the work, but it turned out nice.

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Additionally, one of the clamp mounts for the hinged speaker panel had completely broken off, so that had to be cleaned, glued and painted.

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The cabinet was missing the mounting panel for the top of the monitor bezel. I had no idea what that panel looks like in an original machine, so I fabricated a piece that fit and did the job based on what I was seeing. Instead of using the dados, I used cleats and built the panel out of a couple of creatively cut pieces of poplar. Pics show the test fit, close up of the panel, and how it looks now.

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The cabinet still needs cosmetic work, mostly to the sides and kick panel, but it's solid now and square again.
 
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All New Wiring: AC and JAMMA

The wiring in this cabinet was a mess when I got it. The power was moving through the original Krull AC harness, into a Gottleib power brick which handled AC monitor isolation and lighting, into a Sony switching power supply which fed DC into a JAMMA harness running a Game Elf. The coin door was barely wired up (credit button only), the service panel was orphaned, and everything else was messy, wrong and put together with wire nuts. It was ugly:

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I was able to re-use the JAMMA harness that came with the machine as nothing was cut too short and everything I needed was there. I had fun with the whole process and learned a lot. I had an over-under coin door on hand that actually had the right Gottleib harness on it and it was clean, so that was lucky. I ran 5V for the coin door, and 12V for the coin counter. Since there's only one coin counter on this machine, I tied both counter pins together on the JAMMA harness and ran a single wire to the service panel for it. I also ran the speaker wires through the service panel so as to be able to use the cabinet's volume control. I wired up all four joystick inputs, one start button and buttons 1-3 for each player. On the control panel (which only has start buttons), I jumped button 1 for each player over to the start buttons and orphaned the wiring for buttons 2 and 3. Everything else was done pretty much standard.

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I also built a new switching power supply using the Bob Roberts schematics as a reference and APAR parts using a Happ switching power supply.

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The install came out clean. I used new molex connectors for everything, routed all the wiring the way it should run, and am happy with the way it turned out. Everything got wired up and tested.

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K4900 Re-Cap and JROK Install

When I rewired the cabinet I put the Game Elf back in it for testing. Once I verified everything was working, I moved onto recapping the original Wells Gardner K4900. It was working when I got it, but it looked bad. It was dim at the top of the screen, too bright at the bottom, convergence was trash, and it had terrible color and artifacts showing on the bottom third of the display. It had previously been recapped, however the cap kit was about half the size of the one I got from APAR to do it right. Here's how she looked:

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This was my first monitor recap, so I took my time and followed the instructions and it worked out great. It took me a couple of hours over two nights to get the monitor dialed in and the convergence acceptable, but now she's pretty. I also installed the JROK after the monitor was done. And then had to adjust it all again due to using a different PCB. The machine is back in the lineup now and looking good.

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I just got this done last night and started fooling around with the JROK, and it is awesome. The Krull control panel leans itself well to the JROK as just about every game available on the board is playable in some fashion. Since I wired the JAMMA harness to send both counter outputs to the single coin counter in the machine, and since the JROK uses the counter 2 pin to send signals to the Q*bert knocker, I had to turn off the knocker in the JROK settings. I didn't install a knocker, and I was getting coins counted every time the knocker was supposed to fire. Easy fix. I could have rewired and for a future knocker, but this is a Krull machine, so I didn't.
 
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One Man's Junk is Another Man's Treasure

A few weeks back, @CharlieG and I worked out a great trade deal. I got a really nice Mortal Kombat II and a project Pac-Man from Charlie, and he got my survivor Crystal Castles and the Takeman Q*bert control panel and Phoenix CPO I picked up for this machine (before I discovered it wasn't a Q*bert). He posted a video about the trade on his Overtime Arcade channel on YouTube. I'm glad he was able to make use of some of the Q*bert bits I had here. I still have a nice Q*bert repro marquee and bezel - if anyone wants to buy them for cheap, message me.

Krull is back in the lineup and will stay there at least through Christmas. In the meantime, I've got to do a few things to Charlie's Pac-Man, and I need to finish up three pretty heavy restores I have going on in the garage. 2026 will see Krull get the full cosmetic restore it deserves. Some quick work on the Pac-Man to get it running 100% is up next...

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Until next time, happy gaming.
 
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All I've gotten out of this so far is you promised your kid a Q*bert and instead you ended up getting yourself a Krull restore project.

:)

Q*bert deserves a home there too. It really is a great game and if you want to do something extra special with it, make it an FHMC cabinet.
 
All I've gotten out of this so far is you promised your kid a Q*bert and instead you ended up getting yourself a Krull restore project.

Q*bert deserves a home there too. It really is a great game and if you want to do something extra special with it, make it an FHMC cabinet.

Right on. That first bit pretty much sums it up. Q*bert plays very well on the JROK using an 8-way stick with the angle stick setting. It turns out the kid likes playing Mellow Yellow Q*Bert on a Krull machine the best. I've got to get way better at it before FHMC gets fun.
 
Right on. That first bit pretty much sums it up. Q*bert plays very well on the JROK using an 8-way stick with the angle stick setting. It turns out the kid likes playing Mellow Yellow Q*Bert on a Krull machine the best. I've got to get way better at it before FHMC gets fun.

I've always liked Q*bert as it's an easy game to understand and once you get the hang of it can be a lot of fun. I really came to love the game when I found out Warren Davis is one of the nicest guys in arcade game history. For the longest time he made his email public so you could email him about anything. He loves chatting with arcade nerds, especially fans of Qbert. He gave us FHMC once he found out that MAME could play them. How cool is that?!

I wished I'd have picked one of these up when they came out: (because it also includes 7-11 Qbert).


Great work on the Krull restore BTW. I admire someone who restores the cab back to original and does it right. I don't have the patience or skills for it.
 
I've always liked Q*bert as it's an easy game to understand and once you get the hang of it can be a lot of fun. I really came to love the game when I found out Warren Davis is one of the nicest guys in arcade game history. For the longest time he made his email public so you could email him about anything. He loves chatting with arcade nerds, especially fans of Qbert. He gave us FHMC once he found out that MAME could play them. How cool is that?!

Thanks for that. There's so much good stuff there. I'm feeling inspired, so I'm going to rock some Q*bert tonight.
 
Nice clean wiring! Well done! Looks great.

I have a JROK Mylstar PCB installed on my switcher on my Smash TV cab. Krull works since JROK converts it to a horizontal format. I'm wondering if the same is true for Screw Loose (horizontal) on a Krull vertical setup. It's a twin stick shooter so it should work great control-wise. The start button is the SuperCharge power up.

Del
 
I've always liked Q*bert as it's an easy game to understand and once you get the hang of it can be a lot of fun. I really came to love the game when I found out Warren Davis is one of the nicest guys in arcade game history. For the longest time he made his email public so you could email him about anything. He loves chatting with arcade nerds, especially fans of Qbert. He gave us FHMC once he found out that MAME could play them. How cool is that?!

I wished I'd have picked one of these up when they came out: (because it also includes 7-11 Qbert).


Great work on the Krull restore BTW. I admire someone who restores the cab back to original and does it right. I don't have the patience or skills for it.
Yep, that 8 in 1 was a great kit. My favorites were 711 Qbert, Mello Yello Qbert and Qubes. I think I still have one of those kits in a box somewhere. I should probably pull it out put it up for sale soon as I now have the FPGA board.
 
I have a JROK Mylstar PCB installed on my switcher on my Smash TV cab. Krull works since JROK converts it to a horizontal format. I'm wondering if the same is true for Screw Loose (horizontal) on a Krull vertical setup. It's a twin stick shooter so it should work great control-wise. The start button is the SuperCharge power up.

I haven't messed with the JROK much, yet, but I'm running a vertical setup and the horizontal games (Reactor, Three Stooges, Screw Loose) all play and look great. Really great.

The only game I'm finding not playable using the Krull CP is Mad Planets. I have button 1 jumped over to the start buttons on my control panel, and it's not possible to reach the start button to fire while using the stick to spin. You'd need a third hand to make it work. I'm going to try to locate a pair of those unobtainium Wico 8-way top fire bat sticks to solve that. @scott451 just listed a set on here, and I have a message out to him to see if they're still available.
 
I haven't messed with the JROK much, yet, but I'm running a vertical setup and the horizontal games (Reactor, Three Stooges, Screw Loose) all play and look great. Really great.

The only game I'm finding not playable using the Krull CP is Mad Planets. I have button 1 jumped over to the start buttons on my control panel, and it's not possible to reach the start button to fire while using the stick to spin. You'd need a third hand to make it work. I'm going to try to locate a pair of those unobtainium Wico 8-way top fire bat sticks to solve that. @scott451 just listed a set on here, and I have a message out to him to see if they're still available.
PM sent
 
The first time I played Krull in the arcade was at a Barrel of Fun and it was in cocktail form. I've never seen any documentation of this, but does anyone know what the donor cocktail game was, assuming it was a kit?
 
Wico Top-Fire Joysticks

In an effort to get as many games playable on the JROK as I can, I bought a pair of Wico top-fire joysticks from @scott451. These were made by Wico conversion/replacement sticks and sold under the name 'Wico 8-Way Joystick with Firebutton Conversion for Zaxxon Video Game' under model number '15-9635-01'. The pair I bought were scuffed up a bit (as noted in the for sale post):

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They needed a little TLC, so I gave them the same treatment I did earlier to the Wico Command Control sticks. Each was sanded with 400 and 800 grit sandpaper, dyed with SEM Color Coat (Landau Black), clear coated (U-POL), sanded with 800 and 1500 grit sandpaper, then buffed with rubbing compound then carnauba wax. They came out looking brand new - or even better with all the mold lines gone. I also dyed, cleared, sanded and buffed the buttons in order to make them black, and removed approximately 0.187" from the bottom of each button plunger to reduce the overall height of the buttons. To me this made the buttons blend in better with the sticks, and made them look more like stock Krull sticks, rather than something aftermarket with big honking white buttons.

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Now Krull, all the Q*Berts, Mad Planets, Screw Loose, and Three Stooges all play great on the machine. Mad Planets is a little weird because the left joystick controls movement and the fire button, and the left joystick acts as the spinner. This is reversed from actual Mad Planets gameplay, but it works well enough, and you can get used to it quick. A second action button is used by both Reactor (decoy) and Argus (catch), and I don't have either of those hooked up, so I ended up disabling those games.

I'll be picking this back up after I get some other projects done, and can start on the cosmetics for this machine.
 
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