Today I spent the day fixing my $50 Stargate. Last Saturday I drove out to pick up a Stargate and a Centipede from Kyle,Texas (about 3.5 hours each way) for $100. When I got a chance to look at them, I decided the Stargate would be easier to work on, so it went home and the 'Pede went to storage, for now.
I didn't take a lot of before pictures because my camera was acting up, but the cabinet was in real good cosmetic condition. As you can see from the pictures I do have, the side art was scratched and dinged but basically intact, except for some serious fade on the upper left corner. There was some delamination on the bottom, so I glued the wood mostly back together again and put a piece of aluminum L-bracket over it (after spraying it with textured black Rustoleum). That saved a lot of Bondo and sanding.
Once I opened the cabinet up and looked at the insides I was shocked. All the serial numbers on the boards matched the cabinet (a first). So if I had had the monitor it would have been a complete dedicated Stargate.
The front was in very good shape. There were no security bars on it and the coin door hadn't been crowbarred. That was a first for me. I had to drill out the lower coindoor lock, but that only took a couple of minutes. No treasure inside, just an original coin box. Added new locks and the feont was complete.
There was no monitor and the power supply had been hacked with a switcher. When I pulled the power supply board and tested it, I was amazed. It was in perfect working condition. So why the beat up PC power supply hacked in? I have no idea. So that was the first thing to go.
Next, I dropped a monitor in, just for now. As you can see in the pics, it has some pretty severe PAC burn. But it is clean and bright, so it will do for now. The monitor shelf was missing, so I had to build one out of a scrap sheet of 3/4" plywood.
I rebuilt the power connector and put the power supply board back in and guess what? It didn't boot. I spent an hour playing bad RAM tag until I realized that it was random. The CPU board was bad. Swapped a new CPU board in and it booted....to a ROM error. So I popped the ROMs and gave them a good bath. Apparently someone had spilled beer over the boards and the ROMs were stuck in their sockets. Half hour later, clean sockets and clean ROMs. Fired it up. More ROM errors. Fuming, I pulled the ROM board figuring it was bad. To my surprise, there was a piece of chewing gum wrapper (the aluminized kind like they use in Wrigley's gums) dangling on a piece of spider thread making intermittent contact with the pins on the back of the ROM board (another first). So I cleared that out, put the ROM board back and it booted.
ken
I didn't take a lot of before pictures because my camera was acting up, but the cabinet was in real good cosmetic condition. As you can see from the pictures I do have, the side art was scratched and dinged but basically intact, except for some serious fade on the upper left corner. There was some delamination on the bottom, so I glued the wood mostly back together again and put a piece of aluminum L-bracket over it (after spraying it with textured black Rustoleum). That saved a lot of Bondo and sanding.
Once I opened the cabinet up and looked at the insides I was shocked. All the serial numbers on the boards matched the cabinet (a first). So if I had had the monitor it would have been a complete dedicated Stargate.
The front was in very good shape. There were no security bars on it and the coin door hadn't been crowbarred. That was a first for me. I had to drill out the lower coindoor lock, but that only took a couple of minutes. No treasure inside, just an original coin box. Added new locks and the feont was complete.
There was no monitor and the power supply had been hacked with a switcher. When I pulled the power supply board and tested it, I was amazed. It was in perfect working condition. So why the beat up PC power supply hacked in? I have no idea. So that was the first thing to go.
Next, I dropped a monitor in, just for now. As you can see in the pics, it has some pretty severe PAC burn. But it is clean and bright, so it will do for now. The monitor shelf was missing, so I had to build one out of a scrap sheet of 3/4" plywood.
I rebuilt the power connector and put the power supply board back in and guess what? It didn't boot. I spent an hour playing bad RAM tag until I realized that it was random. The CPU board was bad. Swapped a new CPU board in and it booted....to a ROM error. So I popped the ROMs and gave them a good bath. Apparently someone had spilled beer over the boards and the ROMs were stuck in their sockets. Half hour later, clean sockets and clean ROMs. Fired it up. More ROM errors. Fuming, I pulled the ROM board figuring it was bad. To my surprise, there was a piece of chewing gum wrapper (the aluminized kind like they use in Wrigley's gums) dangling on a piece of spider thread making intermittent contact with the pins on the back of the ROM board (another first). So I cleared that out, put the ROM board back and it booted.
ken


