my new tempest - brought back from the dead.

cleverlyj

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Donor 2011
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so, as i've casually mentioned in various threads, i now have a tempest. i really got bored with my tron, as the same levels and patterns just weren't fun, and i wanted an enjoyable game to play. so, i called jon exidy to see if he had anything to trade, specifically a tempest, and he did. the 'to kill or not to kill' tempest from that thread back in january.

well, if any of you saw the pictures, it was in bad shape. the cab had been dropped, and had two big cracks through the left side of the cab. both going all the way through. it was missing boards but complete otherwise, so i got that and credit toward a boardset from exidy (thanks exidy and perfidious) in trade for my tron. which i must say, was a great trade.

so when i got the tempest, jon had bondoed up the cracks on the left side. i started to pull everything apart to fix it, and it turned out there were more issues: when it dropped, the top panel broke off, as did the marquee and the wooden pieces that the marquee holds onto. the guy who had it before jon got it nailed it all back together. yeah, not cool.

so, first step was fixing the left side. i disassembled the top, speaker tray, and marquee and pulled all the nails out. then sanded down the bondo, and re bondoed over the big crack to smooth it out. the top crack, i cleaned the mdf out, and clamped and woodglued the top piece back on, then bondoed on both sides. then i clamped and glued the wood blocks back on the back of the marquee that hold it on to the cab.

after that, more fun began. now, i had to figure out exact placement of the top of the cab piece (that covers the speaker shelf and butts up against the top back of the marquee. after doing a bunch of measuring, placement and eyeballing, i glued the top in place, and clamped the cab sides at the top together to get it back to normal.

then, sanding began, as well as some painting. i had to sand the cracks on the insides, and then touch up paint to hide the bondo'd crack area in front of the marquee. i did that, then put everything back together.

after that, i had a complete tempest with boardset, but no bob roberts parts. took a week and a half for them to get here, thanks to the incompetence of the usps. my box got dipped in a puddle something, and i got a new box with a water logged shredded address label taped over the top, and a sticker saying it was repackaged due to being wet. no shit.

the good thing is, all my parts were in there. the ar2 kit bag had torn open, probably by the usps, and because the moonpies and packing material were all missing (thanks again, usps) a bunch of caps and other parts were just rolling around in there. luckily for me, they taped the new box well enough that nothing fell out.

so, a couple hours were spent rebuilding the k6100 and ar2 board. also added a 120v 35cfm fan in there from radio shack. i take everything back to the cabinet, put it in, and bam, no worky. i heard deflection chatter but no pic, and the spot killer light was blinking. turns out the dumbass that just rebuilt the monitor forgot to plug the anode cap into the tube, but thankfully i had it tied off so no voltage shot anywhere or zapped anything. plugged that in and was missing 50% of my horizontal deflection.

i checked out the 6100 faq and per that, q705 (i think, can't remember) was the transistor that would cause that. well, for some reason, my brain decided that i should probe connectors to see if there were any connectivity issues. i pushed on the connector that connects to q705, and my picture came back! pulled out the deflection board and resoldered all the connector pins, as well as all deflection transistors, and the pins on the hv cage as well, just to be safe. at last i have a 100% working tempest.

at this point, all that was left was some artwork stuff. the owner of the cab before exidy had generously drilled through the marquee to the blocks that hold it on to the sides of the cab, instead of gluing, so the marquee was shot. i ordered up a new one from arcadeshop, new t molding, and spinner bushings, and replaced that. the cpo wasn't terrible, but kinda messed up in a few places, but arcadeshop was out, probably due to the tempest cpo problems they were having. i ended up going with a cpo from gameongrafix (mame marquees) which is actually the early art style spo, and it looks sweet on there. so, at this point, i may replace the left sideart at some point, but i have a pretty nice tempest.

oh, the paint i used to spray the white over the bondoed areas was the krylon fusion vinyl shit. came out ok.
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Wow, that is some major restoration work! Can you post a picture of the inside after the repair? I am curious how that turned out. Great job saving this game from a sad fate!

Thanks for the Tron review from a former owner's perspective. I wanted a machine because the cab is very visually striking, but there are a lot of posts here that say the game inside gets old fast. I guess my 5 minutes in front of one would not hold up over the long term.
 
Wow, that is some major restoration work! Can you post a picture of the inside after the repair?

i will as soon as i get up the strength to drag that out from the line up. for whatever reason, i didn't take pics as i was doing the cab work, although i wish i had...
 
Nice job...looks great. I need a tempest !!!
Is it the angle of the camera shot?? or is the cabinet short?? Not trying to rain on your parade....I'd take that in a heart beat but its look small compared to the other games. I always remembered Tempest as a tall game......
 
it is tall. i have them all pushed back to where the control panels are all level with each other. with that, tempest kinda sinks back behind the others. and the multi williams is tall at the front. the only thing that even could be bad about tempest is that you need another cab with a similar tilt shape next to it. it kinda hides amongst all the other games.
 
Nice to see one saved. Great game and great learning experience for you I bet.

definitely. did you see the early artwork CPO? got it from mamemarquees. if anyone gets one, the only thing is that the black part on the sides is slightly wider than the control panel, so you really have to line it up by the button holes and trim the excess off.

but here's the thread referencing this cab, when exidy had it. looks like he took the pics down.

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=167394&highlight=tempest+kill
 
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