picked up a weird one.. Multi gravitar?

mrbill2084

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Guy either worked at atari or was a total tweeker. I think the harness has been changed to space duel. I need to check harness number to be sure.

It looks like they made an adapter to go from space duel to black widow. There were no extra control panels, but there were 4 boards mounted in the cabinet. Gravitar, space duel, black widow, and major havoc. The guy also pulled out another box with a tempest board. It has a tempest to gravitar adapter on it. Interesting pcb they used on the adapter.

Cab is a bit rough. Here are pics. Need to finish getting it working. I have a spare space duel panel and I think a spare gavitar panel. Probably can put it all together and pass it along.

front-21.jpg


side1-17.jpg


side2-12.jpg


boards1.jpg


tempestpcb.jpg
 
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Very nice find. Either tweeked or modded at Atari, looks like it was well done. Figure it out and post some more!
 
Yes, swap the harness to the game you want to play. I would drop in a vector labs kit in it when its done.

The MH pcb has tempest to MH card on it. So It would need the gravitar to tempest harness adapter to work. I have no plans to plug those in as frying a tempest and MH board is not cool. I will test them in my tempest.

Its the weird gravitar to tempest adapter that makes me think atari employee. It looks like something atari made, but why? There was an envelope inside a box from video connection with cut wiring. Pete used to make custom wiring. All the boards are dated working in 93. The package addressed to someone in SF care of the gap.

The wiring haness tag number is a037938-01. Anyone know if thats space duel or gravitar? I can't get to my cabs easily.

Here are pics of the adapter. Its pretty close to the color of the tempest board, but it has no atari stamp on it.

adapter1.jpg


adapter2.jpg
 
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I had a feeling you would be grabbing that one. It was dirt-cheap too. Looks like an interesting...um...contraption. Congrats.
 
space duel harness

Thanks! Thats what I figured. I would have worked off space duel If I was going to do it. Its running a -04 ARII which seems odd. Maybe they added to it?

I paid the guy more than 2x what he was asking. Its not like he was asking for more when I first called. I told him I thought it was worth more when I was there to pick it up. I would have given him a bunch more if he had busted out a quantum board. Still, I got it for less than 1/2 what its worth.

I fixed and recapped the monitor and PS last night. So cab is working. The bad news is that the gravitar and black widow boards did not fire up. Gravitar is is drawing bad vectors but making game sounds, black widow is stuck in spot killer. I did not test the MH or tempest board yet. Space duel board looks like it works(can't start it with BW panel). Maybe the ARII-04 is the BW and gravitar problem? Going to check that on tuesday.
 
prob just the avg chip on gravitar, swap it with the space duel one takes 10 seconds.

not sure on the AR board rev's. but ive had a space duel, major havoc, gravitar pcb's in both space duel and gravitar dedicated cabs with no issues if that is anything to help.

i do know tempest and major is different from BW/gravitar/space duel wiring, not sure how it would play with that frankenstein harness. but don't plug them in without checking the pinouts.
 
Looks like one of mine

Yes, swap the harness to the game you want to play. I would drop in a vector labs kit in it when its done.

The MH pcb has tempest to MH card on it. So It would need the gravitar to tempest harness adapter to work. I have no plans to plug those in as frying a tempest and MH board is not cool. I will test them in my tempest.

Its the weird gravitar to tempest adapter that makes me think atari employee. It looks like something atari made, but why? There was an envelope inside a box from video connection with cut wiring. Pete used to make custom wiring. All the boards are dated working in 93. The package addressed to someone in SF care of the gap.

The wiring haness tag number is a037938-01. Anyone know if thats space duel or gravitar? I can't get to my cabs easily.

Here are pics of the adapter. Its pretty close to the color of the tempest board, but it has no atari stamp on it.

adapter1.jpg


adapter2.jpg

Hi Bill. Joe Mageria pointed me to your post. Did you possibly get this from Ray G.??? I seriously modified a Black Widow in the 90s and sold it some time back I think to Ray which would explain how it got across the country. The wood rack to hold the circuit boards looks like my work as does the writing and adapters. I could tell better with a better look at the tags and more of the inside of the cabinet. If I had to guess I'd say it's my initial work modified by Ray or someone else that knew what they were doing. As I recall with the control panels I had at the time I could play Tempest, Major Havoc, Quantum, Black Widow and Gravitar out of that cabinet. The attached picture shows one of the adapters I still have made the same way. Also look carefully at the control panels of the games in the attached pictures of my once upon a time game room. Notice the extra controls on the Black Widow control panel. Armor Attack would support Ripoff, Star Castle and a couple of the obscure Cinematronics games. Missile Command also played Food Fight of all things. The Sega Converta cabinet Ray got for sure from me and it supported about every Sega XY including 4 player Eliminator with the custom control panel I had made.

Rick

adapter.jpg

old_days.jpg
 
Hi Bill. Did you possibly get this from Ray G.??? I seriously modified a Black Widow in the 90s and sold it some time back I think to Ray which would explain how it got across the country. The wood rack to hold the circuit boards looks like my work as does the writing and adapters. I could tell better with a better look at the tags and more of the inside of the cabinet. If I had to guess I'd say it's my initial work modified by Ray or someone else that knew what they were doing. As I recall with the control panels I had at the time I could play Tempest, Major Havoc, Quantum, Black Widow and Gravitar out of that cabinet. Notice the extra controls on the Black Widow control panel.
Rick

FYI, I still have the modified control panel shown in Rick's picture if you might be interested. I traded him a regular Black Widow CP. In fact, that's how I played Quantum for the first time, on Rick's set up as a horizontal game. When I saw a dedicated cabinet, I thought something was wrong with it that it was vertical.
 
Hi rick! its been a long time. I still have steve o's ripoff & star castle kit he made for me.

These guys had no clue about the game. Hell, they listed on CL as atari pinball. If I was not keeping an eye out for a video pinball, I might not have clicked on it. The weird part was they did know it had 4 games in it.

They said they got it from their neighbor a while ago. They only had the one control panel. It seems pretty odd as you can't play anything else without at least the space duel panel. I told them if they found the other panels, I would buy them too.

The guy in SF name was chris Y. In the box was a tempest spinner, a speaker, 5 marquees, a tube with 1 atari eprom and photcopies of atari schematic pinouts. Also the envelope from video connection dated 93 with bits of cut wiring in it. I don't think this one was setup originally with tempest or major havoc in mind. tempest pcb will not slide into the rack (mathbox board hits). Monitor does have tempest burn on it.

Wiring did not look modifed. It did look like 2 wires were cut at the edge connector. Maybe they were relocated at the harness as there was no loose wires. Someone hacked 2 wires on the sevice panel. Maybe trying to add a speaker?



Hi Bill. Joe Mageria pointed me to your post. Did you possibly get this from Ray G.??? I seriously modified a Black Widow in the 90s and sold it some time back I think to Ray which would explain how it got across the country. The wood rack to hold the circuit boards looks like my work as does the writing and adapters. I could tell better with a better look at the tags and more of the inside of the cabinet. If I had to guess I'd say it's my initial work modified by Ray or someone else that knew what they were doing. As I recall with the control panels I had at the time I could play Tempest, Major Havoc, Quantum, Black Widow and Gravitar out of that cabinet. The attached picture shows one of the adapters I still have made the same way. Also look carefully at the control panels of the games in the attached pictures of my once upon a time game room. Notice the extra controls on the Black Widow control panel. Armor Attack would support Ripoff, Star Castle and a couple of the obscure Cinematronics games. Missile Command also played Food Fight of all things. The Sega Converta cabinet Ray got for sure from me and it supported about every Sega XY including 4 player Eliminator with the custom control panel I had made.

Rick

adapter.jpg

old_days.jpg
 
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