Restoring a Crystal Castles Cocktail

[Lgallair]

I recently got my hands on a Crystal Castles cocktail table that has been converted into a multicade. I want to restore it back to a Crystal Castles but I need some advice from the KLOV community. First of all, let me tell you the condition of the cabinet. The player two control panel is missing and the player one control panel has two extra holes drilled into it for buttons. The cabinet itself is in fairly nice condition with very minor dents. Most of the screen printed artwork on the glass has been scraped away except for the sides; which is how I knew it was a CC. The inside has been gutted and replaced with a modern power supply, vga monitor and of course the 19-in-1 multicard pcb. The only original part left was the speaker.

Here are my concerns and areas I need advice on...
1. How difficult is it to obtain the missing parts required to restore this? I would like to keep the power supply that's in there now so the big items would be the CC pcb, monitor, and the missing control panel.
2. For the pcb, were the pcb's used in the uprights the same as cocktails?
3. For the monitor, what was the original size and orientation of the monitor? Landscape? portrait? 13"?
4. For the control panel, does anyone reproduce these? What are my options besides waiting for one to appear on ebay?
5. Can anyone provide pictures of the inside of a CC Cocktail? What other parts am I missing?
6. The coin door doesn't look to be original and of course the coin box is missing. I submitted my name in Takeman's thread for repro coin boxes. Can someone suggest a good source or substitute for the coin door?
7. The two cam lock hooks for securing the lid are missing. I understand these are difficult to get. Any suggestions on what I could do?
8. I'm concerned about the trackballs as they are the most important part of gameplay. Are there suitable replacements that come close to the "feel" of the originals? Were the original trackballs illuminated?

All the rest of the parts I can get from the Internet. I can purchase the screen printed glass with the CC artwork and the CPO. I plan on powder coating the legs and glass clips and putting new T-molding.

Here are some pics.

 

[Lgallair]

Some more pics...

 

[andrewb]

Parts are available, if you're willing to do a little asking around.

I have a refurbed PCB, if needed. All cab styles use the same board.

Monitor is 13" horizontal. I actually have an original one, which has an original Atari serial sticker on it, and has light CC burn. Shipping to Canada might be pricey, but if you're interested, shoot me a PM.

 

[VectorCollector]

Go past the 10min mark in this vid and see some of the insides.

Some answers:

1. You need CC logic board, optional filter board, power brick, 13" monitor, ARII (you need this power supply for logic and sound) etc; also led cone/buttons for PLYR 1/2 start. wire harness (main and CP).
2. CC logic board is the same for all variants
3. Any 13" CRT should work.
4. I don't think the CP is repro'd. At least TOG has the CPOs and glass.
5. Lots of pics on the web ...
6. The coin door are standard Atari cocktail. Do a WTB. Probably same as WL cocktail, I'm unsure if j.m. is repro'ing these or not. See the WL threads.
7. The two cam lock hooks are repro'd by Takeman for the WL cocktail.
8. Red translucent track balls. Illuminated. See vid.

Lots of work there. Good luck.

 

[Lgallair]

Can anyone tell me what decals or stickers were attached to an Atari Crystal Castles cocktail table? And specifically where they were located on the cabinet? I've seen pictures of other Atari cocktails with stickers on the left side of the player 2 control panel.

I found this website (https://www.easywebshop.com/arcadedecals/webshop/218388-atari) but don't really know which ones to get.

 

[Lgallair]

I'm slowly getting all the bits and pieces I need to rebuild this cocktail table back to a Crystal Castles.

I'm having a hard time sourcing the wiring harness. I was only able to find one place that has a CC wiring harness but it's from an upright.

Is it possible to convert a wiring harness from an upright to its' cocktail version? Or would it be easier to make my own wiring harness from scratch?

I know there are some differences in an upright and cocktail cabinet, the most obvious is the cocktail has two separate control panels and the upright does not.

I'm also thinking the upright would require more wire to reach the various components and the cocktail being more compact would not. So more wire is better than not enough.

Anybody have any thoughts?

 

[andrewb]

Any harness can technically be modified to do anything it wasn't made for. It's just a matter of work, and usually a fair amount of time. But it's not rocket science, if you have the right tools (e.g., a good crimper, and maybe pin extraction tools, if needed).

The CC cocktail is a pretty rare bird. So I'd say it's unlikely you are going to find a harness. Not necessarily impossible, but the cards are stacked against you, as anyone who might have one is likely to not even know what it is. People here do find rare parts all the time, and the best way to do it is to create a wanted thread, and bump it once a month, to keep it in peoples' heads. Sometimes it can take up to a year or even more, but in almost all cases, I've seen people find the parts.

IMO, your choices are 1) to add wires (mainly for the second CP) to a CC upright harness (provided the rest of the harness can fit/reach everything, which I think there's a fair chance of.) Or, 2) you could potentially modify a Centipede, Millipede or other similar cocktail harness to suit the CC PCB.

The latter option will have both sets of CP wiring to start with. However I know from experience that the PCB pinouts between CC, Centipede, Millipede, and Missile Command are pretty different, and take some work to convert. (However the connectors are the same in all cases, so that's a plus.) I made adapters to be able to test all of these boards in my Millipede cab, and it was not trivial. I needed to make spreadsheets with the pinouts taken from all of the schematics, and they are all significantly different, so there are a lot of pins to move. And it's very easy to get confused and make mistakes, as you can go crosseyed looking at the pinouts.

I think your tradeoff is this: Adding a second CP (and potentially other misc wires) to a CC upright harness will be easier overall than trying to mod a Centipede cocktail harness, however the end result will look a bit more 'hacky', as you'll have to add extra wires to the edge connector (going all the way to the CP), for the second CP. Plus you'll have the extra length of wiring in the cab, due to it being an upright harness.

If you want things to look cleaner (in terms of wiring, and how the harness fits in the cab), it would be better to try to convert/repin a Centi/Milli cocktail harness for the CC PCB. This will require moving many of the pins around on the edge connector, keeping track of everything, and not making any mistakes. It might be prettier in the end, but will be more complicated, and have more potential for error.

I'd say that about sums it up, based on what I know about these.


Actually, PS - A third option might be to get a CC to JAMMA adapter (if one exists, I'm not sure), and then just use a JAMMA harness with the original Atari PS (which you still need, and would need to add wires to the harness to support the extra voltages, and Atari brick and PS). This would be the best way to do one 'from scratch', if you want to go that route, but would be even more work, and not look great IMO, compared to the two options above.

 

[PassivePac-Man]

I think it would be best to make your own with a bunch of various color wire and connectors. It would definitely be more work, but, you could make it look really clean and perfect in the game.

Good luck with the restore, I'm very excited to see how it turns out. CC is a great game, I don't see why it doesn't get more love

 

[andrewb]

I think it would be best to make your own with a bunch of various color wire and connectors. It would definitely be more work, but, you could make it look really clean and perfect in the game.

Well yes, there's always that. You can just make a complete harness, by hand, from scratch, if you really like punishment. You'll have no reference to go from, so you'll have to figure everything out, and route all of the wires manually.

I hope you have a strong back and knees, in that case.

 

[PassivePac-Man]

Well yes, there's always that. You can just make a complete harness, by hand, from scratch, if you really like punishment. You'll have no reference to go from, so you'll have to figure everything out, and route all of the wires manually.

I hope you have a strong back and knees, in that case.

Lol

I didn't mention it in my first post, but I was thinking he'd be able to base it mostly off of the Centipede/Millipede/whateverotherAtari cocktail harness and adjust for Crystal Castles needs

 

[Lgallair]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I may be able to get a Centipede harness. If I can, I'll modify that to work for a CC. If not, I think i might buy the CC upright harness and modify that to work. Although I'm very tempted to make one from scratch, I would welcome the challenge.

 

[Lgallair]

I need to buy a 15 pin molex connector for connecting the wiring harness to the Atari Power Brick. I was under the understanding that the 15-pin connector on the power brick was female because the terminal pins have holes and I needed to buy the male connector that have the pins. Apparently this is backwards, and the female/male indicators refer to the housing, not the pins themselves.

Does anyone have a good source for these molex connectors?

 

[andrewb]

Greatplainselectronics.com carries all Molex connectors. Arcadepartsandrepair.com too.

 

[Lgallair]

Thanks Andrew. How's that 13" monitor coming along, BTW?

 

[Lgallair]

Okay, I'm trying to build a harness for the CC cocktail table from a harness supposedly from a CC upright; although I suspect the harness is actually two harnesses from a Missile Command to Crystal Castles conversion kit. Anyway, my questions are:

1. In the CC upright, the Start 1 and Start 2 buttons are wired to the control panel's Jump buttons? But on the cocktail, the Start 1 and Start 2 buttons are on a panel of their own. Does this mean the Jump buttons on the control panel was able to start a 1 or 2 player game?

2. The connection tab on the CC pcb (P20 pin 7) is labelled "Cocktail". How do you wire this pin? Does it simply get connected to +5V? Is there anything else I need to do to get it running in cocktail mode?

 

[creepykenny]

pretty sure the cocktail mode pin goes to ground not to +5v

haven't looked at the cocktail harness diagram but it is the one you need to pay attention to not the UR

to do what you are trying to accomplish you will need to basically cut all of the wire nylon ties out of the UR harness and spread it out
you will be making many of the wires much shorter
hopefully you own a good crimper and a box of .156 flat pins and molex round pins (i forget their size)
easiest way to do this is to install all boards & components in the cabinet then start at the pcb connector and work your way thru the cabinet to everything else

pictures of the real deal will be great help to you if you can find them

 

[andrewb]

Okay, I'm trying to build a harness for the CC cocktail table from a harness supposedly from a CC upright; although I suspect the harness is actually two harnesses from a Missile Command to Crystal Castles conversion kit. Anyway, my questions are:

1. In the CC upright, the Start 1 and Start 2 buttons are wired to the control panel's Jump buttons? But on the cocktail, the Start 1 and Start 2 buttons are on a panel of their own. Does this mean the Jump buttons on the control panel was able to start a 1 or 2 player game?

2. The connection tab on the CC pcb (P20 pin 7) is labelled "Cocktail". How do you wire this pin? Does it simply get connected to +5V? Is there anything else I need to do to get it running in cocktail mode?

- Haven't gotten to the monitor yet. Maybe next week. Love takes time.

- Regarding cocktail mode, the 'cocktail' signal (which works similarly on most Atari cabs) is what tells the CPU what type of cab the board is in, as the same board is used for cocktails and uprights. Cocktail cab harnesses should have that line tied to ground, while upright harnesses don't (so it floats, and is effectively high). Note I *believe* I have the logic correct there, as the signal in the schematics is 'COCKTAIL' with a bar over, it, which means it's active low, so grounding it should be cocktail. If not, I'm backwards, and just leave it floating (though I think I'm correct). Do not tie it to +5V.


- Regarding the Start/Jump buttons, it turns out this is an interesting question. My experience with CC is limited to board repairs, and I don't have a cab of any type, so I can't get a concrete answer that I can confirm, and I haven't looked into this before. BUT, I looked into the schematics, and can tell you what I know from looking at them:

I only have the UR schematics (as I don't think the cocktail ones exist online, and have never been scanned). And in the harness wiring map, Pin H on P19 of the game board is labeled START1/JUMP, and Pin L on P19 is START2/JUMP. So for the upright at least, they appear to be the same thing (i.e., wired together, to the same buttons on the CP, which is also what the wiring diagram shows for the CP).

NOW, what's interesting is that the *PCB* actually has a second set of inputs. In the 'Audio Output' section of the schematics, there are actually three additional inputs, which are handled by one of the Pokeys (hence why they're in the output section). PCB connector J20, pins H and 6 are labeled START1 and START2, respectively. However along with these in the schematic is J20 Pin 7, which is the COCKTAIL signal.

SO, not having the cocktail schematics to confirm the wiring diagram, it's possible (and I'm speculating) that the CPU also uses these two other lines for Start1/2. HOWEVER, the question is whether or not the CPU treats the signals separately/differently when it detects that it is in cocktail mode (and maybe ignores/disables the J20 Start1/2 when in UR mode, using the J19 signals for both Start1/2 and Jump). There's really no way to know conclusively just looking at the schematics we have, so it's hard to say.

I could maybe look into this the next time I am set up to work on a CC board, as my current test rig assumes a UR setup, and I've never tested a cocktail configuration. However it would be possible to ground that COCKTAIL line, and see if those four inputs behave differently, depending on cocktail mode or not.

Sorry I don't have a more conclusive answer, but that's the best I can determine for now, just looking at the schematics. But it should be enough to let you make some progress, as you can do the same tests above in your cab (and probably easier than I can at the moment).

Hope that helps.

 

[Lgallair]

Once I get the monitor and a second control panel (which I might have shortly), I'll test those start 1/2 pins on P19 in cocktail mode.

 

[Lgallair]

I never found a source for the cam lock clasps used on Atari cocktail tables so I decided to make my own. It took some trial and error but finally got them to hook onto the eyelets. The original clasps were straight and didn't quite line up with the eyelets so I needed to "offset" them. After that it was simply a lot of grinding and filing. Of course the other one had to be a mirror copy so that made it a bit harder as well. I'm happy with the result.

 

[Lgallair]

Attempted to repair the base of the cabinet underneath the coin box. The wood was badly damaged and someone tried to bondo it. I decided to cut away the damaged area with my router and screw and glue in a new piece of plywood. Here's the result. Not the greatest work but it's underneath where no one will see it.