I finally decided that my back was about as good as its going to get, so it was road trip time. With the help of KatanaJoe and his son, I made the trek to Austin and picked up the Black Widow Greg (Perfidious) has been holding for me.
After picking up the game and chatting with Greg for a while, we stopped in to help support one of the few arcades left, Pinballz in Austin. They have an amazing collection of pins and quite a few classic video games as well. If you are ever in the area, it is worth dropping by. It was kind of fun to walk around and go "Darren outbid me on that game", "I remember seeing that one at the last auction" and "do you remember what he got that one for at the auction?". As well as playing some of the pins that always seemed to have a line at the shows. Avatar (so-so), Tales of the Arabian Nights (me want), Theatre of Magic (drool), Iron Man (big no), Lord of the Rings (Dear Santa....) and a bunch of others. Surprisingly it took the three of us about an hour to go through $20 worth of token. Most of the games and the pins are 2 tokens ($0.50) with the newer ones and the top 20 pins were 3 tokens ($0.75). Medieval Madness was 4 tokens ($1) and got fixed just before we left
. Overall a pretty good road trip. Even if my back is paying for it today.....
Joe and his son unloaded her (a Black Widow has to be a her) and hauled her into the house last night, but I decided to let her sit overnight to cool down. Color vectors can be rather finicky.
I opened her up this morning to see how everything survived and to my horror, the CPU board had popped the mounting screw and was laying sideways inside the cabinet
. So I pulled the board out and carefully pressed all the chips in, remounted it and put a bigger screw in to hold it. I then reattached the edge connectors, crossed my fingers and plugged it in and prayed. I could see the LEDs come on and the player one and player 2 switches stared blinking. Yay! Then I moved around to the front and the screen wasn't on. Oh sh!t. After 3 minutes it still wasn't on. It played blind. But no screen. So what would an operator have done??? Oh yeah! A quick slap to the side of the cabinet and the monitor popped right on! Hurrah! I've turned it on and off 3 times now and the monitor still works, so I guess the old fixes are still the best fixes.
I moved things around, plugged her in to a remote controlled socket (Atari puts the power switches in the most inconvenient places for home use) then pushed her back into her new home.
Anyway, without further ado, the BlackWidow in her place of honor at the entrance to the Whole House Arcade (along with Jeri (my current yellow dog), who wasn't real impressed with the new addition
).
ken
After picking up the game and chatting with Greg for a while, we stopped in to help support one of the few arcades left, Pinballz in Austin. They have an amazing collection of pins and quite a few classic video games as well. If you are ever in the area, it is worth dropping by. It was kind of fun to walk around and go "Darren outbid me on that game", "I remember seeing that one at the last auction" and "do you remember what he got that one for at the auction?". As well as playing some of the pins that always seemed to have a line at the shows. Avatar (so-so), Tales of the Arabian Nights (me want), Theatre of Magic (drool), Iron Man (big no), Lord of the Rings (Dear Santa....) and a bunch of others. Surprisingly it took the three of us about an hour to go through $20 worth of token. Most of the games and the pins are 2 tokens ($0.50) with the newer ones and the top 20 pins were 3 tokens ($0.75). Medieval Madness was 4 tokens ($1) and got fixed just before we left
Joe and his son unloaded her (a Black Widow has to be a her) and hauled her into the house last night, but I decided to let her sit overnight to cool down. Color vectors can be rather finicky.
I opened her up this morning to see how everything survived and to my horror, the CPU board had popped the mounting screw and was laying sideways inside the cabinet
I moved things around, plugged her in to a remote controlled socket (Atari puts the power switches in the most inconvenient places for home use) then pushed her back into her new home.
Anyway, without further ado, the BlackWidow in her place of honor at the entrance to the Whole House Arcade (along with Jeri (my current yellow dog), who wasn't real impressed with the new addition
ken

