So I got a new countertop today

warmachine

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I think I might be developing a fetish for these things.

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I traded my vectrex and games and made a 130 mile round trip for this cabinet.

As soon as I saw it, I instantly thought how cool it would be to have a counter
top sinistar machine, but including the coors light bowling board I've had for a while,
I now have 2 games that I can play with this cabinet.
It's also my first trackball cabinet, so I'm starting to think twice about trying
to convert it.

At first, I thought it could have originally been a pit boss or trivia whiz, but
I don't see any tags or labels indicating that this was converted from something else.
Also, This seems to be the control panels original setup since I don't see any other
holes on the underside.

Perhaps this is just a generic cabinet.

It didn't come with any keys, so I had to drill out the locks to open it up.

It's pretty nasty inside.

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I'm going to remove it's guts and give it a good scrubbing.

I think it's got a 13" monitor.

It's got a fair amount of burn-in and probably needs a cap kit.

There's some gaussing on the bottom of the tube which could be caused
by the unshielded speaker close by and the picture has slight waves scrolling
vertically across the screen which could be related to the slight interference
I'm hearing from the speaker. I guess I'll find out.

There are also some strange locks on it that I haven't seen before.

The locks for the control panel have a pin built in that inserts into the control panel
and holds it down when locked.

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The lock on the back door is also different, but I think a standard lock could be made
to work in it's place.

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After some TLC, it will be sitting next to my megatouch machine,
I think they'll make a good pair, unless I get another one anyway.

My wife was a bit surprised that I was trading the vectrex and I
think I'm going to miss it a bit, but I've got a cool project to work on,
so maybe I won't miss it too much.
 
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lol better stock up on some bandaids..

Good luck which ever route you go. I would love a countertop like that with a 60n1
 
I think after it's been cleaned up, I'll be happy with it's current control scheme.

I've got an instant boredom reliever for a while and I think there are
probably quite a few cheap vertical trackball games to stock up on eventually.
 
So I got a new countertop today.

Hey Mario, This is Steve. The guy you traded your Vectrex to. I didn't know you were on the forum. Man! You didn't waste any time digging into that machine.

For everyone else, I noticed in the Watertown CL that Mario was looking for a countertop arcade game and was willing to trade his Vectrex plus extras for one. So I emailed him and we put the deal together and met yesterday for the trade.

Mario traded me a working Vectrex plus the carrying bag. Three carts Scramble, Berzerk and Clean Sweep as well as a Vecflash and three home brew games Gravitrex Plus, Protector / Y.A.S.I and Revector for the countertop arcade game.

I attached pics from Mario's CL listing.

Post some pics when you put the Coors Light Bowling in it or better yet one of those jamma multi boards. :)
 

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I gotta say I think this thread inspired me, I think im gonna strip my cocktail table and make a counter top 48in1, 1 joy, 3 buttons and trackball if I can fit it.
 
looks like an old countertop 8 liner to me. I'd imagine thats what the majority of the countertops that aren't homemade are converted from.
 
US classic is always fun...

But you should get a Bowling title also.
 
Hey Mario, This is Steve. The guy you traded your Vectrex to. I didn't know you were on the forum. Man! You didn't waste any time digging into that machine.

Hi, I just finished moving on saturday so I've really had to restrain myself from
tearing into it too much until I get everything unpacked.

I hope you enjoy the vectrex. It's an awesome machine, I just think I would
have enjoyed it more if it had a coin slot :).

mdrago said:
looks like an old countertop 8 liner to me. I'd imagine thats what the majority of the countertops that aren't homemade are converted from.

I thought it might have been an old merit machine, but there aren't any brand names
or logos anywhere on the cabinet and the control panel hasn't been modified.

I think it was probably just a generic conversion cabinet similar to a dynamo cut corner
or something.


SpartyMAC said:
You should throw an Ameri-Darts board in there. I have one if your interested.

I might be interested. I'm gonna wait and see what happens after I get it cleaned
up and put back together.

I could change my mind about what I want to do with the cabinet probably
3 or 4 times before then. :)
 
I got enough stuff unpacked that I felt that I could spend some time
on this without feeling too guilty.

So far, it looks like I have a WG monitor. I won't be sure of the model until
it's been removed.

I may need a new jamma harness. This one was attached to the board
with duct tape and some of the wiring seems to be a bit hacked up.
I guess I'll find out more about this later.

It has a wico trackball. It seems to roll pretty smooth, so It may work even
better once it's been cleaned and serviced.

Even though there was a fan attached to the back door at one time,
there are no other vents in the cabinet.
Looks like it couldn't hurt to add a couple.

Everything is attached to the cabinet with square head screws.
It's driving me nuts because I don't have any bits or drivers for these
type of screws and it has pretty much halted progress until I can find
a bit set for these.
I'm pretty sure that everything attached to the cabinet with these
originally came with it since any sane person would not use these. :)

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I'm thinking about making a couple more holes for the player 1 and 2 start buttons.
I noticed that there are vertical trackball games that use more than 1 or 2 action
buttons and the holes on the control panel are perfectly aligned, so I guess it should
work out ok.

I'm just trying to decide where I should put the new start buttons.
I'm thinking right above the three action buttons, or the area right under the
control panel.
I want to keep he area to the right of the trackball clear to have a place to
put custom instruction cards.
 
Everything is attached to the cabinet with square head screws.
It's driving me nuts because I don't have any bits or drivers for these
type of screws and it has pretty much halted progress until I can find
a bit set for these.

Here's a trick I learned... If you have a dremel just dremel a line through the top and use a flathead to remove it. If it's not seen leave it. If it is visible replace it with a flathead or Phillips. I do this anytime I find a screw or bolt I can't remove.
 
Here's a trick I learned... If you have a dremel just dremel a line through the top and use a flathead to remove it. If it's not seen leave it. If it is visible replace it with a flathead or Phillips. I do this anytime I find a screw or bolt I can't remove.

I thought about it, but since every screw (about 30 or 40) had a square head,
and since many of those were pretty close to the monitor, I thought it would be best
to get the bit set.
They came with a set of black and decker bits for about $6.00.
I was trying to not spend money on the cabinet itself, but I justified it by
telling myself that since it was a tool purchase, that it doesn't really count. :)

So far, I've wiped down the inside and removed enough of the grunge
that I can see what's going on inside the cabinet.

The jamma harness isn't as bad as I thought it was.
Some light soldering and heat shrink tubing should clean it up pretty well.
I've just got to add some wires to the harness for the 2nd and 3rd action
buttons as well as the test and service switches.

I got around to removing the old cp overlay.
It was much easier than the last one I removed.

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I imagined spending hours trying to remove it with a scraper and goo gone,
but this one took about 3 or 4 minutes and left nothing behind.

I had some black cp overlay left over from my other project, so I just used that to cover
the control panel.

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It turned out ok. there are a few rough spots near the track ball and the spot welds
for the cp latches, but it shouldn't look too bad under plexi.

Hopefully, the plexi will clean up well enough that I can reuse it.

The power cord was pretty mangled and I didn't really have a spare,
so I cut a hole in the door and installed a socket that I kept from a
dead atx power supply.

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Now I'm just trying to work out how to secure the game boards to the cabinet
without having to screw the pcb feet to the plywood each time I want to swap the game.
It should be a challenge considering the small space I have to do this.
 
I guess I'm almost finished. Or am I?

I got the control panel populated after Cleaning the trackball assembly.

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I put the plexiglass in the dishwasher and it came out well enough that I decided
to reuse it. I also swapped the trackball with a billiard ball that I found a while
ago in my first cabinet. It's a perfect fit and doesn't effect the operation of the
trackball assembly in any negative way, so I left it in there.

I also drilled a couple of holes in the front of the cabinet for the start buttons
since I don't have a way of drilling into the control panel at the moment.

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Then I attached the cp, added some wire to the jamma harness for the other
2 action buttons, attached an adjustable PCB holder to make it easier to swap
games out, and finished up the wiring.

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This is how it looks now.

The new t-molding is being glued into place because the slots are just a bit
larger than they need to be. I don't have an effective set of clamps for this,
so I'm just gluing one section at a time.

I've still got to wire up the lighting for the coin reject and the start buttons,
but that will wait untill the t-molding is finished.

There is a fair bit of gauss on the lower right section of the monitor that
I can't seem to correct with the degaussing wand, so I've still got some
work to do there.

Other than that and the moderate burn in, the monitor's in good shape
and has a decent picture. The tinted plexi over the monitor makes the
picture look dingy, even after a good cleaning, so I may replace it with clear
sometime in the future.

I tried to plug in my coors light bowling board, but it seems to have died
since the last time I tested it about a year and a half ago.
If I get a capcom bowling board, I can just swap out the roms and have
a working game again.

I spent a bit of time with the u.s. classics game and it turned out to
be a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be, especially since
I know roughly dick about golf.
The only real problem I have with it is that this cabinet wasn't designed
with these types of games in mind. It's certainly playable, but it's just about
impossible to get a good spin on the trackball without smashing my fingers
into the monitor glass. my hands get pretty sore after a good 18 hole game.

With that in mind, I'm starting to have doubts about keeping this cabinet
set up with a trackball.
 
If you rotated the monitor, it would make a perfect COOL POOL! I really like Cool Pool, very good game (as long as I don't put actual quarters in it!) and I've seen pics of it in a bartop cabinet very similar to yours.
 
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