Today I got to learn quite a bit in a short period of time, and I also got to make an enhancement to my Ms. Pac machine.
1. on a game I just got, the monitor tube had the plastic thingy busted off of the neck at the bottom. Some folks were saying I could probably reinstall the piece and it would be fine, others were saying that basically ended the life of the tube. I reinstalled the piece and unfortunately it did not work, but in doing so I got to get more proficient with degaussing a monitor. I'm terrified of electricity, got zapped pretty bad as a teen when I grabbed a cracked distributor plug wire on a running car. Been with me ever since. But today I seemed to get through the degaussing pretty easily, so I am starting to be a little more comfortable with being around electricity.
2. on my Ms. Pac, the original CP was shot when I got her in 2006. I got a complete replacement panel which was in really good shape, except in a couple of places it had white spots where it looked like it had torn. I couldn't feel any tear when running a finger over it, but it was always there just enough to irritate me. At diff times I've tried cleaning it off to no avail, and even tried using some WD-40 on it, thinking it might be leftovers from something that was stuck there- no luck. Today while passing by it once more, I decided to put some acetone on a rag and go over it VERY lightly, to see if maybe it was paint from God knows what. I did one brief pass and........... it came right off! There were 3 or 4 spots where this had happened, and all of them came right off of the CP and did no damage. I was really psyched because during this week, I got the sound fixed on the game myself, got the coin lights fixed myself, and now, the CP looks really good too! She's looking really good.
While I was out there messing around with the games, I also played a few rounds of Ms. Pac. I'm hoping after the kids go to bed that I can get out there and tinker around some more. But all in all, a good day for games!