The 85% Capcom Big Blue restore

[DuffCon]

Welcome to the follow up to my previous 85% restore thread:

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/the-85-street-fighter-ii-champion-edition-restore.471135/

So if you read or cared about the previous thread, you may have remembered that I restored a 3-Koam Z-back to it's original Street Fighter II: Champion Edition condition. I expected to sell this cab to refill the 'hobby account' to keep SWAMBO happy, but then the pandemic happened and I just ended up putting in a real PCB and keeping the cab.

Some of you may know that I'm a big SFII fan and an aficionado of the "Capcom Big Blue" series of cabs.

I had sought out a local operator and left him a VM asking if he had any cabs he'd like to be rid of. Many weeks later he returned my call and after a chat he sent me some pics of warehouse. Tucked away on the highest shelf was an all-black cab. I squinted at the picture and there it was. We worked out a price and it was mine.

So I now had a interesting issue. I had just done a Champion restore and I really didn't want to convert a dedicated into something else. But this cab by rights was just as much a dedicated Champion. So what was I to do? I actually did a lot of the restore work before deciding, as the cosmetic & structural portions could be done while I pondered it. More on this later.

Obviously the vinyl was toast, but there were a few more interesting surprises. Some from general hackery, others from our friends at 3-Koam.

 

[DuffCon]

This cab actually had a completely original Xmen: Children of the Atom CPS2 boardset that still had the factory tamper labels on. I checked the battery, which still held 3.6v and was dated 93-09 (Sept. 1993!). Amazing that it was still holding on, I obviously changed it anyway.

 

[DuffCon]

Firstly, the rear door bracket had been replaced with a metal "T" bracket and lovingly attacked with some carriage bolts that were bent over so that it could never be removed.

Another issue on the rear side was that 3-Koam made the rear door incredibly huge. This large opening made the cab prone to rack from side to side. On top of that, the power supply was shot, and I usually replace these with a different model as the original is much more expensive. So given all these things, I decided to kill 3 birds and raise the rear plate up about 200%, while cutting the same amount from the bottom of the rear door, thus removing the the area with the T bracket. This would make the cab more stable, give me a chance to make a new power supply cutout, and would make a smaller door easier to handle. Win Win Win.

I cut a new lower rear plate, using a small block to shrink the power supply opening and route out a new opening with a copy bit on my router.

Fit the new rear plate, clamp, glue and staple:

Cut the rear door down to the new size (i'll eventually fill the holes left from some security shackles). Much more stable now.

 

[DuffCon]

Second major issue: The kickplate had obviously been replaced with a hacked together piece of MDF which looked horrible. This was generally easy to fix with new ¾" particle board.

Cutting the coin door opening was a bit tough. My idea was to use a forstner bits to gain the rounded corners and then cut the straight lines out.

I really should have just bought a jigsaw (I can't believe I don't own one yet). I eventually discovered I cut the opening a bit too large. No big loss as I would be doing a lot of wood-filling anyway. So I Just glued some cutoff material in the corners to provide structure.

 

[DuffCon]

So I there's a ton of 'how to bondo and paint' information here, so I'll spare you a long description:

 

[DuffCon]

The monitor was a Kortek k7000 clone what was in vertical collapse. I lucked into a cheap k7000 chassis that I rebuilt, so I decided to part-together a monitor with a spare frame. I found a local sharp 25" tv for free and put it all together.

My frame was missing the plastic spacers and I was unable to find any for sale, so my solution was to fabricate my own with some scrap wood. I just cut a channel into and screwed the parts to the frame.

I had never re-purposed a TV for a monitor and now the picture is so good it makes me want to tube swap my entire collection!

 

[DuffCon]

So it was about this time I came up with a solution on my question about what to do with this cab. I had a Champ Z-back & a 2nd​ Gen big blue. Most of my restores have been really pretty original, with some concessions made for structure or modernization. This time I decided to a total custom cab, with all the bells and whistles that I wanted.

Being a CPS1 based cab, it doesn't have the additional test/service and volume up and down controls from a CPS2 cab, but fortunately I actually had a set from a reused coin box. It's like this was meant to happen.

Did some clean up and touch up on the coinbox, replaced one reject button from my spare parts. Unfortunately, it doesn't match, but it adds personality

Managed to trade for an original Alpha 2 marquee. It's one of my favorites as it really uses the space well.

 

[DuffCon]

First up; I never had a q-sound cab. So I stole this idea from @RetroGamerJP to use bookshelf speakers for Stereo.

These $20 ebay speakers actually sound really good, but had an issue because the power for the speakers is not controlled by a physical toggle. I worked around this by soldering a jumper on the power switch so it comes on with the cabinet power.

I considered my options to mount the speakers. I was thinking about building a shelf to mount them, but decided to use some 1" wide webbing from the craft store. This way, it can be easily reversed and it holds up fine.

 

[DuffCon]

Control panel was in good shape, it needed some dents beat out and after cleaning it up, applied a new CPO from gameongrafix. I feel like their repop is a bit dark, but it works. Made a new bezel from target tagboard.

 

[DuffCon]

internal layout:

rear completed with rescued label:

Internal shot with my Darksoft CPS2 multi moved from my xmvsf cab; the gen 2 big blue went back to being a dedicated. Mounted the controls with 2-way tape. The narrow from makes it easy to access from the coin door.

 

[DuffCon]

And here we are, in almost final form. Installed new glass and side stickers. In transit are Alpha 2 move cards. This was an interesting project; I like to try new things each cab, so this one was my first tube-swap and first q-sound setup. Overall i'm happy with the cab, sort of a "resto-mod" which is also another new spin.

 

[DuffCon]

One last pic, fully complete with bezel art

 

[Greeneye]

Looks great!