The danger of free....

wastedyouth

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There's nothing better--or worse--than an op going "You can have these games", hah. After I got the truck loaded the effort of what I was doing hit me. I hauled them to the storage I have rented and unloaded 'em, the free was a Virtua Racing (no monitors/missing the steering wheels), Outrunners (no monitors/missing steering wheels), two San Fran Rush cabs (no monitors/missing main boards), and a Cisco Heat (which I didn't want but it was part of the free deal). There might've been something else, I can't remember at the moment. While wanting to be a preservationist is cool, damn, when it comes to the bigger games it can be some serious effort. I mostly wanted the Outrunners, never spotted one before and thought it would be neat to have, figure I'll get it and the Virtua Racing going soon as I get some spare monitors going and find some steering wheels. Is it odd the op would pull the steering wheels off the games? Are they prone to breaking or something? The wheels on the games I have seem durable enough, made me wonder. It's just the wheels that are gone, the shafts and whatnot are still there. Hopefully I can get around to enclosing the porch on the game room house soon, then I can move the games home and have them nearby to work on. Anyone else ever have free override common sense? Har.
outrunnersntank.jpg
 
LOL!!!! Yeah come get all this FREE crap, you must take it all, use your fuel, time and store said FREE crap in your paid for storage.

Not so FREE anymore now is it? :)

What's the price of FREE, there always is a price!
 
I'm picking up a Carnevil cab with just the tube and harness. No monitor chassis, no boards, no guns. Not sure why but I'm picking it up for maybe a long term project that will do nothing but take up room in my workshop. So I feel ya, I probably would've taken them too.
 
He was going to bust 'em up and throw 'em in the dumpster like he normally does, so I figured if nothing else I'd take 'em and get them out into the hands of collectors. Well, once I either decide I'm not going to fix any of them or I just get tired of them being in the way. Hell, that Desert Tank in the pic, I gave like 50 bucks for it, I didn't need it, but I wanted it. And it was going in the dumpster soon too, and I just couldn't bear that thought of that, hah.

There's always the option of parting them out, but that's something I've just never been able to do. I'd have to sell them whole and let someone else slaughter them into tiny little Ebay pieces.

The bummer is looking on Ebay for wheels and seeing prices like 59 bucks, gah. Maybe someday on down the line, when I have the machines in a closer state of working.
 
Funny...
I'll see a game on CL and get super excited. Then realize it gonna be a major PITA to move..or won't fit in my Expedition.

I start firing txts to other collector with the heads up...sometime I'm just to lazy to capitalize on the deals.

However...when I found my Star Wars cockpit with an amp....that ended up my garage!
 
It'll end up taking more money to get them going (by a long shot) than if you had bought working machines. Some of those games use Med Res monitors... Unless you plan on using lcds instead. They'd be easier to source at least. Still not cheap.
 
Yeah, I've got this showcase cabinet (with 33" monitor) taking up an ass load of room........Haven't brought myself to parting it yet, but that day is coming.
 
I've got 9-10 monitors lying around I need to repair (or being lazy, get repaired) to swap into the games. I've never spotted an Outrunners before, are they more common outside of my region (Western Arkansas)?

The LCD route looks atrocious IMO, as the larger LCDs that fit the games that used 25" monitors are 16:9 ratio and just look goofy to me. If only we had 25" 4:3 LCD monitors being made just for arcade games.

Location can play a big factor in ease of collecting, like if you look on Ebay the games tend to be East coast (NYC/NJ) or West coast (Cali), with a few smatterings in between (Texas tends to have quite a few). I scoure Craigslist and Ebay for local deals, and they pop up every once in a great while.

If I had wheels lying around that would fit the OutRunners or Virtua Racing I probably would've brought them home for a bit and goofed with them, borrowing monitors from other games.

Oh yeah, I own a truck with a 24' box and a lift gate, that makes getting stuff dangerously easy at times.
 
It'll end up taking more money to get them going (by a long shot) than if you had bought working machines. Some of those games use Med Res monitors... Unless you plan on using lcds instead. They'd be easier to source at least. Still not cheap.


I find this as well. Free or beat up often requires more money to
fix then working and in nice condition. We all see that the parts are
worth more then the whole unfortunately these days.

Of course if free and beat up is you only option to get a game you want..ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Ya gotta do what
 
Good think Outrunners is listed as a standard res monitor. Getting some 25" K7000s in there should be pretty easy... but yeah two missing monitors... it's pretty much a free cab.
 
I've got a single wheel from an Outrunners, pm me if you want it, we can figure something out.
 
Cool, thanks for posting that, though he has the entire control/wheel panel assembly. I wonder if he'd just yank the wheels off, hrm. Probably not but no harm in asking.
 
At least now you're somewhat in with the op. In this situation I'd consider taking the cabs I don't want and re-offering them to the local community. Just get them out of my hair. There's nothing worse than having to pay for storage or having a ton of realestate being taken up for long term projects I don't want.

...but yeah. Free can be a trap.
 
Free can occasionally be really cool. This was sitting by a dumpster, a friend called and told me about it, I sped over and grabbed it. Missing the original PCB so I wired up (without hacking anything) a JAMMA harness and put a 60-in-1 PCB in it.
journey.jpg
 
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