To Buy or Not: Gorf w/ Screen Issue 250.00?

squall280

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So i was able to find someone locally that had Gorf for sale. He wants 250 for it. He says that you can hear it and the voice and all sound is there. The problem is that the monitor has lines going through it and its just screen garble. i can't get out to him to look at it myself. my schedule is just bad lately. i wanted to see what people thought. grab it the way it is or just walk away for another day?
 
Questions:

What sort of shape is the cabinet / artwork / CP in?
Are you comfortable working on a monitor? Do you have a resource to fix it if not?
Do you love the game?

For GORF, I'd consider one that plays blind at 100% at that price to not be a terrible deal, but not spectacular. It'd be hard to tell w/o a display if it really is at 100% game board wise, but voice and sounds are an encouraging sign.
 
A slight monitor issue is nearly irrelevant. What matters is condition, completeness, does the rest work, etc.. A $5 cap kit would likely fix that.
 
Judging by pics, it seems in very good shape over-all. i wouldn't mind getting it fixed. Just wanted to see if that was a decent price. I seen them go completely workign for not much more.
 
I'd try talking him down another $50, and snatch it up.....its worth a try. But yeah, I agree with the other guys; the price depends on the overall shape of the game. They always look better in pics than in person.
 
I'd try talking him down another $50, and snatch it up.....its worth a try. But yeah, I agree with the other guys; the price depends on the overall shape of the game. They always look better in pics than in person.

+1. Try going down $50 and cite the monitor as the reason if he wants to know why. If its in decent shape, $200 would be alright in my book. Hopefully, the monitor is the real problem. Those Midway card racks are a major bitch to work on.
 
here's the problem. he has a "tech" that told him it was worth 250 just for the cabinet alone and that you could convert it into any popular game. now i know as well as all of you that jamma doesn;t apply to this situation. he seems pretty firm with the price but i did ask to get a few more pics of everything. he seems liek an ok guy just is "ill informed" i suppose.
 
here's the problem. he has a "tech" that told him it was worth 250 just for the cabinet alone and that you could convert it into any popular game.

That's good information. So, you now know his tech is a complete idiot.

Question is, are the seller's impressions of the machine derived more from the tech, or from himself? Like others have said, GORF is a tricky machine to work on when it comes to the board stack / other electronics outside of the monitor....
 
here's the problem. he has a "tech" that told him it was worth 250 just for the cabinet alone and that you could convert it into any popular game. now i know as well as all of you that jamma doesn;t apply to this situation. he seems pretty firm with the price but i did ask to get a few more pics of everything. he seems liek an ok guy just is "ill informed" i suppose.

If you don't want to lose it, pay the $250. If you don't want to pay $250, put the ball squarely in his court. Give him your card with $200 written on the back and ask him to call you if he changes his mind. Politely say goodbye and leave...
 
It's a magical game.

P5280749.jpg
 
It is a great game. The voice taunts are great. I my Gorf but I got wayyy more money for it than it was worth at the time. I would probably get one again if the opportunity arose.
 
Gorf is awesome. I picked up mine 99% working (couple light bulbs were burnt out) in B+ shape for $170 from a "local" ebay auction back in October. I would definitely try to talk him down.
 
Monitor issues can usually be fixed fairly easily as a previous poster stated, usually with just a cap kit. Sometimes, they don't even need that. I just bought a game a few weeks ago and the guy stated that the monitor is scrambled but you can kind of see a picture. I realized even before I went to look at the game that it was JAMMA and it would be a neg sync monitor hookup. When I was inspecting the game, I saw that someone had tried to solder a jumper over the neg sync connections but had the JAMMA video hooked up to the pos sync. I said, no problem, I'll take the game off your hands for $100. Got it home, clipped off the solder, made a new connector for the neg sync, guess what - I got a picture! A little fine tuning of the colors and a cap kit, CRT works just fine!

Bottom line on the GORF, if you don't mind doing CRT repair (or learning how to) then $200 would be a good price if all else is in good shape on the cab. If you identify the monitor and read the CRT forums, you should be able to get a rough idea of what is causing the problem and how to fix it.

Best of luck!

-Muel
 
Depends on what you mean by "Lines in the screen". If you have yellow lines that cause the ship to explode when it touches one, then you have a bad RAM chip. If it's just a monitor problem, then yeah, those are real easy to fix. Bad RAM is very common on Gorfs, but there's a test ROM you can use to identify the bad chip - so fixing one of those is pretty simple too.

As with most arcade purchases, the condition of the cabinet is everything. Fixing the electronics is the easy part.

-Ian
 
As with most arcade purchases, the condition of the cabinet is everything. Fixing the electronics is the easy part.

-Ian

True for the most part. I would make Gorf to be an exception because of the card rack but some people don't mind working on those type of board sets. Not sure how much a working set goes for now but a couple of years ago, I had 2 non-working sets, a couple of extra cards, sound amp and a partial wiring harness. I was able to get $100 for it. However, on the bright side, if it all goes to hell and you can't fix the thing no matter what you do, you should still be able to get your money back out of it. If you can get it for $200, it is well worth the time, maybe even for $250.
 
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