Un-conversion question

KazooBR

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I've got a Gorf cabinet coming in a couple days with Time Pilot 1984 in it. I can see from the pictures that some wires are cut so I originally assumed I'd have to get a new harness. But the more I think about it I wonder if this could be saved. So the questions:

- when this was converted, would wires in the edge connectors typically be moved to different positions? I always thought a conversion was just swapping the PCB but with wires cut there's obviously more involved.

- Does anyone know what would have been changed with the joystick? The owner says some of those wires appear to be cut too.

This will be the most challenging refurb I've done - my other 6 games have been just cap kits, trackball rebuilds and the like. Any other thoughts or suggestions to bring this back to it's original glory?

Thanks,
Brian
 

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Gorf

It looks like they changed out the entire harness and hacked in part of the ps harness. I have all the parts you need to convert this back if you are looking to tackle such a task.
 
Wow, they kept the original linear.
You would be better off buying a complete gorf unless you had the parts already.
 
Oh, I'm aware that I've got some work ahead of me and I'm fine with the old power supply - I'd prefer to keep it closer to original anyway. I think my challenge is to understand what I need and acquire parts. I've got all the time in the world and am doing this for the fun of the restore. Maybe you know more than I and it's a warning I should heed ... but I think it'll be a fun project.

As I mentioned in our PMs, I've not done board-level repairs on main boards but tracing wires, replacing parts, doing monitor repairs and cap kits are things I've done and so once I get a boardset and wiring harness I should be in good shape.

I do plan to learn along the way. What makes this a poor candidate for conversion back to original?

Thanks!
Brian
 
I do plan to learn along the way. What makes this a poor candidate for conversion back to original?

It's not really a poor candidate, just a game that's a pain to assemble if you're missing parts... You need:

Working boardset
Wiring harness
Video interface board and audio amplifier (if missing)

The original Gorf wiring harness is kind of complicated, it didn't have an edge connector, just a two rows of .1 molex pins for the video/control/sound interface and a .156 Molex for the power supply to the card rack. The Gorf boardset is a metal card rack with a backplane, and six circuit boards plugged into it. They're notoriously a bit hard to work on. The video output from the boardset does not go straight to the monitor. There is a video interface board that you need to convert the signals from the game board to analog video for the monitor. It's small, about the size of a floppy disk, and mounts to the middle inside left of the cabinet, looking from the back. Gorf does not have onboard audio amplifiers - the two channels are amplified by a small amp that mounts to the back of the coin box.

Also, if the lamp board is missing, you'll need that too.

The original Gorf power supply is less than stellar, but if yours works, then that's a step in the right direction. Might need to be repaired/replaced though, mine was nearly working, but was not steady. New caps and a few replacement diodes brought it back to life.

If you can find all the parts, and you're willing to do some learning and repairing, then by all means, this is a great project. Gorf is a great game, and an awesome cabinet to boot.

-Ian
 
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It's not really a poor candidate, just a game that's a pain to assemble if you're missing parts... You need:


If you can find all the parts, and you're willing to do some learning and repairing, then by all means, this is a great project. Gorf is a great game, and an awesome cabinet to boot.

-Ian

Uhum..


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I have all the parts you need to convert this back if you are looking to tackle such a task.
 
Thanks RetroHacker for the info. That's the detail I was after!!!

I'll post an update when I see what I'm actually working with later this week.
 
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