What's the worst arcade related screw up you've ever made?

Drove 3 hours round trip to a fellow collectors home to pick up a free monitor. When I was about 5 minutes away from home, I turned a corner too quickly and necked it.
 
Well, sadly I have necked a monitor (see the loading/moving/unloading disaster thread)....

I also have done the audio board connections wrong on a 20EZ.... WTF Nintendo.... make every connection different to prevent stuff like this except 2 that will make for a bad day.... was that some Nintendo engineer's secret 'win a prize' plan.... damn !

I have had a game fall over on me while getting it inside... but thankfully I was at the top of the two board ramp and it wasn't... so my upper body could not get hit by it. And somehow the way the hand truck landed, I wasn't even pinned.... I wiggled my way out, and back to work getting it in the house.

I've accidentally desoldered the wrong chip on a PCB when flipping it and getting the orientation wrong :).... but I just had to replace 2 chips then :).

I'm sure I've made some other mistakes, but that is all that is coming to mind at the moment.
Hopefully the ones I forgot are all little and irrelevant.
 
I reversed them two identical plugs on the AR2 and blew up an ESB Board set

I also necked the bench 14" monitor not long after converging it better than ever before

Also I hate scratching sideart, but remember each time, when I see the scar

I dropped a screwdriver (Yes the sharp end) onto a newly applied CPO
It still has the dent

Tore a Lunar Lander CPO, and a Star Wars CPO (Don't get me to do yours . .)
Fitted Rare sideart onto a Cruisn USA cab and it shrunk and looks awful. YUK

Loving wasting time and money
 
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I reversed them two identical plugs on the AR2 and blew up an ESB Board set

I also necked the bench 14" monitor not long after converging it better than ever before

Also I hate scratching sideart, but remember each time, when I see the scar

I dropped a screwdriver (Yes the sharp end) onto a newly applied CPO
It still has the dent

Tore a Lunar Lander CPO, and a Star Wars CPO (Don't get me to do yours . .)
Fitted Rare sideart onto a Cruisn USA cab and it shrunk and looks awful. YUK

Loving wasting time and money

Yeah man, not related but i remember my buddy wanted his signature jimmy page
les paul set up.. i accidently dropped a screwdriver onto the guitar about the neck pos pickup and nicked it pretty good. it was a brand new guitar too.
 
Getting in to this damn space-absorbing hobby to begin with.


Anyone want a Showcase cabinet w/GT Fore 2005 for CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP??


:D
 
Got a good deal on a centipede off of CL. Backed my truck into sellers driveway which was on a steep incline. Loading the pede into the bed on its back and whoosh! slid right into and smashed out the rear glass of my pickup. Lesson learned.
 
OK, I remembered another one ... :)

Was winter.
Rented a large cube van.
Went locally to vendor to pick up 4-5 games.
House was on hill with steep incline on the driveway.
Backed van up the snowy/icy driveway as close to house as possible.
Loaded one game - OK.
Loaded second game - OK.
Loaded third game - van started to slide down the driveway to the road.
Loaded pants with brown stuff watching it roll away.
Stopped somehow just before exiting the driveway into the road.
Left the van there and moved the other one or two games down the driveway to the van.
Got home and changed pants.
Unloaded the games on flat surface.
Fun. :)
 
OK, I remembered another one ... :)

Was winter.
Rented a large cube van.
Went locally to vendor to pick up 4-5 games.
House was on hill with steep incline on the driveway.
Backed van up the snowy/icy driveway as close to house as possible.
Loaded one game - OK.
Loaded second game - OK.
Loaded third game - van started to slide down the driveway to the road.
Loaded pants with brown stuff watching it roll away.
Stopped somehow just before exiting the driveway into the road.
Left the van there and moved the other one or two games down the driveway to the van.
Got home and changed pants.
Unloaded the games on flat surface.
Fun. :)

Did you end up starting a bobsled team? hahha.
 
My worst ones have all been when moving cabinets around:

  1. Asteroids Deluxe came off the hand truck when I was moving it at storage (by myself). Tried to catch it, and it proceeded to take a big hunk out of my leg and bruise the **** out of it.
  2. When picking up a SF Rush cabinet with a friend, the back half dropped on my foot, breaking 2 toes.
  3. Numerous sprains & bruises while taking cabinets downstairs.
 
I am a card carrying member of the following clubs:
CRT Tube Neckers - back door on the Dynamo cabinet got stuck and when I tapped it out it fell right on the tube. HSSSS...

ARII J6/J9 reversers club - on Tempest, when I was re-assmbling it, I reversed the J6/J9 plugs and fried a bunch of the ARII; got lucky that I hadn't connected the Tempest PCB yet, going step by step.
 
Taking pictures of my arcade to show a game or two that was for sale, then being hounded by jow to let him buy games in the background that weren't for sale.

He eventually ended up with 3 of my favorites. :(

I've only been able to replace one of the missing games. I'm probably screwed on the other two.
 
Got a good deal on a centipede off of CL. Backed my truck into sellers driveway which was on a steep incline. Loading the pede into the bed on its back and whoosh! slid right into and smashed out the rear glass of my pickup. Lesson learned.

I call it "diamonds & the rough".
 
CRT surgery

Newfound to the hobby I was trying to earn some cash by sticking 60-1 boards in my pile of newly acquired Franken cabinets. Everything had been converted and jammified!
I separated out Star Wars, tron, defender, centipede and punchout from the pile for the deco version process. First up was some horizontal shooter cabinet with questionable depth for verticàl gaming. When I turned the g07 monitor sideways I determined that the top right back corner would stick out 3/4 inch and you couldn't put back door on.
Due to impatience and infinite wisdom I decided that drastic measures are needed.
I got a sawsall and proceeded to cut off back part of the g07 framework!
Shortly thereafter it stopped working. My tech looked at it and said wtf!
I guess that the vibrations from sawing broke several tracers on the chassis board.
 
Necked my first tube and freaked out that I'd never be able to find a compatible 25" tube locally again. (Which thankfully I was wrong about).

Not sure if this is something I screwed up or a faulty part, but also somehow caught an isolation transformer on fire.
 
-using latex paint on a stencil job, then having to strip it all down, buy more stencils, do-over
-necked a new monitor, but it was a cheapo Korean one
 
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