Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
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Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
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Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#2I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require before starting up again? I imagine, at the very least, cleaning corrosion from the contacts of all mechanical switches and changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Are the boards salvageable or would the cabinets just be gutted and a modern (MAME?) machine be substituted (or is this just sacrilege?)
Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#3I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require before starting up again? I imagine, at the very least, cleaning corrosion from the contacts of all mechanical switches and changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Are the boards salvageable or would the cabinets just be gutted and a modern (MAME?) machine be substituted (…
Cabs from this vintage would have lots of individual components with probably a lot of through hole mounting. With the water damage being more recent I'd expect most of them to be serviceable. It would be most exciting if there were some for which no ROM dumps already exist. A game could be returned from the grave.
Since these games were grabbed by collectors I'd expect most of them to be fixed up like new. No need to go to all of this trouble if you are just making a MAME cabinet.
Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#4This article is nearly 5 years old. I'd be curious to know where all the arcade games ended up and what the total value of them were all worth after resale.
As for the ship, apparently in 2019 there were plans to host a zombie-themed event on it, but the plans are now delayed indefinitely: https://www.dailypost.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/zombie-ev...
Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#5I somewhat recently came across this youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9mrDyAw2EvsnFozzrxLrmQ. "Joe's Classic Video Games". They frequently produce fairly lengthy and in-depth videos about doing maintenance and restoration on older arcade games.
Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#6who would believe it - northwest Wales. if you're not familiar with the area, be sure not to ask George Bush https://youtu.be/S0ZG5-WB_ho
Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#7I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require before starting up again? I imagine, at the very least, cleaning corrosion from the contacts of all mechanical switches and changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Are the boards salvageable or would the cabinets just be gutted and a modern (MAME?) machine be substituted (…
> changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect?
Given the timeframe the article quoted for the most recent cabinet (1980-1981), they all predate the capacitor plague [1] by nearly two decades. It is possible that the capacitors in the PSU's of these games might still be close enough to spec. to not need any replacement. But given the folks who picked them up, they are likely to test everything extensively and then decide what to replace based on that testing.
Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#8I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require before starting up again? I imagine, at the very least, cleaning corrosion from the contacts of all mechanical switches and changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Are the boards salvageable or would the cabinets just be gutted and a modern (MAME?) machine be substituted (…
> changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Given the timeframe the article quoted for the most recent cabinet (1980-1981), they all predate the capacitor plague [1] by nearly two decades. It is possible that the capacitors in the PSU's of these games might still be close enough to spec. to not need any replacement. But given the folks who picked them…
I knew this happened, but I never knew why it happened so often- or that it was actually coded into a word(Capacitor Plague) with a timeframe.(99-07) I just thought we quit buying dirt cheap caps in consumer electronics. I have not seen a motherboard pop caps in a long time.
Nice to know a true root cause and better understand all those boards I trashed long ago.
Pretty exhaustive wiki on the topic, thanks for that.
Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#9I know that somewhere there is an old IBM mainframe connected to a bunch of 3278's, 3279's and 3290's waiting to be saved.
Re: Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016)
#10I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require before starting up again? I imagine, at the very least, cleaning corrosion from the contacts of all mechanical switches and changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Are the boards salvageable or would the cabinets just be gutted and a modern (MAME?) machine be substituted (…
>> I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require before starting up again?
I used to have a small collection until I moved recently and sold most of them. The ones in my basement never degraded much, but suffered some common issues which are reasonably fixable. One sat with a monitor problem in my garage for 17 years. I'm in the US midwest, so that meant cold winters to thermal shock things when I'd open the garage door and such, but no direct exposure to the elements. When it came time to move, I fired up that game and it worked exactly as good or bad as the day I set it aside in the garage. My vector games were sold to a friend at lowish prices because I wanted them to go to a good home and they needed a little work - but they are physically in almost the same condition as when I got them 25 years ago. A box of boards I gave to the guy you fixed my monitor just because I had no use for them and again wanted them to go to a good home. My guess is most of those will work just fine. The one from the garage is the one I kept and it's beautiful in my new basement.
It's an interesting hobby. One I mostly gave up, but I had to hang on to one cabinet and a few boards that were most important to me.