Pretty much done / All done

The T-molding is installed, so the work is complete (for now).

Picture post!

EDIT 9/3/2009: Here's a dark pic with the new marquee and monitor installed:

It's hard to get a quality picture of a monitor.

The End Is Near

One of my last tasks was to apply the red stencil. Here is how it went:

First, the three-layer stencil is positioned on the cabinet:

Second, the back paper layer is removed, which makes the middle layer stick to the cabinet.

Third, the top paper layer is removed, which exposes the actual stencil.

Fourth, the paint is sprayed over the stencil:

Fifth, I go do some yard work while the paint gets tacky.

Sixth, I very carefully peel away the stencil:

Unfortunately, the previous JPG was saved at such a low quality that the red paint looks really bad. Well, it is actually smooth and doesn't look as ugly as in the previous picture.

Running

Yay I got to play the game! The first thing I noticed while playing is that the game has some slight slowdown when there is a lot going on. That is interesting because I've never encountered this slowdown when using the MAME or Xbox 360 version of the game. That totally affects the difficulty. I'll have to test this on another arcade machine.

The game constantly uses 150 watts. That's important to know.

The new adjusted task list is:

• Use red spray paint for the side art
• Install T-molding
• Install the new marquee when it comes in the mail
• Install the new monitor when it comes in the mail

That's right, I've got a new monitor on order. The old monitor works, but it's too blurry and distorted for me. I ended up mistaking some robots for humans, trying to save them, and dying. Oh, the blurriness has nothing to do with the moving "W" circles in the previous picture. Those are just animating circles.

There is no glass bezel available for sale now. I'll live with the old bezel for now, it's not that bad. But by looking at it up close, it's easy to notice all the scratches and chipped paint.

Weekend update

One of the big tasks for the weekend was to finish one layer of side art. I finished the blue stencil on both sides. Next weekend I'll apply the red stencil. The blue needs to be really dry before I stick the next layer on top of it.

There's just something about wet blue paint that screams out to insects: "Please land on me and die!" I had to pick off many little bugs that got stuck in the paint and then respray over the mess.

When the stencil is pulled off, two registration marks are left behind. Those are used to align the next layer.

I removed the Happ Competition sticks from the control panel and installed the Wico leaf sticks:

The game is working now. The last repair it needed was to replace a bad chip on the motherboard. I'll put up a picture of the game in action once everything is done. So, what's left?

• Apply the red side art (spray paint)
• Install T-molding around the edges
• Buy a new marquee
• Maybe buy a new bezel (tempered glass)

Then I'm done! There's not too much left before I can bring the cabinet inside the house and see what high score I can get on a real machine.

Wico sticks

The "new old stock" Wico sticks arrived today - that is good. These are what the Robotron cabinet originally had before someone replaced them with Happ Competition sticks:

• Leaf switches
• 4" handles
• Red ball top

Since I finished rebuilding the power supply, I thought I'd post a final picture of the board. Many things have been replaced, including the big yellow capacitor. It was still working OK, so I'm keeping it around just in case it becomes useful.

Actually there was one more change to the board after I took this pic. I removed the R10 resistor in order to increase the 5v power. Previously the RAM was getting 4.95v, but now it gets 5.05v.

Stumped

I replaced the voltage regulator chips on the power board and now it provides the ideal output. But the game still claims that a RAM chip is bad (1-3-1 error on the ROM board). That could be because of a bad power supply, but I'm pretty sure the power is good. And I know the RAM is good since I just replaced every chip and checked the voltage on each one.
Maybe there is a logic error on the motherboard. I don't have the tools to test each chip on the motherboard, so I am stuck. If only I had a known working motherboard...

EDIT:

I found someone sort-of-local that knows how to repair Williams games. He knew how to find the bad chip on the motherboard. After that, the game worked fine.

Lookie here!

First, the good news. The monitor works! I assumed that it would be broken, but the picture seems fine, although all I can see is the test rug pattern. That leads to the bad news.

Second, the power supply isn't given perfect voltages to the RAM chips. They are getting 4.8v and 11.8v instead of 5v and 12v. Some of the chips get the right voltages though. So now I gotta go back and debug the power supply again.

But this result is way better than I expected. I expected everything to be completely broken.