My Gameroom
Jrok Pengo High Score Save Kit Released!
I was surfing last night and I saw that Jrok finally finished his Pengo High Score Saver kit back in late May. I am pretty excited about this, it has high score saving with extended tables, freeplay, attract mode, it can determine how fast the draw is of the blocks in the beginning, and you can choose which soundtrack you want. The last two options are paramount for me because I hate the soundtrack the game has now, probably a lot because I am used to playing it on Mame. (Say what you will).
The thing is, do I get the pack and have it sit until I get the game working? I think not. I don’t think I should plug it in to see if it fixes something either because what if the short blows this processor? So, it will probably have to wait, but maybe I will have to make this more of a priority fix as well. Hell I could take it out to Wagner Games considering I don’t have any money into the game so far in theory.
May 24th, 2007
Got the game into the basement tonight, for it’s final resting place for awhile. The monitor was great in the garage until I moved it around, and then when we moved it into the basement it got better again. Was a ton of work though, figured out that we can’t have a game facing out with it’s back against the window. The back really has to be against the guest room closet wall. But it works.
Cutting wood for Mr. Do! control panel
Tonight I went over to a friend’s to use some of his tools, and have him help me cut up a board to use on the back side of the control panel. It was some composite wood from a shelf, that we cut down to size, drilled the holes for the joystick and the two buttons, and then did some holes for the bolts to hold the clips on. He had a cool drill bit with a counter sink, but the hole size was just a fraction too small. Plus, the holes we drilled with his wood blades were just a touch too small. So, now I need to see if I can possibly purchase some wood blades to make the holes bigger, and look again for small but longer carriage bolts. But things are very close.
May 16th, 2007
Got out tonight and worked on the control panel. The control panel I am using is a rusted, beat up Pac-man with most of the chewed up overlay still on it. I had gradiose ideas of taking that off in one piece and keeping it, but sad to say, in the end it was anything but in one piece. I did some scraping to take away the outside plastic layer with a 5 in 1, and then started trying different chemicals to get it off.
I had read Acetone worked really good for getting Midway overlay’s off, but all that did was take off the painted artwork for the overlay, it did nothing for the 3M adhesive. I tried Goof Off, and that worked fairly good, but the best was the same remaining paint stripper I used on the cabinet (Stripeeze). That got me right down to the painted panel.
I got it sanded down fairly well. I thought briefly about leaving it as just the metal color, but I would have had to work that much harder on the details to get out all the small areas of paint left. I didn’t need to in painting it over, so I wiping it down, and gave it two coats of spray paint before the night was over. Looking pretty cool, amazing how nice it looks after you do that. I was pretty surprised when I sanded down the exposed panel on the Pac-man I have.
Next is setting up the wood for the backside, which a friend was going to help me but he may be busy for awhile now, I am not sure.
Ms. Pac-man Marquee Light Working.
Kenny was over this weekend, and he took a look at my connection behind my Ms. Pac-man marquee. He changed out the starter with the one that was in the Pengo, as well as the bulb, and found that both the Pengo starter and bulb worked fine.
So looked back at the light fixture and figured out that it was just that the connection needed a little push and on the marquee came! Exciting to have that lit up.
Unfortunately, I now realize why the operator in Ohio was selling this marquee. Although there is great color, there are some significant scratches. I don’t think I got a bad deal per say, I just know that deep scratches on the artwork of a marquee, which would have to come from behind, wouldn’t happen naturally. So to say, “Hey, that’s just the age of the game” doesn’t exactly work.
But getting another one isn’t high on my priority list with what else I have to do with my other games. Maybe sometime I’ll just come across one when talking with people.
May 11th, 2007
I finally made it back to the garage for a short period of time.
Went up in the attic and think I found a piece of composite board that I can use for the spacing on the backside of the control panel. I also installed the PCB holding brackets and secured that inside the cabinet.
It sounds like Tuesday I may be getting that piece of wood cut out at a friend’s house. I have the sander for the panel, so that would leave very little left to getting that done and out of the garage.
Pengo PCB problem – Thick Yellow Horizontal Bars
Alex emailed me back and said that the board is not something he would work on. He gave me that name of someone else who might be able to, John Robertson. I emailed him, and he let me know that he could, but is two months behind on the boards he has to currently repair. So, I don’t think that is not a very good option.
On a related note, in less than a month, Tim has bought two Pengo’s for really good deals. The one seems to play blind, so he may have two working boards. I don’t know if he will sell me one or not, but we shall see.
I tried to figure some things out about the PCB today online. I research the sound a lot, seems the bad pot that causes the static on the game is very common. I don’t know if the symptons of the sound caused the PCB problems or not (even though I doubt it), but the other thing I read was that the power supply does seem to go back fairly easy. The original Pengo power supply will under or over supply voltage on a regular basis, so that made me think that maybe I should just try to put in a switcher and see what that does.
