Due to Survivor and Olympic hockey, I wasn't able to get the 440 kit installed last night. BUT, I was able to get it installed this morning, so that the boys won't be disappointed when they get home from school.

Ready To Be Made More Bueno	More Bueno
Welcome To The COLLEX'N	Make Your Choice
Crossbow
Cheynne
Catch-22
Combat
Crackshot
Chiller
Clay Pigeon
Hit 'N' Miss
Who Dunit

Last night I spent 4 hours working on Unknown-1 (ProTip: The polarity for C312 is misprinted on the solder side of the board. It is correct on the parts side of the board), only to end up with things worse than when I started. It's bad enough that DigiKey shipped the wrong 820u capacitor (which I managed to make fit) and that I totally missed a big 220u that I don't have a replacement for, but the hula remains and now I have convergence problems. I guess it's about time that I learned to properly set the convergence, but that definitely wasn't on my roadmap when I decided to fix Unknown-1.

The good news is that the doorbell just rang and I found my friendly neighbourhood Canada Post man smiling -- "This one is actually for you and they didn't ding you for any taxes or duties". Normally, the packages are for Deb and come with taxes owing. He caught the "little kid seeing the Giant Tinkertoy set at Christmas" gleam in my eyes and said "I guess you've been waiting for this one."

Damned right I have.

Without further adoo, I present Exidy 440 COLLEX'N kit, serial number 027, resting on the kickass t-shirt that Mike sent with the kit.

It is going to be a really long day ... today is feature-lock day for the next version of VirtGate and I promised that I would let Kevin (and Gilby) help me install the kit.

This fun will have to wait until tonight, which is, I guess, good news, since it gives me time to pick up the "6-pack of your favourite beer" that Mike recommends as part of the installation process.

My 440 kit is in transit, somewhere between Chicago and Toronto.

It almost would have been worth driving to pick it up in Chicago -- I've done that drive in just over 6 hours, but that was when I was young, stupid and had a fast car. Now I am old, wise and drive a frakking minivan (no way I could have fit an arcade cabinet or a pinball in the Acura) and have to be content to wait for Canada Post to deliver my kit with a smile (the Canada Post guy loves hearing the details whenever he drops off a piece of arcade history, even though he is firmly ensconced in the middle of GenerationXBox).

So ... I need some sort of arcade-related project that will be quick to finish but keeps up the momentum.

I've been meaning to do a rebuild on the monitor in a bartop that I picked up at auction some years ago for $50. The lot was listed as "HARDWARE", which is auction-speak for "the damned thing is broken". It should have sold for $25, but I was late raising my card ... by about a half-second. It seemed like a crappy result, but I ended up with a "Starburst parking lot opportunity" to get my money back. Something, however, made me decline the offer and take the little cabinet home.

Lo and behold, the damned thing worked (once the appropriate wires were reconnected) AND it had a working Team Tetris board inside. BONUS!

I cleaned it up, repainted the trim, installed new vinyl on the control panel and put on some new T-Molding. It was a pretty little machine that I would be able to turn around for a quick sale and profit.

Then I installed the Rygar board that I had previously picked up on eBay as "UNTESTED", which is eBay-speak for "the damned thing is broken". Lo and behold, the damned thing worked and played AMAZING in that little cab (thanks to a nice Wico 8-way and buttons). My little bartop was going nowhere and was doomed to be a permanent addition to the game room.

I almost didn't notice the teensy, tiny little hula that was showing up on the monitor.

Well, the hula is now little less teensy, not so tiny and I have finally decided to get off of my butt and yank the chassis for a rebuild.

I tried to identify the chassis using Bob Roberts' What's My Monitor ? page, but it turns out that it is listed as Unknown 1. I broke out my magnifier and proceeded to assemble a list of caps to be replaced ... there are 40 FREAKING CAPS -- for a little 13" monitor!! I have a spare 13" WG that came out of my uncle's exercise equipment and is pristine, but it looks really nice on my testbench, so it's time for me to suck it up and just fix Unknown 1. I see lots of soldering in my future.

To make matters worse, there were a boatload of 315V 2.2u and 3.3u caps that I didn't have in stock (nor did I have suitable substitutes), so I had to place an order with Digikey, which arrived (as expected) 1 business day later (e.g. today), but with the wrong bloody B+ filter cap (capacitance is right, voltage is fine, but the damned pinout is wrong -- so I need to finesse the fit).

Here is a picture of the biggest capkit I have ever assembled:

This afternoon was consumed with swimming lessons for Gilby, so I have some RealWork(tm) to catch up on before I can turn my attention to such recreation.

Tune in tomorrow for the thrilling, chilling adventures in soldering!

After a brief delay thanks to the family stomach flu, and a battle with the stupid cabinet trying to get the chassis back on the frame, dropping a screw down into the board sandwich, requiring me to remove the mounting racks and boards to retrieve it, I got the chassis reinstalled. I still need to tweak the contols a bit, but will wait until I have a helper nearby to help guide me ... or at least hold up a mirror.

OK, I got bored of waiting and just did the "duck into the back of the cabinet, reach around the high voltage components, turn a knob that you can't see and run around to the front to see what happened" routine. Repetitive and frustrating, but it does work.

The foldover is gone, as are the lines, waves and bizarre blob in the lower right. Yay!

It looks like Jeff over at Rotheblog may be working on some artwork, which would spare me the  embarrassment of trying to assemble my own artwork! Double Yay!

And, best of all, Mike has indicated that all paid-up orders should ship by Friday! Triple Yay!

I have made some progress in terms of vectorizing characters from the artwork fom various 440 games:

I am still looking for decent scans from the other games. I have Carl from Combat, but the resolution is terrible, so the resulting vectorization is crap. Also trying to learn enough GIMP and Inkscape to do something neat with the text for the marquee.

Dave and Mike are well on schedule with the multi kits (first kits shipped today), so I really need to get this monitor out of the cabinet and fix it.

Unfortunately, pulling the entire monitor was starting to look like it would require disassembling the frame, so I grabbed my trusty driver and plier kit, along with my fancy-shmancy discharging tool (the picture tube can hold a charge of about 20,000V, so you need to get rid of that charge before disconnecting the chassis from the tube) and discharged the tube in the cabinet, then removed the chassis.

Grab our caps and map ...

... add in soldering gear and we are good to go!

Capping is fairly straightforward work -- desolder the old cap and solder in the new one. Just be careful to get the polarity right and it is best to do one cap at a time just to keep things straight. One of my pet peeves about working on old boards that others have worked on before is that they are frequently covered in sticky, icky flux. The resulting crud not only threatens the integrity of your solder joints, but is also ugly and gets on your hands. So, while I am working, I like to use a little rubbing alcohol and a toothbrush to clean things up.

Then, after my handiwork is approved by Inspector G, we are done.

I'm going to wait, let any remaining alcohol dry off, then double-check the caps for value and polarity before reconnecting to the tube.

Maybe I should do some maintenance on the rifle as well ? Hmmm.

Damn! I need to get my butt in gear and get that monitor capped. I couldn't pull it last night because Kevin and I both wanted to play Cheyenne for my birthday. Sad thing is that the monitor distortion is slowing worsening and making things less and less playable. Time to fix that mofo!

And to whet my appetite, Mike posted pics of the front and the back of the official t-shirt:

Saaaaaweeeet!!!!!!

I've already sent my email requesting a final balance so that I can get mine ASAFP!

http://revengeofthenerdsv.blogspot.com/

Well, in anticipation of 440 Multi, it's time to fix the monitor in my Cheyenne cabinet. When I picked it up at Gerald's auction, you could barely make anything out -- no sync and all sorts of blurring and distortion. After a little tweaking of the controls, I got it sync'd up and playable, but it is still showing some folding and lines, as well as a nice distortion on the lower right side (which, according to one of Randy Fromm's articles, and my prior experience with the WG 4900 tracks back to a bad bypass filter cap).

I didn't have time today to do much and tommorrow's schedule is packed, so I probably won't get to actually working on the monitor until Thursday or Friday and, even then, won't have much time. So ... tonight, i am going to do the prep work (which, for some reason, I find fun).

First, let's start with a hopefully fully-stocked cabinet of electronic components:

Then, make sure that we have our magnifying glass to read the teeny tiny printing on the teeny tiny caps, not to mention reading the monitor boards and schematics.

Next, I grab a cap list from the Ionpool.net, the troubleshooting flowchart from Randy Fromm's Technical Department (not really required for a basic capkit, but I always like to have one on hand when working on a monitor), as well as a CapMap. I typically take the diagram of the parts side of the PCB from the manual (which I grab from ArcArc if I don't already have it). The CapMap comes in handy when you can't find things on the board -- I like to put the map beside my work area and lay the caps out on it. it is an easy way to keep track of things.

And, after what seems like a lot of effort, we end up with a box of capacitors ready to be installed. This is one of the pricier capkits out there due entirely to that big D-battery-looking 560u 200V cap, which weighs in at $12!

Now, all that remains is to pull the monitor, discharge it (not as scary as people think), then replace the caps ... and keep my fingers crossed that I don't make things worse.

Stay tuned ...