The Joys of Arcade Ownership

So the lobby leading to my movie room is done, and by “done” I mean it’s an empty 10×20 room with carpet, waiting for me to fill it. The outside door is slightly off center, leaving about 7′ of space to the left and 10′ to the right. To the left, I plan to put a couple of arcade machines, a small snack bar, and a monitor that streams cartoons, music videos, and movie trailers. The vibe I’m going for is “80’s skating rink,” more or less.

On Sunday, Susan and I picked up one of my two remaining arcade games from our storage unit. We’ve been paying for a storage unit ever since we moved into this house, but are hoping to empty it out this month now that the workshop is done.

My old 60-in-1 multicade arcade cabinet was in worse condition than I remembered. The marquee light had burned out, the monitor I had used was too small (and off center), and worst of all, the bottom of the cabinet appears to have suffered some minor water damage while in storage. (Everything else in the unit is stored in Rubbermaid tubs, so no worries there.)

The first project I tackled was removing the old CRT computer monitor and replacing it with a 17″ flat panel monitor. In retrospect, chronologically, this is the last project I should have worked on. With a few L-brackets and a bit of ingenuity I was able to mount the new monitor in place. I thought this was going to be the most time consuming project, but ha ha. It was not.

Next, I decided to replace the burned-out fluorescent bulb in the top of the machine behind the marquee. While making a Walmart run for food, Susan picked up a replacement bulb for me. Replacing the bulb did not fix the problem. I was about to replace the ballast next when Susan noticed some of the wires running to the fixture looked burnt, so I decided to pull the whole thing out and replace it. Not only will that be the safer approach, but also the more economical. On Amazon, a replacement bulb is $19.99, a ballast is $16.99, and an entirely new fluorescent light fixture (with bulb) is only $14.99. So, that’s been ordered.

The light never worked before, so I didn’t let that stop me from moving the machine into the lobby. Using my old dolly, I wheeled the machine from the workshop back to the lobby. After moving arcade cabinets back and forth across a lumpy lawn for almost a decade at my old house, it was so nice to be able to have a straight shot across concrete for a change!

After moving the machine to the lobby, I scooted the machine across the carpet into place and that’s when I heard it — the sound of wood splintering off. A quick check of the floor confirmed that the cabinet was leaving a snail trail of splinters each time I moved it. This was when I noticed that the bottom of the cabinet appeared to have sustained some water damage while in storage. This discovery led to a side project where I built a pedestal out of 2x4s and slid it underneath the cabinet, in an attempt to get it up off the floor. This resulted in a cabinet that was too tall and a little wobbly. Things were going bad, and were about to get worse.

I wanted to check if the game felt too tall while playing it, so I plugged the machine into the wall, turned it on… and got nothing. I flipped the switch and checked all the connects, but there was no power. After quoting Q*Bert, I decided to move the whole cabinet back to the workshop and regroup.

I decided that laying the cabinet over on its side (on a bed of plastic milk crates) would make it easier to work on. I don’t know why I thought that. It’s not. All it did was cause 200 vintage tokens and random pieces of glass (?) to fall out.

Inside the cabinet I found a new(er) switching power supply mounted next to the cabinet’s original power supply from 1981. The original power supply was not being used, so I decided to remove and bypass it.

Next, I took an old power cord, cut and stripped the ends, and attached them to the newer power supply. After confirming that I was getting 110 volts to the power supply, I checked the output and found what we call in the business “a problem.”

Zero volts out across the board explains why the machine wouldn’t power up. Ironically, the original 39-year-old power supply down in the bottom of the cabinet had been working right all along. It was the newer one that had released its magic smoke and died.

My buddy Robb Sherwin is mailing me a spare power supply he had on hand, and I’ll patiently await the new fluorescent light fixture from Amazon. For the time being I’ll leave the thing laying on its side until the next round of repairs gets the machine both figuratively and literally back on its feet.

PS: WordPress just reminded me that I already replace the power supply on this machine once back in 2014. They really don’t make ’em like they used to!