Fire Truck. Racing to the Fire's

Well this is going to be the last update in the foreseeable future of my Fire Truck. It is now as complete and working as I want it to be, but there are a few items that I will come back to in the future when space and time permits. I would really like to remake the top cab panel and the two rear sections above and below the back door position. Theses parts are made of chipboard and have become slightly swollen, I'd like to replace them with MDF as I have with the new rear door and cover them in some black vinyl, similar to what was originally fitted. All the wooden edges would then line up and really top the cab off, but I'm restricted with space and now being winter I cannot work outside on the cab.

Anyway below is a photo of the rear cab with all the monitor wiring complete, I tapped the 240 volts for the monitor from one side of the interlock switches so it now essentially getting its power direct from the mains input when the interlock switches are closed and the cab is turned on.

After being happy with the cab innards, It was time to make a back door to replace the rotten one that came with the cab. It had a big section missing and was in a really poor state. The main door is a single piece of MDF cut to size, with a small section which holds it in place at the bottom.

Backdoor cut, lock hole drilled and edges sprayed

I was going to cover the door with some adhesive vinyl, but after seeing how the spray looked decided to cover the whole panel in spray and leave it at that for now. As you can see below the lock is fitted and the original Atari Information sheet was re-stapled to the inside of the door.

Backdoor complete

This next shot is a big of a tight angle but shows the door locked in place on the cab.

Backdoor fitted to cab

As mentioned above at some stage in the future I will replace the woodwork above and below the door along with the piece on the top of the cab.

The final piece of work needed to finish the cab off was to make a cardboard monitor surround. Even though my cab didn't have one, Phil who sold me the cab had one from the other Fire Truck cabs, so he lent it to me so I could make some replacements.

This was done using some heavy duty card from the Hobby Craft chain of shops and was carefully cut using multiple sharp blades, I disassembled the original monitor surround, drew round the pieces, cut them out and made the folds where necessary, finally I used hot melt glue to hold it all together.

Old bezel ready for templating

New pieces cut

Did I mention I made three of these today :)

My bezel, glued ready for fitting in the cab

New sticker with part Atari part number and a new custom revision.

In the cab. Nice!

Plexi glass installed, slight Vertical sizing adjustment need to be made.

Finally a few shots of the cab taken with a real digital camera and not my mobile phone.

Thanks for reading, and a bigger thanks go to Phil for letting me have one of the three cabs he picked up all those years ago.

FT-394 is ready to be played...

Enjoy, Mart.

Tempest Cabaret. Let the games begin.

I've been slowly working on my Tempest cabaret in the background of my other projects. I bought the cab in non working condition, in a poor/fair condition. Both the Main and AUX boards were confirmed as being faulty so I decided to buy a working board from Mark at Retroclinic.

Working for a brief period

Cab innards when I got it

After replacing a couple of fuses in the power brick the game played. The picture from the monitor wasn't sized correctly and after a while you would what I thought was horizontal collapse, any way before I knew it, the game had died, it was still playing but there was nothing on screen.

The cab has been in this condition for nearly a year and being my current last non working cab it was time to do something about it.

First up I stripped the whole cab down and took all the parts out. I then, fitted some new teflon leg levellers to make it easy to move about, Its a shame this hadn't been done previously as the bottom of the cab had been roughed up by being moved around with broken levellers in the past.

Everything was then thoroughly cleaned. The ARII was rebuilt with new Electrolytic capacitors, voltage regulators and power transistor. The Power Brick stripped and rebuilt with a new multi fuse holder and 'Big Blue' capacitor.

The Control Panel had seen better days, it was peeled off in certain areas and rust had bubbled through the exposed sections of control panel. A member of the UK arcade forums runs regular artwork orders for arcade marquees and CPO's. I stepped in and had a CPO made up.

The old control panel had the buttons and spinner removed and then the remaining parts of the CPO were removed with a scraper. The panel was then sanded and spayed in black satin paint. After lots of careful measurements and bits of sticky tape the new CPO was applied. It all went well with no creases or bubbles.

The buttons were cleaned and refitted, the spinner assembly was also cleaned, new bushes and a new repro spinner were fitted. Overall it looks pretty good, not quite as vibrant in colour as the original, but for now it will do.

Before (top) and after (bottom)

Next up... The monitor has a fault and so does the gameboard! You gotta love this hobby :)

Pole Position. Chequered Flag in sight

It's been a long time since the last update and tbh I've spent more time playing PP that finishing it off :) To recap from the last update back in August '13, I had just purchased a working boardset and had fired up the cab and played a few games. 

Fast forward 24 hours and the game didn't run correctly I was greeted with a blue screen on the monitor with a 'RAM 22' error. Mark from Retroclinic kindly sent me a hand full of them and after replacing the faulty RAM the game still didn't work! eek, ok so what had happened, well my ARII had shat its load. The 2N3055 Transistor had failed and caused the ARII to output around 7 volts (from memory. It may have been 8 volts) well this had the effect of blowing a protection diode on the CPU board, so a week later Mark had sorted it at my expense, and I had replaced the offending 2n3055's on both ARII's. The game was working once again.

Not content with using the ARII's for fear of similar failures I decided to go down the route of installing a switcher PSU into the cab to run the gameboards' leaving the ARII's to run the audio amplification.

Running a switch mode power supply for the 5V supply

I jumpered the 5V line and the ground lines across test points throughout both boards, and removed the 5V edge connector feeds which came from the ARII. Fingers crossed the board have been playing fine for months now.

Next I needed to make a back door for the cab, I had already remade the bottom section of the cab when I was initially putting it together, but with having a new mdf door, it made sense to remake to bottom section so it all matched.

Rear Door made and hole cut ready for a lock

Another new bottom section of the cab

Fitted to the cab ready for paint

I still need to spray the door, that will get done in the first instance of some fine dry weather. After that it will be painting the coin doors (the frame is already done), remounting the mechs and then making a cardboard monitor surround. I'll get there soon!

Fire Truck. Pye update.

Well after being tipped off on the Jamma+ forums that a Black and White TV made by Pye had gone unsold on Ebay, I made no hesitation in getting in touch with the seller and striking a deal. After a 100 mile round trip one evening this week I had an 'untested' monitor which seemed to suit FT's needs. 

It's a 23" screen, had already been modified with a composite video and audio circuit (not that I need the audio) and it has no screen burn, things were looking good!

Crappy photo but this is the TV

First thing first, there was no fuse in the plug, an easy fix but I did wonder why it wasn't fitted, next up was to remove the back cover and see what was inside.

Back cover removed

Well nothing on the inside looked smoked or burnt, there was a bit of cable hackery going on for the extra circuit that been added, after 10 mins of checking the connectors were all seated, I plugged in a video feed from Fire Truck into the input on the back of the case, made sure it was switched to video input and powered up...

First power up with FT's video input

Well it was a good start, you cant tell from he image above but the image was rolling in horizontal and vertical directions. So at this point I powered off the monitor and discharged the tube, I needed to see what adjustments were going to be available to help me fix this issue. There were a few adjustable variable resistor's on the board but from the component side there were no markings as to what the were for, a bit more luck... on turning the board over to solder side there were some nice markings on the underside depicting what they should do.

Click me for larger photo!

So after tentatively making these adjustments which the chassis back in place, I got a good solid image which filled the screen nicely. The next job was to de-case the screen and remove all the unnecessary bits which I didn't want cluttering up the cab.

TV innards removed

Tube mounted in Original Atari frame and Pye TV chassis mount attached. 

At this point I decide that I would power up the screen with the parts loose fitting and try and work out what parts I could remove to leave the chassis as lean as possible in terms of parts. This is an arcade machine and doesn't need to that tuning dials still attached.

Mains transformer, video input board, and tuning dials laid loose to test

Mains transformer mounted, tuning dials gone, video board in process of being remounted

I was now in a position where the tuning dials were gone and I had removed the brightness and contrast adjusters from the original circuit and traced their wiring so they could be re-soldered onto a mounting plate that needed to now make.

Video board with brightness & contrast being wired in 

Video board all mounted

In the photo above the red wire is powering the video amplifier board, the left side mini coax is the video output which is wired directly onto the chassis circuit board, the other mini coax is he video input from a BNC connector which I mounted on the plate below the PCB with the brightness & contrast adjusters.

After a few evenings work this is how it turned out, I'm very happy with how minimal it became considering it was once a TV sitting in someone's front room no doubt. 

Completely remounted. click for a larger photo

Here's the parts left from the original TV

Leftover Pye...Case, audio amplifier, tuning dials, speakers and some wire

And finally...Mounted in the cab, and powered up :o)

The way it was meant to be played! 23 inches of black & white magic

Thanks must got to Tony (tb2000) for making me aware of this screen, the seller for not binning it when no one bid on the auction, This has been a great week for me and the FT cab, the Karma gods have finally paid me back after what feels like a long absence.

Next time will end the rebuild with a new back door, locks and monitor bezel. Until then thanks for all the comments, its been great to have such enthusiasm for the cab shown. I'm looking forward to completing this now getting lots of plays on it, initial testing has put a smile on my face for sure!

Fire Truck. 1st power up

Well after the game board came back from repair, I couldn't hold off and wait for everything else to be completed so decided I needed to power it up and see what would happen...

The video is a genuine 1st power up once everything was plugged back together:

It turned out pretty successfully, with only a couple of LED's on the Control Panel buttons having failed, I have since swapped these out with some working ones, the image from the monitor is poor in the video but I can assure you that's a temporary measure and will be rectified in the future before I declare the cab to be complete.

The rubber matting was completed when I made my last post, but I forgot to add a photo.

New rubber matting installed.

Since the above video was made I have put a 19" temporary video monitor in the cab and have been busy play testing it.  :)

Play testing with a larger monitor

I have also fitted a 'non invasive' credit button which is activated by using the coin reject button on one side of the coin mech. The left side is for 'free' credits and the right side still take 25 Cent coins. I've also fitted a bulb holder to replace the one that had been cut off so the 25 cent sign is now illuminated.

New bulb holder and Credit button.

After having some fun playing I decided to have a look at the monitor mounting framework that was part of the original monitor. It turns out that some woodwork was missing from the cab, I made a new part and fixed it to the cab, which is highlighted in the image below.

The monitor (that I don't currently have!) will now sit in a wooden framework that attaches to the two pieces in the image above.

Sorry for the slow progress, I'd have liked this resto to have been finished a while back but I've wasted a few days trying to get some colour monitors to work unsuccessfully with the game, I really need an original black and white CRT if anyone has one laying around spare?

Next time... The cab will be completed. Remaining items to completion are as follows:

• Find, fit and test a suitable monitor.
• Make a new back door for the main cab, paint it or cover it in black vinyl.
• Make a cardboard monitor bezel to fit the cab.
• Fit locks to the main coin door and the back door.

Once the above are complete I'll make another, better produced video and post up some quality photos of the finished cab.

Until next time, thanks for reading, Mart. 

Fire Truck. Gas pedal clean up.

Small update from my last few evenings work...

The gas pedal on the cab looked in a pretty bad state, plenty of wet shoes and cold storage had caused the surface of the pedal to to turn a lovely glowing rust colour. I wasn't sure if I would need to spray this black to 'hide' any damage but as things got this has turned out nice :)
The metal backing plate was also sanded back, primed and sprayed in black, I with I had shares in black spray paint as I have used lots of it in the past year or so.

Pedal ass'y as found on the cab

Eek! elbow grease required, anyone got some!

A good bit of cleaning and polishing later...

Gripped up, with metal plate sprayed. Mmmm.

That's all folks! Only a quick update as time permits, the next update will hopefully be of the cab cosmetics complete, minus the monitor which will require a lengthy post as I've got some work to do retrofitting an LCD monitor ;o) a CRT monitor to replace the missing 23" Black and White which would have originally been installed.

Thanks, Mart.

Fire Truck. Main cab, Work begins...

Moving on from the rear seat, its time to get the main cab on the road so it can put out some fires! Work carried out so far in no particular order.

1. Cab stripped out of all components and thoroughly cleaned.
2. New Leg levellers fitted and the cab had none, no doubt this had caused some of the damage around the bottom of the cab.
3. Laminate sides glued back on.
4. Small repair to a bottom section of the cab that broken off.
5. New T-Moulding fitted.
6. Top and rear section of cab re-fitted back into place with glue and original nails.
7. New power switch fitted as the last one had been home to some wasps and I think they ate most of it!
8. Wire loom had a bath and some new connectors fitted as the plastic had become brittle and snapped off the locking lugs.
9. Power brick stripped and cleaned. All five fuse holders replaced as the old ones had gone brittle, both the internal metal and the plastic cases broke off when opening the holder to check the fuses.
10. Steering assembly stripped and cleaned

Time for some photos...

Empty cab full of grime.

All the innards.

I thought about taking the whole cab to bits but decided against it!



After a clean up with paint on the transformer and new fuse holders



Damage to the laminate side. New screws adding strength to the base.



More T-Cut applied to clean the sides.



Steering assembly stripped for maintenance.

There's plenty more to do but things are moving on nicely, more soon.

                             

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