Star Wars Trilogy Arcade caught in my tractor beam

So a few weeks back I saw a Star Wars Trilogy Arcade game on eBay. Now this is one of my favorite arcades, and one of my favorite Star Wars games. I’m a huge Star Wars geek, and this was just so much fun to play when I was younger, and even now. Last time I played it locally was at an arcade down by the shore, and after that I managed to find it in an arcade in Las Vegas. However since the game is from 1998 it’s harder to find these days, especially as arcades are being down-sized etc.

A New Hope

So I ended up bidding, and I actually won! The damage was around $370, however shipping wasn’t an option and I had to pick this beast up. Long story short and over 200 miles later I pickup the arcade with my girlfriend’s parents van and drive it home. I finally get it home and I find that it’s 1 inch too large to fit in the doorway for the room I wanted to place it in. Thankfully I was able to take off the joystick area and it fit through the door with the help of my friend pushing.

Now it’s beat up, I didn’t mention that before. But this thing’s in rough shape. The wood is damaged, the monitor is showing funky colors, etc, this thing literally fell off a truck, and it survived! I didn’t get a chance to test it that night, but the next day I did. Plugging in all the odd connectors and wires to each other. I carefully re-connected everything from the very few photos I took of the insides… (Tip: ALWAYS take a million photos of the inside of an electronics component before you start disconnecting wires, you’ll think you will remember. But after a while it all looks the same!). I plugged the power cord into a power strip, so I can have easy access to the on/off switch in case the machine decided to catch on fire. So I flip the switch, and I hear an increasingly loud whirling noise. I panic and shut the system off. Well it turns out there was a cable in front of the fan, so as the fan got faster it made a horrible noise. Whoops! I fix that, and turn it on again – Ta-Dah! It works!

The screen has some burn-in and some colors are washed out/displayed oddly, but the arcade works. She actually works! 😀 I was very excited at this point. I played around a bit and was very happy to get it working.

The Arcade Strikes Back

Over the next few days I’d tinker with it more. I installed it’s subwoofer and as of last night I’ve soldered new ‘Test’ and ‘Service’ buttons to the cabinet. The issue was that these buttons were broken. So now they worked again. Now here comes what I regret, in the Endor level I could never aim toward the far right of the screen. I assumed the joystick just needed to be calibrated. I saw an option in the service menu, so I went ahead and set it up the best I could. Well, for whatever reason this screwed everything up! 🙁

The joystick will now only move vertically, and not horizontally, it’s also all the way to the left. No matter how many times I re-try, or re-read the instructions I have the same result. One odd thing is, under ‘Game assignments’ if I set the cabinet from U/R (Upright) to Dx (Deluxe, Bench) the controls work, but a bit differently, obviously needing of some calibration. So I have a feeling there is something that’s being shorted out, or just not working. The service menu shows the joystick moving correctly, but the game does not. Also I can no longer access the ‘Input’ menu on the Service screen, it will flash for a second and exit. Something is wrong and I have to figure it out…
Update! So the issue was the joystick. I took apart the joystick area and examined the ‘volume knob’ (the knob that sits on the joystick and moves when the joystick is moved left to right, etc) This knob wasn’t sitting right. It turned too far so the movement of the joystick wasn’t making a good connection. So I removed the knob via the four screws… there was an odd bolt in the way so it was hard to remove the knob’s faceplate. Once removed I re-set the position of the knob and screwed everything into place. I used a lot of duct-tape fearing that glue may not be a good idea. Weeks later and it’s still playing fine. I do notice now that the volume knob must have shifted every so slightly. As the cross-hair on the screen no longer will go to the far left side. Thankfully no enemies are on the far left side, they are often on the far right side. Either way I may have to open it up again when I have time. But it’s working at least. 🙂

Things to fix:

Joystick – this is my top priority! (Edit: I got this working! 😀 I needed to adjust the ‘volume’ knob on the joystick to sit properly!)

Monitor – colors are all weird, degaussing didn’t help much.

Wood cabinet – some cracked wood, need to bolt / screw brackets in to help support it.

Marque:- I have some of the pieces, but this needs replacing, I put the light for it somewhere… now where was it?

The Trenton Computer Festival: Then and Now

The Trenton Computer festival is the longest continuously running personal computer show in the world (To quote Wikipedia) and was started in 1976.  Although they’ve moved around from place to place the show has always been a great place to find affordable computers & electronics as well as a great place to meet friends and vendors from years past. It’s a place you can get together and geek out as well, sharing stories and memories about past shows and experiences with others. The show consists of  keynotes, tutorials and talks. There are also the vendors, inside vendors and outside vendors at the Flea Market area. The Flea Market area is my favorite, the vendors are friendly, knowledgeable and usually willing to give you a good price. The inside vendors are okay, but usually they stray a bit away from computers, you’ll find things like dental tools and cleaning products, odd really. Their prices inside are also a bit high, but they’re more commercial and even charge tax.

My friends and I started going around 2003 or so to the show. At this time I was in High School and I learned about the show from my Friends Gabe and Todd. I couldn’t drive yet, but he drove me there. I remember picking up a Graphite iMac DV for $40, it was a steal at the time. I had it working and running for years until I sold it on Craigslist for around what I originaly paid for it. I remember it needed an external hard drive power cable, but it ran fine despite being a bit warm or hot. I also remember coming in 2005 and buying a ’30th Anniversary TCF’ shirt. Last year in 2010 I picked up a purple 1998 TCF hat, that was a fun freebie. You can read more about the 2010 show from my post last year.

My first experience with the show was amazing. I’ve always loved flea markets, but this time it was a flea market JUST for computers, games and electronics. I was in geek heaven. I believe it was 2003 or so when I got a Macintosh Color Classic for $40 with a spare LC 575 board, I think that’s where I also got my Newton 2000 for $20. I saw a black Macintosh TV there, the guy wanted $50 for it, I passed however. Then I remember in 2004 getting an old Apple Scanner for a dollar. Some Clone Mac towers cheap and even a few odds and ends, and of course cables (you can never have enough!). Oh and I got Unreal Tournament 2004! It had just came out a few months before and I think I paid $35 for it which was a steal at the time. My friend told me not to get it, saying he could just copy his version so we could all play, but that never worked out so I’m glad I had my copy.

Being a Mac guy I was more interested and knowledgeable about Mac items than PC items. Finding Macintosh things at the show was hard to say the least, they even had a sign at the inside part of the show with a drawing of a Mac with a slash through it, explaining that most of the software and hardware was geared towards PCs. That didn’t stop me from picking up an original 802.11b AirPort card for $19. It was an absolute steal at that time too.

Maybe it’s due to the rise of the internet, but the shows don’t seem as big as they used to. Last year there was a good amount of vendors, but this year it seemed smaller. It could be other shows, some vendors go to others, and the date of the show this year was on April 2nd, compared to the late April / Early May shows of years past. On Saturday the show was still thriving, but on Sunday it was pretty vacant.

At least it beat Sunday last year, it was pouring outside and by the time I made it to the show there was only 1 person at the flea market, I did get a D-Link router off him for $4. Either way inside was still good, I got an AirPort 802.11b card for $13, beating my previous record. This time at the show I saw one for $20 – people still think they’re super rare, well I guess they’re uncommon, but the people who still need them are most likely Apple collectors looking for some wireless connectivity, I don’t think there’s much value in them like before. I remember when they were going for over $100 on eBay when Apple first discontinued them. Now that was the time to sell them.

Back to the 2011 show, it was good. I finally stayed after the show until almost 4:30pm and talked to the Mac guys I always shop at,  Doug and George. They’ve been coming to the Trenton Festival since 1984 and they try to come every year, I can only recall one year when they did not make it. From the first show I’ve been to I was always drawn to these guys. Why? Because they are Mac guys, they have a ton of Apple stuff, old and some new, and have very good prices. Usually at the very end of the show they’ll dump their unwanted items or give out some freebies. They’re really nice people. I stayed after to help them clean up and pack up their tables. It was the least I could do for all that they did for me.

I was happy to go to the show this year, but a bit saddened. Something seemed like it was missing. The weather was bitter cold and windy, and while there were a lot of vendors there weren’t as many tables as there were last year. I really hope it doesn’t die off. That would be a terrible shame.  I’ve met some great people and I’ve heard some awesome stories and shared some fun moments. It would be a shame for it go away. But I think as long as there are people interested and the vendors think it’s worth their time people will come. Because if the vendors stop coming, the attendees will stop coming. It may help for them to move the dates closer to May, the weather is usually nicer, which would bring more people out. Let’s hope the fun geeky times never end!

CED: The vinyl cousin of the LaserDisc

Some of you may have head of LaserDiscs, the pre-DVD optical disc video format for watching movies at home that offered better picture and sound quality than VHS, Beta, and some argue, even DVDs. But if you haven’t heard of a LaserDisc there’s even less of a chance that you’ve heard of a C.E.D. What the heck is a C.E.D. you may ask? Well it stands for Capacitance Electronic Disc, and it was video system developed by RCA to playback movies stored on special discs which were similar to phonograph records. The first player by RCA debuted on store shelves in March of 1981 with a choice of 50 films to purchase on CED. You can find out more information about the rise and simultaneous fall of the CED format here on Wikipedia.

I picked up my CED player on craigslist, it’s an early RCA model, I believe the first model made. I got about 20 or so CED discs with it as well. So what started this insanity? Well while at a local flea market I came across of a stack of CED discs. The guy selling them knew what they were, and was selling them for $2 a piece. So I picked up The Empire Strikes Back, Thunderbirds Are Go, and The Birds for a total of $5. Which lead me to look for a player to play the discs on, just to see how they worked. The player cost me $25 with a slew of discs, my only disappointment is that the player is not a stereo model and only has coaxial connections out – not the standard AV (yellow, white, red) ports that would be on later models.

Unlike Laserdiscs, CED players use a needle (again like that of a record player) to read the information from the disc, where a LaserDisc player is similar to a CD or DVD player, using a laser to read the information off of the disc. So while the CED player can cause wear on the needle and the disc, the LaserDisc player will not since it never comes into direct contact with the disc. The manufacturing process of stamping films onto vinyl discs at the time was cheaper than making VHS cassette tapes, so this medium was created for those to buy movies cheaper.

So does it work? Well yes surprisingly! I plugged the player in and put in my first disc, Star Wars. I skipped ahead a few seconds to the start of the film and it seemed to work just fine. The movie did skip a bit, it may be either the player or the disc, but it wasn’t too bad. I’m surprised it worked at all. After all the player is 30 years old this month, maybe I should throw it a birthday party? Overall this thing is pretty cool, definitely a geeky blast form the past. I prefer LaserDiscs still (and of course Blu-Rays), but the CED format is an interesting one from the history books.