Harley Davidson!

Well...here it is. My latest investment. I found this bike locally on Craigslist, I emailed him literally 30 seconds after he posted it. It was a smoking deal so I had to jump on it, I spent a month selling off much of my video game collection but it was well worth it, this bike is amazing, a huge upgrade from the Suzuki.

It's a 2001 Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 Custom. Even though it's 9 years old, it has barely any miles on it and looks brand new. The only things I want to do to it is add a sissy bar and a windshield. The previous owner also had a bunch of upgrades done so this bike is awesome. The pipes are loud and it has a nice chug to it. I can't wait to get some riding done on it.

Bye, Bye Games

Well...I had to sell my arcade games. Both Space Encounters units, and my Lock 'n' Chase were sold this morning...I'm glad to see that they're going to a good home though. I've also sold my '77 Suzuki motorcycle that I showed in my previous posts. On top of that, I've also sold a few hundred dollars worth of console systems and games. I'm still hoping to sell my bartop MAME cabinet, and there isn't any interest in the upright MAME cab so unfortunately, it looks like that one is going to become firewood pretty soon. I still have the Pong, that is the only one I'm keeping for now. I'll build my collection back up soon enough once I move to Florida.

As much as I hate to see my life collection thinning out, there is a positive aspect to this all...

...I bought a Harley-Davidson! My new toy, a 2001 HD Sportster 1200. It is beautiful. I can't wait to get it on the road. I'll have some photos up on Sunday or Monday once I pick it up.

Lock 'n' Chase Update 03

WOOHOO!!! The monitor is fixed! It's about time. Thanks to a member at the arcade-museum forums, I'm up and running. I purchased a replacement chassis for the monitor and replaced the H/V daughter card, fired it up, and with a few minor H/V adjustments I now have a crystal clear, perfectly centered picture. I'm extremely happy right now. All that's left is for me to get the sound working correctly and I can start restoring the cabinet!

My Suzuki GS400

I got my bike put back together! It took a while but I did it, It needed a new battery, a new clutch cable, and a new tail light. Once I got everything in, it started pouring rain. Lucky for me I was able to take it out this morning and test it out. The thing runs beautifully. I'm not looking forward to selling it. I'm trying to save up for a decent Harley but I'd hate to see my first bike go.

Current projects...

Alright well its 2:30 AM right now and I can't get to sleep so I figured I'd give ya'll a little update as to what I have going on...Lock 'n' Chase is on hold for a couple days, I don't want to start restoring the cab until I get the game working 100%. I pulled the boards out of it earlier today to see what I could do about the sound issue. I pulled one of the chips out of its socket and managed to f**k up the pins on it, after 20 minutes of straightening them out I put it back in and gave up for now. (I don't think the chips are the problem anyway). Oh, on the positive side, I found someone that will send me another monitor chassis so I'm just waiting on that, should come in within a week or so, then I can get back to work on the game.

As for my two space encounters games, I still don't want to start them until LnC is done, but I have found a couple replacement parts that I might be picking up in the next few days and then put aside.

In the mean time, while I wait for the Monitor Chassis, I decided to pull out my motorcycle and do some work on it seeing as how the weather is starting to get nicer out. Over the winter, I thought it'd be smart to rip it apart and rebuild it...I got it ripped apart but then stopped so I spent all day trying to remember how everything goes together. So as of now the whole thing is back together and running but I need a new clutch cable (Should be coming in on Monday). I'll throw some photos of the bike up later.

Lock 'n' Chase Update 02

Ok I installed the cap kit on my monitor...it did absolutly nothing. What a waste of time. Anyway after doing some research online and asking around on the Arcade Museum forums I got a few suggestions.

1.) Replace Resistor R360. (R360 is a 27ohm Resistor, mine was reading 37.4ohms)

2.) Adjust L351 until a decent image comes in.

3.) Fine tune the image using the Horizonal Hold.

I did all three and here's where I'm at with the image.

It's getting there, at least I can see the entire image...mostly. However the left side of the screen looks like it has down's and the whole image is way to far up the screen...I'm lost, I've spent hours on this thing trying to get the image to look right, it just isn't happening...any ideas?

Lock 'n' Chase Update 01

Alright, I plugged it in to "diagnose" it, if you will. I adjusted the image settings (H hold, V hold) until I got a picture, this is the best I was able to come up with:

So, obviously the monitor needs a little attention. As for gameplay, It seems the game is running perfectly, however there is slight audio issues, a few of the sounds aren't playing correctly and sound like something dying.

I guess the sound shouldn't be too hard, and hopefully a cap kit will fix the monitor, I'll find out later when I install a cap kit...

Lock 'n' Chase First Looks

Here it is, my Lock ‘n’ Chase. I drove from Buffalo, NY to Columbus, OH for it. At the time I was only going to pick up a Pong that I had purchased but saw this and ended up getting it…my girlfriend thought the characters were “cute.” I also grabbed two Space Encounters machines which I’ll fix up eventually. Anyway, here’s how it looks as of yesterday, I haven’t started restoring anything on it yet, and as you can see it’s in decent shape. Definitely in need of restoration.

The coin door needs major work, you can tell someone tried to pry it open at one point, it's all bent up. I'll also have to strip it down and repaint it.

Same thing with the lower door, it looks disgusting.

The wood on the base of the machine is all water logged and I'll probably just rebuild that bottom piece, looks easy enough.




Wow look at that TAITO logo, that's going to be a pain to stencil out for repainting...why would they use something so complex for a generic Taito side art?

The inside of the machine, it's pretty dirty but complete...that's a WG K4600 Series monitor in there. Looks pretty good, a little burn in from Lock 'n' Chase, but it is the original monitor.

So all in all, it looks to be a decent restoration, as long as everything works for the most part, the asthetics should be pretty easy to restore. I'm looking forward to this one, I'm going to make it look brand new...or so I hope.

I finally got a blog!

Finally after a couple years I've decided to take the time to create a blog/website to document my progress on my restorations and to show off my collection. I'm currently in the process of restoring my Lock 'n' Chase Arcade machine and am hoping to document the process for everyone on here. The restoration started about a week ago so my next post will sum up everything that has happened in the past week. Check back often because I am constantly working on my machines and plan on posting quite a bit, I'm also going to be showing off some of my more...unique...gaming pieces.

P.S. I'm new to this whole blogging thing so pardon me if I manage to screw up the layout and have things all over the place, I'll try to keep everything organized.