Bought Another Project

Well...I just got back from 10 hour round trip to Michigan. I found a great deal on a great new toy. I can't reveal what it is yet, but oh is it going to be great. On Saturday I'll post what it is and throw up some nice photos of it :-D

I haven't done much on Attila recently. But I need to. The boards will be back in a couple days, they were shipped out today. I have the stencils already. It's just been too cold for me to go outside and finish sanding and prepping for paint. There's no way I can be painting when the temperatures are in the teens :(

Hopefully I can find a nice torpedo heater to throw in the garage for a few days to get it to a higher temp so that I can get the paint done. As soon as it's painted, I can throw it together and play it for the first time!!

Today's Pickup...Karate Champ

Well...I kept getting calls from a guy in Buffalo who was trying to get rid of a Karate Champ machine. He said he was selling it on Craigslist for $1,100. After telling him he's smoking crack, he said make an offer. I drove out there to take a look and this thing was pretty beat up and sitting outside. I told him I wouldn't pay more than $30 for it...He said ok it's yours.

I took it home, plugged it in, and whaddaya know...it works 100%.

Cosmetically, the cabinet needs an extensive amount of work. The side art needs to be replaced, there's a lot of wood to be fixed, and it could use a repaint. The Bezel, Marquee, and CPO are all in almost perfect shape and the monitor has little to no burn in. The only issue with playability is the joysticks. They work, but the knobs were replaced with blocks of wood hahaha.

Anyway, this one will be kept in the shed for now, it's not worth it to restore it at the moment, I have other projects to attend to. Who knows, I might just resell this one.

Quick Update...

I haven't posted in almost 2 weeks so I figured I'll just give a little update as to where things stand. Right now, I have the entire Attila cabinet sanded down to bare wood. I've got to patch it up with some Bondo and attach the new pieces I had to cut. (Pictures will be posted tomorrow). I've been taking my time on it because I'm waiting for some things to come in the mail before I can do anything else on it. The stencils are on their way from Florida right now so it'll still be a few days before I get them. The boards should hopefully be on their way back from Texas within the next couple days as well.

Still don't know which company I want to go with to get a new translite/backglass printed. I guess I'll sit on that for now until I get closer to completion. Anyway, pics will be up tomorrow, just wanted to post since its been a little bit. Oh and on a side note, I'm still looking for a new camera to get some videos up...

Attila the Hun Update 08

I printed out full scale prints of my vectorized sides today at work just to see how they look and make sure all my shapes came out looking good with no artifacts or anything. I placed the prints on the machine and I've gotta say...it's gonna look pretty sweet once its repainted!

Attila the Hun Update 07

Side art vectorization DONE! It was a pain. The scanner didn't work for this so I ended up taking 3 photos of it and stitching those together. It was awful, the lens distortion caused everything to warp and I ended up having to place about 30 guide lines on in Illustrator in order to trace things correctly. But anyway, after the tedious work, here's the stitched and vectorized images of the side art. Today I'll print out full scale images of the cabinet and backbox sides at work and make sure everything matches up before I send them out for stencils.

Attila the Hun Update 06

Well, I got the backbox sides scanned in and then I painstakingly stitched them together and had traced everything in Illustrator to get a nice vector image with a layer for each color. This will make it nice and simple to be turned into stencils. I borrowed a Magic Wand scanner from work to test out. It worked surprisingly well for the backbox but when it came time to scan in the cabinet side, it didn't work out so well. Here's how the backbox looked after I stitched it, and then after the vectorization was complete. Now time to work on the cabinet art.

PONG Back Up And Running, and Attila Updates

Well, I feel kind of dumb...I got PONG working. Turns out two of the wires going to the monitor were reversed...oops. But it's back up and running. I'll finish restoring it eventually. I'm still focused on Attila the Hun right now.

I've decided...for now...that I am going to re-stencil and re-paint the entire game. I figured that since I put all the time and money into making a new backglass, and making the playfield look brand new, I might as well make the entire thing look new. So here's what I have to do on it:

• Install the boards once the repairs are done.
• Scan the artwork and vectorize the scans to have stencils made.
• Replace or attempt to remove the rust on the legs.
• Finish up the backglass in Photoshop and get a new one printed.
• Replace a couple waterlogged pieces of wood on the head.
• Remove rust from coindoor.
• Paint and assemble the finished cabinet.

Wow...that's a lot more than I thought. Looks like this project will drag on a little longer than I had anticipated...oh well, it'll be fun. I'm just very anxious to play it!

On a side note, I'm hopefully going to be purchasing a new video camera soon so I can start getting some videos up on the machines, and do vlogs on the updates...eventually.

Got My PONG Motherboard Back...

Well...after waiting patiently for 5 weeks, I finally got my PONG motherboard back. I got it all hooked up and plugged it in and it looked great...until I put a quarter in. As soon as the quarter hits, the game goes nuts. I'm extremely disappointed. I paid quite a bit to get it repaired, so having it come back broken is pretty upsetting. Hopefully I can get this resolved...

Attila the Hun Update 05

Playfield, DONE. The parts I ordered came yesterday so I had a lot of work to do the past couple days. After waxing the playfield, I cleaned all the plastics, polished all the metals, and re-bulbed everything. 127 new bulbs, a couple dozen new rubbers, a bottle of Novus #1, and this thing looks brand new! I'm very surprised at how nice it came out. The worst part were the stupid pop bumpers. Those were a pain, they come apart into about 10 pieces each, and in order to remove them from the playfield I had to unsolder them from the back (I hate soldering). Also, I rebuilt the plunger, bought a new ball, new locks, and new buttons. So now, as of now, as soon as I get the boards back from being repaired, the game "should" be playable.

A few things left for me to do include:

Getting a new backglass printed. I found a company online who can print me a new translite for $50. I'm almost done photoshopping the design.

Cabinet work...I'm still debating this part. IF I do it, I'd sand the whole cabinet down, restencil and repaint it. However, this is a HUGE amount of work and a long process to do so I'm still considering it. I have decided to sell this machine when I'm done, so I don't want to drop too much money into it, but repainting the cabinet might bring up the value.

Attila the Hun Update 04

Alright, got a little update here. I was able to get a lot more done on the playfield today. I spent a good 2 hours removing all the glue left behind from the mylars that were attached to the pf. The entire thing was pretty much soaked in Goo Gone for 10 minutes then I spent the rest of the time scrubbing all the sticky off it. It actually worked much better than I had expected. After that, I did one final cleaning with a microfiber cloth and rubbing alcohol. I also removed the drop targets. They're nasty. I'm going to take them to work tomorrow and make new decals for them, should be easy. Tomorrow I'm hoping to wax the playfield if I have time, and then start putting some of the plastics and guides back on. Can't do too much though because I'm still waiting for all the new rubbers and a new bottle of Novus to come in.

Here's the nasty looking drop targets. Tomorrow I'll make some new decals so I can clean these up and apply them.

The playfield all nice and clean. All that's left is to wax it up and then it's time to put it back together, it's going to look very nice.

Attila the Hun Update 03

Ok, here's just a quick little update on the backglass. As I just mentioned in my previous post, I've spent a little over 6 hours so far on it.

This is how it looked right after throwing all 6 scans together...notice how much color correction is going to be needed, as well as scaling and stretching to make all the pieces fit together.

After 6 hours, I had all the pieces stitched together nicely and color corrected. The color correction was a bitch to do. It was awful and I hope to never have to do it again. Also notice I've got a lot of the cracking in the paint taken care of. Still a few more spots here and there as well as most of the bottom edge.

Attila the Hun Update 02

Well, I needed to take a break from the computer. So far I've been sitting at it working on the backglass for 6 hours. It's coming along, but I needed a break...all the colors started looking the same. I decided to start the playfield. I spent a good hour and a half just stripping the pieces off of it. Man, there's a lot of parts! I've got it down to as little as possible, to make it easier to clean and wax. This thing is so dirty it was pretty gross even touching it. There's some protective mylars attached to it right now, once I'm able to remove those (without removing the paint) I'm going to start cleaning it. Hopefully it cleans up nicely even though the entire thing has stress cracks.


All the playfield pieces layed out.

The playfield after everything has been stripped off it.

Look how disgustingly dirty this thing is!