2024

 A lot has changed since my last post here, yet much has stayed the same. I am still working at the local waterpark, but the Corpos cut most everyone for the off-season this time around. Until about March I will be mostly focused on current but sparse AWS DevOps contract work, fixing up a few things around my house, trading stocks (lol), and game development as far as productive things. 

On the fun side of things; I have not purchased any more arcade games, but none of my games have broken down since the last time I worked on them. I was basically forced to build a new computer in September of this year. I had decided to get myself a new Nvidia RTX 4060 card and it worked great for a while despite seeing an obvious bottleneck at the CPU and/or other components. Well, for about 3 days anyway. After running some Unreal5 tests the machine bluescreened and then never acted right again. One highlight was after many attempts finally getting the machine to boot and looking at the Device Manager section in Windows 10 to see that the processor entry was completely empty. I realized that the newest Intel CPUs are "generation 14" and I was running 4th. Simply replacing the motherboard and PSU didn't seem viable; at least for something I would enjoy for much longer. 

 Despite the voltage/heat weirdness that can occur with this generation of CPU and corresponding motherboard I've been really happy with my setup after making sure I wasn't burning up cores via a hardware monitor and watching a YouTube video that made sense on how to properly configure the BIOS for my motherboard to sacrifice a bit of power for sake of not cooking things. It's a bit insane how fast and power-hungry these new Intel chips run, so there's really no reason to even have the chip running that hot. It's not as if any game out now is really going to care! Cyberpunk 2077 running with 14th gen I7, 64GB fastest RAM, and the new video card was completely awesome to finally experience. I finished my 2nd play through of it last week and will probably have to check out the DLC content next year. Doom II Retraced on this setup is also amazing, and I hope to try VR soon once a friend lends me a headset. 

Duck Slide Range 3.0 was released earlier this month! I had to remove it from Google Play store because of numerous reasons. The short version is it barely made any money compared to the iOS release. That update introduced a new area with some new levels. I am going to try to push another update before New Years that will mainly be scripting changes and should add the ability for players to re-start the game on higher levels based on previous levels cleared rather than having to always start from the beginning. 

I recently had to re-do the micro-SD card inserted in my "EverDrive" cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The original became corrupted after trying to update firmware and ROM contents. I lost a couple of save games, but kept my most important at the time and got Mario Adventure 3 running. This is probably the best hack ever of Super Mario Brothers 3 featuring new areas, suits, and all sorts of craziness. Difficult, but I've been having a lot of fun with this one. 

Speaking of NES I recently attended my cousin's birthday party where he handed me his old NES to refurbish. I may make a blog with pictures here of how I do the whole process because I find myself explaining it a lot and while I know that sort of thing is fairly well documented on the internet, in my opinion there can never be too many pictures or descriptions when it comes to things like fixing PCBs. 

Summer of 2022

It's been about 2 years since I've updated this blog, but I figured it's about time for whomever actually ever looks at it.

I haven't had much to talk about here arcade-wise as I haven't had any recent problems for at least a year or so with all four of my cabinets, and have yet to mess with testing or repairing any of the random game PCBs I have collected since I got into the arcade hobby. Basically I reached a period where it was finally time to play these games rather than working on them; though I'm bet eventually something will pop up and change that. I'm still on the lookout for an affordable Funhouse or Fathom pinball machine. 

There was a Funhouse that popped up at a recent auction.. but due to nearly everything money-related being inflated lately and the fact I've been working a lot less while enjoying life more I am thankful I was at a waterpark that morning rather than taking a potentially awful hit to my bank account!

In the Interactive Fiction world, I've been paying attention and playing other peoples games.. but I've strayed from producing any more IF for quite a while now. Instead, last year I decided to create my first 3D arcade-style game for mobile platforms. I don't know how much (if any!) revenue it will bring me, but it has been a wonderful learning and productive creative process. Though I've dabbled in Unreal before and may return to it.. for this game I opted for the Unity engine. 

The game was formally called "Duck Slide", but another iOS creator had taken that name. I changed the name to "Duck Slide Range" (placeholder site: Duck Slide Range) upon my first submission to the App Store for Test Flight after work had already been done for quite some time. Speaking of which, if you would like to be a tester for the game, just leave a comment on this blog! I am still looking for testers for both the iOS and Android versions; though I still need to actually produce the Android port. That port should come soon. 

However, I do still have A Day in DPRK on the back burner. While obviously meant for text parsing computers, it may also potentially see a mobile release one day; and perhaps even be completed. I have also been helping Robb Sherwin (Author of Cryprozookeeper and many other classics) get some of his works properly (re)released to Steam. 

Aside from that.. I'm stoked about more surfing, kayaking, fishing, and definitely water-sliding this year!

Bosconian Arcade Restoration & Repair - Part III

Ended having to pull the monitor again to fix the sync issue. When I went to do that, the bent metal rod that encloses the flyback transformer fell out.. completely rusted in the middle. I followed this https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/u-bolt-on-my-k4600-flyback-broken.462981/ to get an idea of how to fabricate my own rod. The proper material, a vice, die tool and cutting oil got the job done.  

https://twitter.com/Jizaboz/status/1326008251989848065

With that catastrophe out of the way, I replaced 2 caps that did not come in the original kit (filter cap for c621 and the big filter cap)  to hopefully make the k4600 monitor image quit randomly scrolling while ticking. 

Alright! Then, I put everything together and fire it up. Within 5 minutes I see the ship sprites turn into blocks. Oh, no! 

PCB issue of some sort? At this point, I remove the PCB again and hook it up to a workbench set up with a JAMMA adapter. Removed and set aside the outdated "filter board" (Whups, what was that still doing there?) and ensured again the edge of the board itself was clean with a fiberglass pencil and alcohol. Replaced/Rewired/re-pinned the edge connector that goes to the PCB edge. 

Also, I was given advice over Twitter on that weird F 00003 error and apparently it was simply an odd dip switch setting! Always check for these things before wanting to start PCB surgery. 

After being very busy with other things, Christmas Eve snuck up on me. I wanted to show the game my nephew after dinner. He played this game a lot on one of those cheap 4-1 arcade things you could buy from Dollar General and plug up to a TV via A/V cables when he was a little kid. Walked into the arcade room with with him and PCB, said "Here goes nothing" and plugged everything up after checking to ensuring 5.10v at power supply and PCB input.

Machine fired right up and finally played completely proper for half an hour. Got another hour or so on it since without any glitching. After a final cleaning and spinning the cabinet back around to line up with the other cabinets, I'm calling this one as done aside from getting a new lock for the back door and other minor aesthetics like re-gluing the t-molding in a couple of places.

Part I is here - https://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2020/04/bosconian-arcade-cabinet-restoration.html

Part II is here - https://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2020/07/bosconian-arcade-cabinet-restoration.html

Bosconian Arcade Cabinet Restoration & Repair - Part II

After the third layer of Bondo was applied and hardened, I did one final sanding job. Then I used 6 new, longer screws to re-attach the metal feet plates for the front corners. It is finally time for the fun stuff; the electronics!

The original power cord was 2-prong and had to be replaced. I had a spare 18 AWG cable that I hacked the end off so that I could tie it into the AC filter. Matching the wire colors from the cable to the AC filter of a Bosconian may be confusing to someone that has worked on a Galaga cocktail cabinet at first glance. Bosconian upright is GND/Neutral/Hot. I have included a picture of the proper wiring. Note the insulated connectors I have used on the ends of the spliced power cord wires. They are not hard to find online or more preferable to me; your local small hardware store business. Always ensure an insulated connection from the wall to the AC filter!

Wall to AC wiring

Then, the monitor was removed for repairs. Wells Gardner k4600. I have only successfully worked on the k7000 model before this which has a more simplistic design. I gathered these are harder to work on, but very dependable once they are fixed.

After discharging and removing anode cup, then removing from cabinet.

Yes, harder to work on indeed. I have 2 daughter cards to deal with here. This requires me to not only replace caps on these boards but also the solder joints to the connectors on the end must be re-flowed. Of course, I also re-flow the neck-board connection joints and other worn-out or "cold"-looking joints.

Slowly pulling in each direction after removing the factory goo, the neck-board comes loose.

Also have to de-solder this width coil on both ends before removal.

k-4600 main chassis, 2 daughter boards, and external transformer.

Lots of things to replace. I used up every bit of the k4600 capkit with exception to a pot that came with it that I could not envision fitting to the board. Hard to stick something in that has 3 legs into a spot for only 2.

After putting it all back together and installing the power supply kit, everything powered up and the game plays. Now I have a a benign PCB issue and a horizontal hold issue with the monitor left as the only things bothering me.. to be continued!

Part I - https://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2020/04/bosconian-arcade-cabinet-restoration.html

Part III - https://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2020/12/bosconian-arcade-restoration-repair.html

Bosconian Arcade Cabinet Restoration & Repair - Part I

This is how it looked when I first brought it home. Years of cigarette smoke and general filth. A few layers of this must be removed before I even want to get near it. However, considering this machine was made in 1981, it is in great shape!

Just a few hits with magic erasers, 409 and papers towels has it looking more approachable the next day.

Now that most of the mildew smell is gone, it is time to start removing all the major internal components to do some repair to the cabinet structure itself. The slightly swelling walls towards the bottom are not much of a concern because the original material itself is there and should not deteriorate further unless for some terrible reason it becomes water damaged again in the future. I would rather not make it look worse trying to remove swollen MDF. 30 year old things should show a few battle scars anyway. However, the damage to the actual floor of the machine must be repaired. A whole corner was broken off and thrown inside the cabinet, and the other front corner bottom is pretty rough.

Time to open it up! Everything is all original inside. I was relieved to see it was the original Wells Gardner monitor instead of some hack or Kortek crap.

So far so good right? No keys were given to me, but luckily some of the spare standard keys in the Neo Geo MVS-2 next to it opened the coin door. Then, something scary happens. I begin to remove the metal piece underneath the marquee to pull it out and stop myself. A friend came over to help me with his ratchet set to remove some of the bolts holding the monitor frame in that are rather deep in the cab.  Figured it was better to remove the bezel glass underneath first just in case I dropped the piece holding in the marquee. I begin to remove the bezel..

It may be a little hard to tell what is going on here, but the upper picture is the top of the glass where I notice some sort of bubble going on. The lower picture is the underneath of the glass where I can tell the bubble is being caused by the old paint flaking off of the glass. This is could get really bad if not handled correctly to prevent further damage and flaking. I sure as hell did not want to have to replace this painted glass. I carefully remove it and consult pinball forums on how to preserve this as I figure it is probably also an issue with old pinball machine back-glass.


After carefully removing the glass, I set it down on a drop cloth to tape off the transparent area of the glass, getting as close to the round corners I can with bits of masking tape. No dust should accumulate on the backside, so there should be no need to try to clean before painting.  I sprayed a tad of this glaze onto a paper plate and dabbed a model brush in it and applied it to the flake shown in the previous picture. I spray 3 coats of Krylon Clear Glaze on. That effectively re-glued it to the glass before it was sealed.

See that in the corner? That is duct tape I added while the machine was still on the back of my truck. As I mentioned, the corner that was broken off here was found inside the machine. I thank the thoughtful person that did that so that I do not have to deal with carving out a new floor; instead I will repair the existing one. I begin removing piece of wood with transformers attached and everything else from the floor, while taking pictures of every wire harness I disconnect. The nastiest mold spot is under the PCB cage. I clean that out well while holding my breath.

Time to glue. Locktite III does the job well. Used a 24 inch "bar grip" in reverse to push one end up against the bottom of that metal coin box holder shown above with the broken piece underneath. I put enough pressure on it to hear a slight crunch after applying the glue and left it for 24 hours.

Now that the glue is hard and the clamp is removed, it is time to add some "body filler". I chose Bondo. One thing I always gathered from auto body guys back when I delivered paint was "Fill the holes, but spread thin." so I tried to do that, as well as using the spreading technique to mix a small bead of hardener into the filler rather than stirring it.

Letting this cure overnight. Also applied some inside the other side of the glued part. Tomorrow I will sand it, apply another coat, and repeat until these 2 corners are level with the rest of the floor. At that point I can spray both sides of the bottom and inside the bottom to about 12 inches up with clear coat.

I am really looking forward to working on the monitor and wiring up a new power supply to boot this thing! 

Part II is here http://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2020/07/bosconian-arcade-cabinet-restoration.html

Part III is here https://jizaboz.blogspot.com/2020/12/bosconian-arcade-restoration-repair.html

Spring 2017

 Today I relaunched retrolab.servebeer.com to clean up old hacks I had used to get my Ultima Online server emulator chugging along. I'll be leaving that and my Quake II server down for a few months to come. If anything, for the purpose of just having 2 less things online that I have to worry about that I've barely had any time for lately. I'm trying to focus on working on the DPRK themed game, as well getting back to actually playing a few games such as Resident Evil 7 and my arcade games. Some good progress has already been made on the last third of Days in DPRK, but I slowed down considerably with the second third. I don't want the player to feel like any of the 3 slices of the game feel "rushed".

 The Guerilla War cabinet I previously talked about is now completely gone with exception to the marquee and bezel. The PCB and control panel were sold for enough money to break even for buying that cabinet and the Double Dragon cabinet. After cleaning up the Double Dragon cabinet with a lot of Lysol cleaner, magic erasers, and other means, it looks and smells a lot better than when I first picked it up. The monitor was removed from Guerilla War and installed it into the Double Dragon cabinet after swapping the wood panel connected to the frame and replacing the molex connector to the wires that were originally just grounded to the monitor frame to the isolated transformer inside the cabinet. The monitor that was originally in Double Dragon had severe burn of the game logo burned into it and had to go. I hope to do a tube-swap on it in the future. This setup is working well for playing Robotron 2084 and other games on a 19-in1 multi PCB. The Double Dragon PCB is still on the shelf for audio repairs.

Gutting Guerrilla War

 Last week a friend of mine who knows me as an "arcade guy" gave me a tip on a couple of cabinets that some people wanted to get rid of. The owner of the house the machines were in used to run his own business out of his house but had since had serious health issues. The state of the house had become pretty run-down and family members were in the process of clearing stuff out. The basement where the machines sat apparently had a leak or had been flooded at one point.

 Initially, I replied that I wasn't really interested in them because Guerrilla War looked like it was about to fall apart right there (despite the fact it magically still turned on and played!) and the other cabinet, a Double Dragon, wasn't of much interest to me as I'd probably not play it much.

 The next day it dawned on me.. if they only want 100-200$ for these, I could probably get that out of parts from the Guerrilla War alone. I also didn't realize that Double Dragon is a JAMMA-standard game with an 8-way joystick. That makes Double Dragon a great candidate to throw other game PCBs or even a multi-board into. Plus, it sounded like these people really wanted these machines out of there but didn't want to just give them away via a Craig's List ad or whatever. It's rare you see even a total piece of non-working junk sell at an arcade auction for less than 200$ anyway.

Picture texted to me of the game running in the basement of doom.

 So, the next day I rented an appliance dolly for 11$ and headed over to the residence with another friend willing to help for beer & pizza. Luckily, it was only 8 miles away. I preferred to take them one at a time so I could lay them down in the bed of my small truck. Moving them was not easy by any means. I've moved machines before, sometimes without even using a dolly.. but these were fragile and Guerrilla War was very heavy. Maybe because it had soaked up so much water (heh-heh)? The path from the leaky basement out to the yard where my truck was parked was covered in old wood, carpet padding, and other sorts of fun obstacles. After a lot of straining and a bruised arm, I got Guerrilla War home and onto the carport without it exploding into a hundred pieces.

The paintball splats on it give a bit of character!

 I don't consider this salvageable. The bottom of it had been so wet it was starting to separate.. as well as the top of it. Thankfully, things in the center and sides look like they stayed dry.

Front panel all busted up but control panel looks OK.

 At this point I have already taken out the marquee, but it was in good shape. The graphical bezel around the monitor was also in good shape.

With the plexiglass and bezels removed.

 This is the first time I have messed with a vertical-mounted monitor like this, so at first I tried to take the 4 screws out of the frame and pull the frame out. Nope. Stuck on something. Then realized "Oh duh, those are handles" in the wood around it. I put the frame screws back in, removed the 4 screws from the corner of the wood, and it came out very easy; a lot less scary and heavy than handling the 25 inch monitor in the Neo-Geo MVS2. I had already removed the wires to it from the PCB. I couldn't get into the back yet because it was locked and I didn't want to mess with drilling it out if I didn't have to.

Now I've just about got full access to everything.

 The monitor looked bright and colorful with the game playing before it was moved, just a bit of burn-in in the tube from the credits and score text. With that out of the way, I was able to open the back door lock easily from the inside and peer in. It was just as horrible as you would think, but honestly I'm surprised it wasn't worse.

Haha Oh, man.. yeah, I'll pass on even touching this.

 Good thing the main plastic circuit board is mounted half-way up the wall of the machine.

 

Nice and shiny PCB!

 The monitor has a Wells Gardner chassis (score!) and mild burn-in on the tube from the score and credits text. This will make a good backup replacement 19 inch monitor.

Backside of monitor sitting on t-shirts to prevent scratches.

 After removing the control panel, few more wires, and the JAMMA connector, I'm done rescuing all the good stuff with this. Tomorrow the cabinet will be busted up into smaller pieces for disposal. Next up: a bit of Double Dragon cabinet restoration!

2016

Two years have gone by since my last interactive fiction full game release, Blackness. Blackness was written in 3 hours for Ectocomp, so it's rather short and there isn't a lot of attention paid to detail. There may be a chance of entering that competition or another short competition this year with another small game written in Inform7. While the Hugo IF authoring language has now became my favorite platform for authoring IF, I do miss some of the conveniences and quirks of I7 and never have gotten around to using the OSX version of it much.

However, I did manage to get a demo of DPRK released. It didn't get a lot of play-tests, but the few random ones I did hear reports back from on sounded very positive aside from a movement bug. Around Christmas of last year, I returned to the project to begin working on the final version of the game. With a lot of help from Roody (author of RoodyLib) I've started a "simulation lab" of sorts to start developing and testing encounter and combat systems. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I think the project is still promising and have a positive outlook to get the rest of the content and system coding done by the end of the year.

In other Hugo related-project news, Cyberganked is also coming up! Robb Sherwin has created a character using a picture of myself and I will be writing up some dialogue drafts soon for him to digest into the game, as well as doing some testing as needed. I'm really looking forward to the release of this game and to playing it. Anyone who enjoyed Wizardry and text games I think will as well. Roody has also been hard at work on RoodyLib for this past year.. which Cyberganked and DPRK both utilize. He's also been working on things such as handicap-friendly interfacing and other Hugo magic lately.
 
In 2015, I did manage to keep a group of 6 going for a table-top RPG going since December of 2014. As a listener of Burzum, I heard of a game that Varg Vikernes created called MYFAROG. I missed out out the first printing in Halloween of 2014, but managed to score a 2nd printing copy of the 1st addition shortly after that. We began as me playing the role of "MythMaster" (Dungeon Master) which was a fun practice returning to creating stories, characters, local areas, etc on the fly while keeping campaign solidarity. Most of the players eventually bought books, and one player took over the role of MythMaster long enough for another player to spend a few months in another country and for me to actually play as a PC.. an experience I haven't had in a very, very long time. I blogged about our game here if you are interested in how it began.

I also hope to get a refurbished monitor from Arcade Buffett soon in the mail to finally get my Neo-Geo MVS-2 arcade machine running again. I bought this cabinet (my first!) in January of 2015 at an auction for 425$ before fees and it worked fine aside from monitor issues. The main culprit of the issues was a crappy Kortek chassis. After a lot of de-soldering and soldering to replace all of the capacitors and the flyback transformer, I learned the hard way replacement flybacks are just not available for the crappy Kortek. So, I ordered a complete monitor as I plan on keeping this machine for years anyway and want something solid (and non-Kortek). I may buy a seperate chassis and yoke to rebuild another monitor with the leftover Zenith 25 inch tube.

The only major non-work or non-DPRK distraction I can see coming up? The new Doom game in May. If it's all it promises to be, expect to see more in the Id Software section of my website! I've still got a "Photon Doom" project I have on a backburner that may end up ported from Doom3 to that. I won't know until I play it. If it's not fitting to Photon, Doom3 BFG will be the target for a new Photon Doom mod. If anyone reading this is already planing a Photon mod for any game engine, please contact me. I'd be interested in sharing ideas and assets.