I had been informed before shipment there was a problem with one of the
LED buttons on the CP of the game, and that shipment would be delayed
to
repair the item. When I received the game, it had a LED button taped to
the CP, turned out it was the broken one. The game played great, and
once
again my cat attempted to electrocute herself on the various boards and
the deadly monitor. I used one of my remaining Bob Robert's locks to
replace
the cut-off lock in the coin door, and Andy Stewart was kind enough to
supply me with a pair of working $.25 coin mechs.
The "25 cent" windows on the front of the coin door contained light bulbs, but they were burned out when I got the game. I decided to attempt to replace them with light bulbs from Radio Shack - 6v bayonet base lamps - but they seemed to burn way too bright. I found a discussion in rgvac about this indicating the proper lamps to use were 12v. I couldn't find 12v but figured 14v would be close enough. Sure enough, they worked.
Next, I wanted to replace the 3.6v Ni-Cad rechargeable battery that had been used to keep the high scores in memory when the game was turned off. Fortunately, my game's board only had noticeable corrosion where the battery sat, or maybe the game's previous owners had repaired any acid damage. All I needed to do was find a 3.6v Ni-Cad rechargeable battery that I could attach 2 wires to without stripping or removing the battery's existing wires. Radio Shack had a battery that fit the bill, and with a little help from a fellow Omega Race owner I found the places on the board where the battery had sat. My problem was the corrosion (and my inexperience with the soldering iron) kept me from being able to keep the wires attached to the proper places on the board! I had to resort to soldering the wires to the back side of the board, and running the wires (carefully!) along the slide keeping the board in place. To ensure a battery problem would not ruin the main board, I taped the battery to the front of the game cabinet. Fire extinguisher in hand, I plugged the game in and left it turned on for an hour before pulling the plug and re-powering the game. My high score was still there, the operation was a success!
Flush with my success, I figured a little cleaning wouldn't be beyond my abilities. Boy, was I in for it! I sprayed down the CP with 409 while powered off, wiped it down making sure I got all the buttons. I pulled the fire and thrust buttons and cleaned the gunk from them, then put them back. I figured I'd remove the monitor glass and clean the monitor, the plexi and the monitor glass, but I didn't count on the artwork on the back of the monitor glass flaking off! I don't think I did very much damage, but a few pieces that had been knocked off the glass during shipping were making me paranoid. I replaced all of that then powered the game up to blow away a few Drones. Two games later, the fun began.
The
game occasionally makes unexpected noises, usually when two events that
cause different sounds happen simultaneously. So, when it made an odd
sound
I didn't think anything of it until I noticed the screen blank out. All
that was displaying was a white spot, so I opened the coin door to see
if there was something visibly wrong. I was greeted with curls of smoke
drifting down from the bottom of the CP! I pulled the power and opened
the CP, to find one of the LED buttons had shorted or burned up. I
attributed
it to one getting 409 in it and causing a short, but don't know for
certain
what caused it. I do know though that I don't have a replacement, so no
more playing 1 player with 2 credits to get 7 ships for awhile.
Copyright 2001 Madoc Owain