T-Molding Put on

So I have overcame a huge debacle as I had mentioned earlier with the putting on the T-Molding and having the upper edge of paint chipping off. I decided to go ahead and uses the .020 ABS plastic sheet to place between the outer edge of the surface and under the edge of the T-Molding and then continued to use the Mallet to place it then continuously moving the plastic forward and this prevented the paint from chipping. In the picture you can see the right side has the T-Molding and the left does not, its a seriously drastic difference in the way the cabinet looks, I'm really happy with the finished look.

As you can see in areas where the T-Molding had to bend around corners I cut notches into the wedge to allow flexibility and to ensure it holds tight. When notches are not cut you are essentially cramming into a space where there's not sufficient room so it typically will not go in flush with the surface, and tends to come up over time looking like crap. I just used a pair of dykes to do it with, its the material cuts pretty easy.

So in the pic you can see both sides have been applied and look great, i placed the marquee and control panel on just to show the huge difference and just how much better the cabinet is looking then before I started. I think the most difficult part about the T-molding is being its specially made to be flat but its some of the softest T-Molding I have ever felt, being shipped in a roll it maintains that form and its constantly battling it to twist it straight while applying. this is no fault at Bill whatsoever he does not have a say in it, nor is there really any other way just a small annoyance but the "True Flat" surface of this T-Molding looks great, the white is brilliant and I am very happy with the purchase and reccomend this to anybody who has never changed the T-Molding on their Ninty cab.

next up is doing the black touch up paint then fixing up the Bezel Retainer. More parts in the mail, and Monitor Cap Kit and New Flyback installed stay tuned!

DIY Vertical Monitor Mount & Brackets

Alright, So just tying up some lose ends and the one I decided to tackle today while waiting for some more parts was the Vertical Monitor Mount. As I had Popeye I have both of the Horizontal brackets but for DK Being vertical I needed a small bracket for the bottom, a long steel bar for the top bracket and 2 "L" brackets! Now if you look on the Net for these small pieces of metal you will be pressed to pay less than $50 after shipping! Excuse my french but that's Fucking ridiculous! So after posting want ad in KLOV, Craigslist, Watching Ebay I came up with nothing! I did however make a deal with Anthony who owns QuarterArcade just to have him flake out of the deal....This only leaves an impression of how his business works ensuring me to never order from him but that's beside the point.

I went to Lowes and purchased a 35" Slotted shelving mount/Bracket & a package of L brackets that

had the holes closest to a match with the side of the cabinet. The L Brackets were off by just a tad but after getting the Drill out and going to town widening out 1 of the holes on each L Bracket they lined up just fine. With both L Brackets fastened to the cabinet I uses a reciprocating saw to cut the Shelve mount to the proper width giving me 2 pieces. I lined the longer piece up with the holes on the L Brackets, then drilled. From there I took the shorter piece with a sharpie pen, lined up the holes in the board the chassis sits on and drilled all 3 of them, used zipties to hole the top bracket in place and simply put a bolt into the lower I then put the monitor in to the cabinet holding it up to the upper bracket and marking the 2 next holes that needed to be drilled. Everything has now been put in with bolts and looks great and for only $5!

Some may be questioning what about the 2 bolts on on the bottom part of the monitor? Where did you screw those in at? Simple truth i didn't! The thing of it is the way it is mounted to the top vertical bracket forces the monitor at a slant and the sheer weight of the monitor with its bottom mounting plate forced against the bracket I installed prevents it from moving at all. I shook the cabinet no movement what so ever. I imagine if the cabinet were to fall over face first you might have a problem but, that would be only 1 of many in that case! Now Lastly I was excited to receive my new bulb and starter from Topbulb today, I pugged both in and wah-lah! I had light! First time I have ever seen the Marquee lit since I bought it back in 05' and damn does the DK Marquee look good!

More pics to come of the monitor mounted in, phone was dying while trying to take the photos.

New Monitor Bezel For Vertical Positioning

As the monitor in the cabinet was originally mounted horizontal, the bezel only fits that orientation so I needed to create a new Bezel that would accommodate the vertical position. I purchased black poster board sheet, 22"X28" and it turns out it was about spot on :) just had to cut 3" from the bottom. I simply measured the largest width from the center of the monitor on the previous bezel which gave me 12"2/16, I measured the poster board at 22"2/16 so I am left with 10" split that in half and you have 5" Which I measured out from each side of the sheet made a straight line down both sides. From there I simply used the old bezel as a template, placed it between the lines traced it, then cut it out with an Xacto Knife.

The bends were made by eyeballing the old monitor, no real measurements, but it turned out right. I guess sometimes Lady Luck is on my side or she is just a fan of the 80's arcade scene. As you can see in the picture I have just simply laid it down over the monitor and the fit is snug, as with the original back drop still there its blocking all light out. The original bezel has holes where a washer sits on top of them holding it down to the Monitor frame,  my mounting is a bit different so I'm going to use black zip ties to hold it to the vertical monitor mount, as you know all the slots in the shelving brackets will accommodate this perfectly! I picked this Poster board up at Walmart for .97 cents and the thickness surprisingly enough matched the original.

Bezel Retainer Fixed up

Ok, So Now I have searched high and low on the internet and asked others what exactly that black plastic sheet over the wood retainer holding the Bezel was, and nobody has been sure exactly what it is so I figured something that I think is close enough and fits perfectly. This piece of plastic originally began to peel off and I'm sure I could have stuck some glue on it and made it look better but it was still pretty beat up, so I just  replaced it. I found Black ABS plastic with a width of .020 was the best match. Though the original stuff Nintendo used had carboard/paper mix I found from having to scrape all the shit off with a razor, I dont think anyone will notice the difference :)

So I ordered 2 pieces of the ABS plastic cut to the exact dimensions as I only paid $4 for each piece you never know, you just might need another :) They are Matte Black as my samples earlier the "Gloss" was way to "glossy" and as this plastic scratches pretty easy I didn't want it to look awful by the time I was done installing it. I used Plastic/Vinyl contact cement to apply it after sanding the surface smooth. I used my finger to rub it into the retainer itself, then to cover the back of the plastic, pushed and held it on tight for about 5 minutes and instant shit to sweet occurred! I know the flash on the camera shows the pieces ends but when looking at it you cant really see where it goes from plastic to wood on the sides of the cabinet making it fit in place nicely with the color match!

So as all the odd's and ends are getting finished the last major things left in this project are making new terminals for the power supply to support the Donkey Kong pinout to the harness, the parts are in the mail and as soon as those come in I will be pulling out the soldering iron and getting to work on that. The other thing that still has to be completed is the powder coating on the coin door, Bezel Bracket, & Marquee retainer in which I am in search for a good pricing on that as of now. once those two things have been completed I till be just putting everything back together! Stay tuned more updates to come

New Side Art Applied

Alright then! The Side art has now been applied to the cabinet, I have been debating now for awhile if I wanted to use the Dry or the Wet method of applying it and finally decided on the Dry method. I understand the wet method gives you a slight margin for correcting errors but I just cant seem to convince myself that putting water on adhesive wouldn't have any affects on the longevity of the vinyls life in terms of staying on. I'm not going to explain my method of doing so, instead I have posted a video made by Tighe Lory who is applying DK Jr. Side art, it's a lengthy video but covers start to finish and this is the exact method I used. (Also to mention one slight detail in the video the tool you see Tighe using to flatten the side art is known as a "Brayer" you can get them from most arts and craft stores, If you have any additional questions feel free to contact or Tighe)

I know on the "True" Dk machines the side art was just a tad bit lower but I really didn't care to be exact from the factory, How many cabs do you think are out there with the factory placements after Coin ops installed side art on conversions? So I measured 4 1/4 from the top and centered from there.

after applying the Side art I went ahead and added the other stickers for the coin insert and the instructional sticker below the bezel. The biggest tip I can give is to take your time! This is a bit of a slow process and the quicker you rush through it the more chances you have of the graphics being slanted or off center and the possibility of air bubbles. If you pull the backing of just a little at a time and use the a good amount of force on the Brayer you shouldn't have any air pockets. If you do happen to find some air pockets its best to deal with them before removing the top mask. This can easily be done by finding the smallest needle you have simply give a light poke in the center of the pocket and use your thump to massage the pocket out, sometimes it will move just a tad apply the same trick. If close enough to an edge try to move it out from under the vinyl. I only found two small air pockets after both sides were applied and successfuly removed both. I will however say I wasn't to entertained to have to poke 4 holes in $70 graphics for mounting bolts.

New connectors for Power supply finished & hooked up.

So I mentioned before that I would be using a Popeye Conversion power supply from Arcade Shop, well... I ended up getting a better deal for a PP-7B Power supply out of a Donkey Kong Jr Cocktail cab I decided to use instead, maybe a bigger headache on my end but keeps things more authentic in restoration to DK. Now this power supply unlike the PP-900A (Popeye) Has the +12V & -5V leads coming from it in which is needed to power Mark's Adapter as well as Jamma (The -5v is also used for the Video inverter on Marks adapter but typically not many Jamma boards require the -5v)

Now that I had the voltage needed it was a matter of getting the proper voltages from the pins to the harness. Popeye as all others had the 2 connectors (9 pin & 10 pin) that lead the correct VDC to the proper pins on the Edge Adapter, since this was Popeye though and a different Power Supply, these did not match up with corresponding pinout for Donkey Kong. I could have chopped up Popeye's adapters and made it work but again I am not chopping anything up or destroying the integrity of any of the original pieces so I opted to make my own connectors.

If you have the the PP-7B Power supply here's the Pinout for the 9 & 10 leads

10 pin connector to Video

1 Brown –5v
2 Red –5v
3 Orange –5v
4 Yellow –5v
5 Green Ground
6 Blue Ground
7 Purple Ground
8 Gray Ground
9 White +5v
10 Black +5v

9 pin connector to CPU
1 Brown Ground
2 Red Ground
3 Orange Ground
4 Yellow +12v
5 Green +12v
6 Blue +5v
7 Purple +5v
8 Gray –5v
9 White +24v (meter)
(List compiled by dokert)

As you can see from the pictures I simply used the same color of wires as Nintendo did on their harness, though I was very surprised to find the colors actually matched the colors to the harness whereas Popeye's didn't, had I known this I wouldn't have gone tracing every single wire to its position on the edge adapter. But then again it never hurts to double check, I did in fact not only check the voltages coming from the pins off the adapter, but also plugged both adapters into the harness then got a reading off the edge adapter itself and as you can see from one of the pictures, its the 12V we were missing before!!!! :)

I ordered all the parts (excluding wire) from Mouser as they carry the needed Molex adapters that were used on the original Nintendo Harness's excluding the little black ones, I've tried finding those but have had no luck, and from what I have heard everyone else say it's still unknown exactly what those were or how to get a hold of them. (truthfully...I'm willing to bet they are in some box in a Mouser warehouse in plain site with no orders as nobody knows their true identity) So instead I just used simple black connectors, I have included the parts list for anyone interested in ordering the parts from mouser to make their own. Total was $9.01 + $4.99(S&H)

538-16-02-0102     QTY X20
538-50-57-9009     QTY X1
538-50-57-9010     QTY X1
538-02-06-2132     QTY X20
538-15-31-1091     QTY X1
538-15-31-1121     QTY X1

Setting up SW2 for 60 in 1 functionality

Ok so some may be wondering by now what I was going to to about the button situation on the 60 in 1 vs what the DK cabinet has available. Well I really wasn't going to drill another hole in my control panel/CPO, though I could have easily had quite a few good 1 button games I wanted some of the two button game notably 1942/1943/1943 KAI. I decided that I would use the 2nd Player Start button as my SW2. The entire time I have ever owned the cabinet I have never played 2 Players on this cab, if it tells you anything my roommate noticed me working on it tonight and pointed out the Player 2 Start button and stated he had no idea that was there and how would you play 2 players?.....(yeah hes been living in the house for 3 years....) So that should easily explain why I'm going this route!

As I mentioned in an earlier post the Jamma to Nintendo adapter has holes designated for adding additional switches B2-B5 to be exact. So this makes it very handy in adding the extra button without having to chop anything up. I simply soldered a 22awg wire to the B2 port on the adapter, crimped a connector to the other end, slid the connector off of the P2 Start button and slid the new wire on! Simple as that! So once again as its been stated many times, at this point all you would have to do is switch the connectors, unplug the adapter and connect the edge harness to a DK 2 Board set and its instantly a DK dedicated! I as well put all the wiring/components back in the cab today, I have yet to fasten the ground wires, waiting for the 60 in 1 to arrive tomorrow and the coin doors will be powder coated in a week or two and that's all that's left!!!