Go!

I haven't been posting much lately because I've been spending more time working on these machines. Track and field is now among the living! This is the first time I started with just a cabinet--no monitor, power supply, boards, lights, marquee, control panel.. just the wood and a beat up coin door. It wasn't my goal to build a Track and Field out of this (I got the cab from someone who had made a MAME panel for it) but things kind of fell together over the years.


Starting with nothing, power was a necessity--so I went with a switching power supply that I had yanked from my Mania Challenge-turned-Centipede, and finished it off with some parts from Bob Roberts' AC power starter kit. The kit has some nice stuff in it, including a fuse block, distribution block, isolation transformer, line filter, plug/cable, power switch, wires, and a bunch of other stuff. If you are looking to build a game from the ground up, these things are a necessity. Many of these items (like the fuse block and the isolation transformer) are there for your safety. Here's what I put together--it's all mounted on a 3/4 inch thick piece of MDF, about a foot square:


Now I needed to connect this thing up to the Track and Field board set I got on Feebay. As luck would have it, after digging around a bit, I found out that Track and Field (Konami) had the same pinout as Mania Challenge (Memetron/Taito). Apparently some manufacturers latched on to the Konami standard for a while there. This meant I didn't have to track down or build a wiring harness--I could just use the one that was already hooked up to my switcher from the Mania Challenge I deconverted. Sweet! One thing to note--Track and Field does not use -5V, so I disconnected that wire. (No need to send voltages to the board that are not neede--not that it did any damage--yes, I had it connected that way for a short while.)

Here's a shot of the boards being tested:


I had my eye out for a monitor, and managed to pick up an Electrohome G07 for $20. That's it in the picture above. I like these monitors because they are easy to work on, reliable, and produce a nice picture. I bought it in untested (aka sitting on a shelf for 15 years) condition, but it fired right up! Sometimes in this hobby, luck is on your side. Next up I had to rewire the connections for the Track and Field control panel. (Mania Challenge had things going on joysticks/buttons, whereas Track and Field is a nonstandard layout.) It took a lot of molex crimping and fiddling with pins on the board's edge connector to get everything going, but in the end, it was worth it! I bought a new fluorescent fixture from Home Depot and wired that in to my AC power center. I also picked up a marquee from Quarterarcade--it's fine for right now, but will keep my eye out for a nicer one. The machine needs some cosmetic work, but here's a picture of it in action:


We had some friends over so I hastily buttoned it up and we tried it out on a 4 player match. It worked like a charm! This is going to be a great addition to the arcade.

On your mark, get set...

Track & Field is a really fun game--you can't beat the button pounding, and it has appeal to a wide array of people. In an effort to make my row of games more appealing to visitors, I've set out on a quest for a Track & Field.

A few years back, I picked up a cabinet that had been partially converted to MAME. It was a Track & Field cabinet (painted black) that was stripped, but otherwise in really nice shape. At the time I thought, hey, I can use this for MAME and *maybe* convert it back at some point in the future.

The parts didn't seem to fall into my lap though, so the project was on the way back burner until a few weeks ago, when I bought some parts and the guy threw in this for free:

I believe his exact words were (while chuckling): "You want that?" I was pretty psyched, since this would finally get my project off the ground. The panel had seen better days, but the metal was good, and that's pretty much all you need. If you find yourself restoring a control panel, there are 2 tools that are an absolute necessity in my book. The first is a heat gun. It looks like a hair drier but gets a lot hotter. Hitting the trashed overlay with the heat from the gun loosens up the adhesive, which allows the overlay to be easily scraped off.

Next off I had to remove some of the adhesive. There are a lot of products out there that are supposed to do this, but I went with an odd recommendation from rgvac--peanut butter. It worked ok, but next time I think I will try something stronger. Apart from the adhesive, I had to remove a lot of rust. Both sides of this panel had a lot of rust; maybe it was left outside at some point. This is where the second tool comes into play: a power drill with wire wheel brush. I've sanded stuff by hand before, but this bad boy ate it up like nobody's business! If you already have a drill, you can get a wire wheel for about $3.00. After cleaning off the metal, it was primed, and painted satin black on the control panel side. (I did this so only black would be visibile on the sides if the overlay was slightly offset on application--it's usually a good idea to do this.) This was all done with spraycans (Rustoleum), since I don't have a fancy painting setup.

After letting this dry, I placed an order with Pheonixarcade . They do great screenprinted arcade artwork, and Track & Field appears to be one of their specialties. Here's the sweet overlay they sent:

Installing it went smoothly. It arrived with a the backing punched out for two of the buttons. This allowed me to set the overlay on the control panel with two buttons aligning it on the button holes. I pulled away the backing on the opposite side of the panel and tacked it down. Then, I unfastened the buttons, and removed the rest of the backing, and carefully smoothed the overlay into place. I would have pictures of what I just described, but my hands were kind of full at the time! Here is the final result, finished off with some leaf switch buttons from Bob Roberts: