I Brought A 1983 Cabinet Back From The Dead

It arrived on a Tuesday, strapped to a pallet, wrapped in a moving blanket that smelled like a basement. The seller had described it as "working, mostly". The monitor hummed, the coin door was held shut with packing tape, and somebody had written a phone number on the side art in marker.

Six weekends later it takes quarters again. Here is everything that went wrong, in the order it went wrong, so you can skip the parts I got stuck on.

WEEKEND ONE — THE INVENTORY

Before you unscrew anything, photograph everything. Every cable, every connector, every scrap of tape somebody added in 1997. You will not remember, and the machine will not tell you.

The best restoration tool is a phone with a full battery and no shame about taking two hundred photos of the inside of a wooden box.

WEEKEND TWO — THE MONITOR

The hum was a failing capacitor on the chassis, which is the most common fault and the most intimidating one. A tube holds a charge long after it is unplugged, so this is the one job worth being slow and careful about, or handing to someone who does it every week.

• Discharge the tube before touching anything
• Recap the chassis as a set, not one part at a time
• Adjust geometry last, after everything is warm

WEEKEND THREE — THE CONTROLS

The joystick was original and worn smooth, which is charming right up until the moment you need a clean diagonal. New microswitches, a new gate, the old ball top kept because it has thirty years of fingerprints polished into it.

Wiring is simple: every switch runs to ground and one signal pin. If a button is dead, it is nearly always the spade connector, not the switch. Try wiggle the connector before you buy anything.

WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY

I would clean the cabinet before I fixed the electronics. Every hour of soldering I did was followed by twenty minutes of dust falling back onto the board. Start with soap and a soft brush, then open the machine.

And I would have bought the correct bulb for the marquee at the beginning, instead of running it dark for five weeks and telling visitors it was "atmospheric".