coronavirus - killing shows

So not only am I not going to TPF, but also not MGC (which means I'm not bringing van halen out anytime soon).  I'm still planning on bringing it to Chicago Expo but that's still 7 months away.

Because I have so much time I'm not going to waste it.  I'm going to try to finish all the basic things I was going to do (IEC connection, try to move more of the boards into the lower cabinet for each hookup, move the audio amp near the coin door for easy volume control), but I have a couple stretch goals in mind:

1. While the speakers are decent, they are by no means optimized.  I literally shoved a couple speakers inside a poorly crafted wooden box and drill some holes on the front.  I would like to get a pair of the 3d printed ported speakers made up to put behind the 80s boombox fascade.

2. I love building LCD mods, and I think adding one that plays music videos would be a nice attraction.  Since there is effectively zero space between the top of the playfield and glass, I would probably have to make some sort of topper.

You see... IEC

One thing that really bothers me about early solid state, the crappy way they did the plug.  It comes up from the cabinet, goes up through the hole, then you have to get it in that channel just right so the backbox doesn't pinch it.  Or you FORGET to do that, bolt down the backbox, and go "CRAP! I forgot the linecord!"  Well screw that.. I'm installing an IEC connector on the back, because I can.  Got out my multimeter and set it to continuity to check which pins are which.  Looks like the back of the IEC connector directly correlates to a standard plug.  Got the port installed by drilling some holes and opening it up with a jigsaw, now I just have to solder the old linecord to the IEC connector and I'm all set.

Van Halen is coming to MGC

So I've committed to Ed Owens that I'm bringing this game to the show.  The homebrew section at both Midwest Gaming Classic and Chicago Expo are fantastic and I want to be a part of that.  Big thanks to Hugh Spahr for rebuilding the SD card from scratch since the original got corrupted (and neither of us made a backup).  He got it to work with a pi zero which makes it look even more impressive in the backbox.

So beyond cleaning it up (polishing the playfield, trying my best to get rid of corrosion on metal), I also wanted to make some improvements.  This isn't a knock on Hugh, I know he worked really hard to get this done for Pintastic and it's amazing he was able to do all this himself.

I decaled the spinner and shooter plate:



I also wanted the backglass to have more light, so I created a new wood panel that just clears the LCD and dropped more strips along the sides.  I also didn't like the screw to hold down the light panel so I put the screw in backwards and tightened it down with a wingnut.  There are some hotspots and I tried defusing them using a ceiling tile panel, but it ended up texturing the light in a weird way.. Plus ceiling tiles are made from acrylic and they crack very easily.