I’ve actually been getting a bit of grief about the lack of updates on my twitter account about this restoration! It’s a fair cop. The grim late winter over here has meant slow progress with the Battlezone (well that, and my laziness hasn’t helped either), but milder weather is upon us, so I’ve been able…
Category: Restoration
Atari Battlezone Restoration 3
We’re making good progress with this Battlezone cabaret. Do check out parts 1 and 2 here if you haven’t done so already. So I thought it time to make a start on the grubby control panel. You’ll recall the state this was in when I acquired the cab: Not pretty at all. Luckily, I managed…
Atari Battlezone Restoration 2
Well it’s been a while since I wrote about this Battlezone cabaret restoration, so thought it time for an update. Part 1 saw us cleaning the cab out of its hardware, removing the horrible white mould that came with it, and getting the monitor up and running. A solid start. (Catch up on part 1…
Atari Tempest Spinner Upgrade Kit Installation
Pursuing a hobby that involves 30+ year old electronic and mechanical parts comes with its own set of challenges. Repairing old circuit boards is one thing; fixing and maintaining what were often bespoke made parts is another. Some things are pretty simple to replace where they are standard components – bolts, nuts, screws and washers,…
Atari Centipede Upright Restoration 5 FINAL
OK we’ve made it. The Atari Centipede is complete! If you’ve missed the previous installations, you can read them all here. So what follows, are the final pieces of the jigsaw being sorted out. First up, t-molding. This is the thing that really smartens up a cab, and gives it that finishing touch. I ordered 120 foot…
Atari Battlezone Restoration 1
You’ll have read about this cab in a previous “Weekend Pickup” post here. It was one of the cabinets from the late Pete Davies’ collection, which you can read about here. It’s in a pretty sorry state, but shouldn’t take too much work to get things sorted out. (I don’t know why I always say that, because…
Atari Centipede Upright Restoration 4
So we should now be in the home straight on the restoration of this Atari Centipede. What started as a “light restore” has turned into quite the job. I under-estimated just how much work I had to do to get this cabinet up and running and looking decent again. But things are coming together, and…
Atari Centipede Upright Restoration 3
So here we go then with part 3 of the restoration of this Centipede Upright cabinet. Some good news to start off with – the monitor is back from the repair guy (thanks again Grant!). You’ll recall we had vertical collapse on the screen. It turned out that all of the High Voltage caps were…
Atari Centipede Upright Restoration 2
So things are going well with the restoration of the Centipede upright. Everything has been stripped out pretty much. We have a cleaned up marquee, bezel, control panel and monitor. Time to take a look at the inside and outside of the cab itself. Things aren’t pretty there. General grime, dead insects and dirt greet…
Atari Centipede Upright Restoration 1
I picked this cabinet up a few weeks back (you can read about that adventure here). Upright Centipedes are lovely looking machines; the artwork is arguably the most iconic of Atari’s efforts from the early eighties. Over 45,000 of these units were built, making it one of the great commercial successes of the company’s early 80s…