Hello

[Mitchell Gant]

Hi,

I'm a new member here, but an old collector just getting back into it after a while not doing much. I've been lurking here a short while.

I'm located in North Derbyshire, and went to the Replay Expo a few weeks back to see what's new... err,no...old.

I started collecting in 1986 with a Firefox innards for £50. I used to have a lot of laserdisc stuff, mostly PCBs/players rather than full cabinets, as well as a fair bit of Atari stuff. Space issues and a general loss of interest through the late '90's meant that most of it has found other homes now, no doubt with some of you folks (I'm looking at you Purity!).

All I have now is:

An U/R Star Wars with 2 boardsets and a 3rd home-made-switchable SW/ESB boardset.

An U/R Firefox with 4 just repaired boardsets, but 4 non-working players.

A Stargate PSU and (mostly) repaired boardset along with a 20 year old homebuilt control panel on a lump of ugly wood... but it works well enough to show me how poor I am at playing it.

Regards,

Neil

 

[Alpha1]

Hi Neil,

Nice one on the Firefox UR - is it an Irish built one?

 

[Mitchell Gant]

Hi Neil,

Nice one on the Firefox UR - is it an Irish built one?

Hi,

Yes says so on back, Tipperary UR0133657 if that means anything.

I got it from somewhere in Blackpool with another Firefox UR my mate had, but that was a couple of decades ago now!

Far from mint though, it's always had a GO7 monitor with Defender image burned into screen since I got it. I guess chances of getting a real CRT replacement are next to zero now?

Regards,

Neil

 

[Big Phil]

Welcome!

Any DMD's you need repairing, just pass them my way.

 

[IDCHAPPY]

Welcome aboard buddy

, nice selection of old time cabs

 

[Alpha1]

Hi Neil,

Nice one on the Firefox UR - is it an Irish built one?

Hi,

Yes says so on back, Tipperary UR0133657 if that means anything.

I got it from somewhere in Blackpool with another Firefox UR my mate had, but that was a couple of decades ago now!

Far from mint though, it's always had a GO7 monitor with Defender image burned into screen since I got it. I guess chances of getting a real CRT replacement are next to zero now?

Regards,

Neil

Was your friend called Richard?

 

[cliff_poole]

Out of interest, how did you get into collecting so early on ?.

I got my first internet connection in '96, and it was a complete revelation to me that it was possible to own an arcade machine (unless you were in the trade), I'd never even considered it as being a possibility.

 

[andyman]

Hi Neil & welcome

Get some pics up, we love pics...........

Andy

 

[Mitchell Gant]

[/QUOTE]

Was your friend called Richard?

[/QUOTE]

He is. He told me he sold it last year sometime when I last spoke to him. You know where it went then? Small world I guess...

If so, do you know if it was made to work again? He said that new owner had or knew someone who had replaced the disc player with a solid state solution... something I've been exploring myself. I'd love to find out more.

I used to be fairly good at keeping disc players working, especially VP931's, but 20 years in a garden shed hasn't done any good and they're all very dead now. No gas left in laser tubes on 3 of them, and 4th is very low.

Regards,

Neil

 

[Alpha1]

Hi,

Yeah I bought it

I am still awaiting the conversion board to remove the need for the player. Fingers crossed next year as I want to take it to the South Coast Slam for people to enjoy.

I have quite a few spare players - not sure on their status - kept in the loft (nice loft though).

 

[Mitchell Gant]

Out of interest, how did you get into collecting so early on ?.

I got my first internet connection in '96, and it was a complete revelation to me that it was possible to own an arcade machine (unless you were in the trade), I'd never even considered it as being a possibility.

I used to play in arcades on holiday from about '83 as a teenager. Loved Star Wars, then Firefox, amongst others.

At a Southsea arcade near Portsmouth while on holiday, I plucked up courage to ask the change bloke what had happened to the circuit boards from the Firefox machine that had been converted to a crappy Choplifter, and were they for sale. He looked at me as a little strange I think!

But he showed me the boards and said £50 and I could have them. I tried for £30 but he wouldn't budge, so I borrowed more off my dad (who thought I was mental) and came away with a boardset, player, disc (still left in cabinet, nearly forgot it!), pair of Audio-Regs and most importantly to me, a full manual and schematic set.

After a lot of studying the schematics I built up a horrible but working loom when I got home, then looked in the Yellow pages and found a local game operator to hassle. He sold me an old Galaxian cab that had a working monitor and I built the Firefox into that. He also sold me a Cabaret Asteroids for £5, along with schematics, and that led to my first chip troubleshoot to get it working.

After that I started just asking in arcades for old boards. Most told me to go away, but some were really helpful.

Me and my mate started going to Cleethorpes where we found an arcade owner who ran it for his dad back down south. Although the arcade was small, he had access to lots of stuff from his dad's place, so we got hold of lots of laserdisc games from him, usually for £20-£50 each, no doubt a nice bit of cash for him selling their 'junk'!

Then I got a part time job repairing and swapping games for a local operator, though that didn't last very long. Problem for me was always lack of space for the amount of stuff I had. At one point I had cabinets farmed out to friends houses just so I didn't have to get rid of them, but eventually they got bored and they had to go.

Now I have more space available and find a nostalgic collector community thanks to the Internet, I'm slightly regretting selling some of it. At one point I had a table top Tempest #000015 (given to me free!), tabletop Missile Command, U/R Space Duel, Crystal Castles, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Warlords and a clone Defender. Plus a lot of PCBs.

To be fair MAME has made a lot of it redundant, but some games just aren't the same on MAME.

Regards,

Neil

 

[trm]

Hi Neil,

That's a really interesting tale - thanks for sharing it! I'll second andyman too: pics are always welcome, especially of any funky modded stuff.

Welcome to ukvac. I think you'll like it here

cheers
tim

PS Was looking at the username and I was sure it rang a bell from somewhere, then the third paragraph of your OP and it all clicked into place

 

[Mitchell Gant]

Hi Neil & welcome

Get some pics up, we love pics...........

Andy

Will this do for you?

No laughing at the back about my Stargate setup...

Love what my phone camera does with Star Wars:

 

[andyman]

'You must think in Russian'

 

[DanP]

You must have hands like a bunch of Bananas to use that Stargate control panel!

Welcome to ukvac btw

Dan

P.S Nice score on Star Wars btw!

 

[cliff_poole]

Great story !.

I had to make do with a Spectrum through most of the 80s (don't get me wrong, I loved my speccy), when I did go to the arcades it was like being in a dream. It would have totally blown my mind to have gaming like that at home back in the day

.

 

[andyman]

Nice Stargate but it seems someone's been at your chips with a dremmel...

Sell me a working SW boardset

Andy.

 

[IDCHAPPY]

Love the ghetto control panel too

 

[dezbaz]

Hi Neil

Welcome to the forum

Yes a few of us are waiting on the solid state Laser player to arrive, the last part I need in my Dragon's lair is the disc. That will be a day in history when they arrive

Also I see you devised a SW and ESB switcher (Homemade). I would love to know more there.

Is it 2 boards (Separate SW and ESB) or did you write software?

Pics ??

I have a few SW and ESB boards I need to fix, and 1 working, so info like this can be valuable (IE how you did it)