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The Beginning:
THE DREADED PURPLE WIRE:
After much frustration I discovered some info about the dreaded "reset
circuit" on the power supply and the dreaded "purple wire".
Well after clipping the purple wire Tron was alive. The purple wire is the
output of the reset circuit and when the circuit fails the game thinks it is
stuck in a reset. Cutting the purple wire from the power supply board defeats
the reset circuit and I was in business. The purpose of the reset circuit
it to ensure that the game will reset in case of a power fluctuation such as a
brown out or power sag.
I will have shots of Tron soon, it is
currently still in the garage being restored.
The Project
List:
I apologize that I don't have pictures of
the whole process, but I will try to describe the restoration process of my
Tron. Some things just don't need a great deal of discussion though.
If anyone has any questions send me an email and I will try to explain what I
did.
Cabinet
The overall condition of the cabinet was pretty good upon arrival.
There were some scratches and a little wear, but overall the cabinet is
solid. It even had the original plastic protective film on the top of the
cabinet (along with a 20 year old piece of chewing gum). The side are on
the other hand was a different story. The front 6" of the side art on
each side had been worn down to the white backing of the decal. I
contemplated for a while, but finally decided it would look a little better if I
painted the 6" white stripe on the side art black to match the
cabinet. This looked a bit better, you can see the picture on the previous
page to judge for yourself. One of these days hopefully I will find some
reproduction artwork and replace it. I also painted the front of the
cabinet while I had the coin door of for restoration. I replaced the 4 fluorescent
bulbs and installed new starters. White bulbs: 1 behind the monitor art
and the other behind the marquee. Black Light Bulbs: 1 above the control
panel and one below the control panel. The bulb behind the control panel
is supposed to be a white black light (that seems like an oxymoron) but I
couldn't find one. I also installed new black T-Molding since the original
was cracked and coming off.
Monitor
I had to do the normal cap kit on the WG4600 monitor in my Tron.
This is a fairly tough monitor to cap, it has 2 daughter cards and the bottom of
the board is not silkscreened very clearly. However once it was capped and
the monitor front, smoked plexiglass and the glass bezel were all cleaned the
monitor really brightened up.
Control Panel
The game came with a total of 3 control panels, I picked the best of the
3 to keep, sold the 2nd best on Ebay and used the worst one for parts.
Here are my before and after shots of the control panel:
Before
& After
(Click Pictures to Enlarge)
I purchased a new
control panel overlay from www.arcadeshop.com
and applied it to the bezel after I used M1 remover to and a large can of elbow
grease to remove the old overlay. Then I installed my spinner with the
original artwork, the 2 original buttons and the joystick after I had cleaned it
inside and out. I am very happy with the results.
Power Supply
Ah...... The Bally/Midway 125VA Linear Power Supply. I hate this
power supply, it is really a hunk of junk with a time bomb soldered to the
corner. If you have a game with one of these beasts inside the first thing
you need to do is remove the battery from the corner of the board. Then
clean up the damage that it has caused. It will usually take out about 4
resistors (R113, R117, R201 & R206) and 4 jumper wires. If you are
lucky this will be the extent of the damage. Also don't forget if
you game wont fire up, cut the
PURPLE WIRE, this had to
be done on both of my MCR II games (Satan's Hollow was the other).
This is the wire for the reset circuit. I have had no trouble with my game
not having a reset circuit, but your mileage may vary. I also had to clean
up the connector that goes to the filter assembly as some of the pins were
corroded and this seemed to affect the ability of the game to produce
sound. It seems to be working much better now. If I have any more
trouble with this I may bite the bullet and convert to a switching power supply
if I can eliminate the audio hum that it causes.
Coin Door
The coin door needed
a good cleaning/painting. I completely disassembled the coin door, sanded
it down and applied 3 coats of paint to it. While that was drying I
polished the chrome coin slots and their mounting screws and the coin return
buttons that protrude through the door. I also straightened out the hinge
so that the door did not drag when shut.
Legs
It seems like every game I get needs new leveling legs installed, at
least Tron had the mounting plates in place so this was and easy task.
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