At one point, I had decided that there wasn't really much point to owning more than one pinball machine. No matter how many machines I had, there was always one that I played constantly, and the rest would just gather dust. So I decided I wanted something besides a pinball machine for my new game room.
I went to the local distributor to see what all he had. He had lots of pinball machines I wanted, but I was determined to get a non-pin. I didn't want to get a boring old arcade game, I mean, that's what they invented MAME for. So I looked around for a non-pin something that I couldn't replicate on my computer.
He had three gun games, Operation Wolf, which I remembered playing as a kid, Terminator 2, and Lethal Enforcers II. The problem with OW & T2 was that they had guns mounted to the cabinet. I didn't want to be restricted like that, and constantly hunched over. LE II had cabled guns however. So I had him plug it in so I could see how it worked.
The graphics were pretty poor (blocky), but it used real pictures instead of drawings, and it differentiated between shooting someone in the leg and shooting them right between the eyes. It was fun, so I bought it and 3 days later he delivered it.
This was my first arcade machine, and it was neat, something different.
There was a short in the right gun however, and depending on how the cable hung, sometimes shots wouldn't register. Plus the guns were mis-matched. One had a flexible metal tube around it, and the other just had a rubber tube. So I looked at what Happ had and decided to replace them both with new "recoil" guns.
The reason I put "recoil" in quotes is that it doesn't recoil, it kind of vibrates. It doesn't really vibrate, it.. well I'm not sure how to describe it. There's a solenoid in the handle of the gun that goes off when you pull the trigger. It's kind of the same premise behind the knocker in a pinball machine, except its a smaller solenoid and it's got a rubber tip. So the gun shakes, kind of.
I guess it was worth the extra $40 to make the guns shake. I mean, the reason I got this game is because I wanted something different. I'm not sure it was worth the extra pain involved in wiring up the guns though.
The new guns came with a power supply and a PCB. It was easy enough wiring everything together, it was just time consuming.
When we first powered it up after replacing the guns, both guns fired, but neither one would register the hit. The right gun registered a hit, but it was at a random position on the screen, rather than where the gun was aimed. The left gun thought we were shooting off-screen.
So we started disconnecting, reconnecting, and checking wires. We couldn't get it to do a thing. We had taken a mostly working game and turned it into a non-functioning one. (We've all been there before.)
I spent a day or so going through the machine, checking wires, checking schematics, checking everything I could think of. I even ended up taking one of the guns apart to see if it looked like there was a problem in there somewhere.
I knew there had to be a reason it wasn't working, and since I hadn't found it yet, I figured the reason probably had something to do with me not knowing anything about videogames. So instead of focusing on what wasn't working, I started focusing on what was working, hoping I could find something different.
Unfortunately, I couldn't. I didn't have schematics for the PCB, and I still couldn't see how I could find something on the original PCB to help with the new PCB. More out of depression than frustration, I decided to give up. I'd just call the guy I bought it from and see how much he wanted to send out one of his techs for a house-call. I'd have them reinstall the new guns from scratch.
But apparently I moved some wires around because I couldn't close the PCB cover anymore. The PCB is inside a thin cardboard box with some sort of foil on the outside, obviously to protect the PCB from the magnetic field generated by the monitor.
Doh!
This was one of those times that I was so mad at myself, I felt like grabbing on to that little red wire on the monitor that has 20 thousand volts in it, and at the same time I was so happy I was almost giddy.
I closed up the box over the main PCB, found the box the new gun PCB came in, taped some aluminum foil over one side of the box, connected the foil to a grounding screw via an alligator jumper and tried it out.
Both guns worked great. After I finished cracking the wall with my forehead (or was it the other way around?), I put the back cover back on and moved the machine back into place.
Unfortunately, I later found out that the right gun only worked for about 5 or 10 minutes. I then went overboard and wrapped all the wires going from the guns to the PCB with metal tape, then insulated it with electrical tape, using alligator clips to connect the metal tape to a grounding screw. I then did the same thing with the wires going from the PCB to the MPU board. It seems to work fine now.
After completing all the aforementioned gun problems, I decided to tackle the feet. It has standard leg levelers on the bottom and moving it was a real pain. So I carefully (extremely carefully) laid it down on it's back and removed the levelers. Then I went to Lowes and bought some heavy-duty casters (the weight rating was around 75 lbs, I think) and some big wood screws and attached the casters where the levelers used to be. After setting it back upright (get help! don't try to do it alone!), I took off the back and verified everything was still where it was supposed to be. And then rolled it into place.
None that I'm aware of.