July 10, 1999
I saw an ad for a garage sale in the local classifieds, which listed a Pac-Man game as one of the items for sale. I showed up when it opened, and found a Pac-Man cocktail in decent condition:

The game was in good cosmetic condition aside from some wear on the Player 1 control panel and some flaking and scratches on the monitor glass. The game had some intermittent video problems that the owner claimed were due to some kind of bad connection:

The screen would clear up occasionally and the game was fully playable for brief periods. They wanted $250, but they took my cash offer of $150, and I took it home. The game was j-u-s-t barely light enough for me to carry myself, which was nice as I've already strained most of my friendships moving games up and down the stairs into my house.

July 11, 1999
Today I checked all the connectors, and checked the power on-board with my multimeter. Wiggling the connectors did not seem to help anything - the screen garbage would come and go without anyone even touching the game. I spent a bunch of time pressing down on the chips looking for a loose connection, spraying cold spray looking for thermal faults, etc. I also bought  an original manual with schematics on eBay for $6.50 + shipping today.

July 20, 1999
The schematics and manual arrived today, and I started poring over them. I was actually surprised at how simple the video generation circuitry looked, although I won't claim to understand them all. I spent a bunch more time wiggling chips, before giving up.

I found Mowerman's pac-man site at http://users.erols.com/mowerman/pacfile.htm. This site was great. He also had a great page on how to use a logic probe.

July 22, 1999
I took some pictures of the video problem I was having, and passed them along to the foks on RGVAC.

July 24, 1999
I got a tip that the "74LS283 @ 1-H might be bad" from someone with the Pac-Man Troubleshooting book. My board has the '283 @ 1-F, not 1-H. I checked the outputs of the 283 with my logic probe, and they seemed OK. Then I followed the lines on the schematic to the '174 right next to it, so I started checking all of its outputs. The 174 is a flip-flop, and I noticed that two of the inputs were pulsing, but the outputs weren't, which I figured was wrong. Since my problem was intermittent, I also could test the chip in it's "working" state - sure enough, the outputs pulsed normally when the video was working, and stayed high when the video was garbaged.

I rolled out to Radio Shack and bought a replacement chip and a socket. About 45 minutes later, my Pac-Man was cured!

July 31, 1999
Started working on the cosmetics of the cabinet. I had some nice black satin paint that I've used on other cabinets in the past, and it looked great on the parts of the trim I tested it on. The coin door and control panel uses glossy black paint, so I'll have to buy some to touch those up. I also bought a little can of Goof-Off, and took off all the extra stickers, gum, etc that were stuck to various surfaces of the cab. I tested it on a small portion of the control panel - let's just say that you DO NOT want to use Goof-off on your control panel overlays. It smears the paint! I may end up replacing the CPOs anyway, but we'll see.

I also degaussed the monitor with my trusty Radio Shack bulk tape eraser. The colors look pretty now, but there's a barely noticeable curl on the right side of the screen and a little clipping on the top that I think a cap kit will fix right up.

Aug 9, 1999
The old tinted plexiclass that fit over the monitor had gotten pretty cloudy over the years, so I bought a new piece from a local glass company. I also bought a small piece of milky white plexi to replace one of the white pieces behind the Player-2 control panel. While I was there, I got a quote for a new glass top. www.pacman.com wanted $100 + shipping for their new glass tops, and their tops have the word "Tempered" printed on them (can you say u-g-l-y?). My local glass shop wanted $62 for the same piece of custom-cut tempered glass, and they would also omit the "Tempered" logo if I wanted. Needless to say, I took them up on it, and my new glass should be ready in a week or so.

Also, I ordered a capkit and some new lamps that go behind the control panels from Bob Roberts. He has pretty much everything under the sun related to arcade games - only a few of the items in his stock are listed on his web page, and he ships the same day your payment arrives.

Aug 26, 1999
I installed a cap kit last week, and I performed the upgrade to make the monitor more tolerant of different syncs. The picture looks really nice now, with no curls or anything - the entire picture fits on the screen now as well. I also resoldered all the connector pins on the main board, so I think the monitor should be in good shape for some time to come.

There was some wear on the control panels and on the black corner trim (you can see it a little bit on the picture at the top of the page). The coin door looked pretty gross as well (faded, a bit rusty). So I took the control panels off, masked off the overlays, sanded off any rust spots, and slapped a coat of glossy black paint on them (my daughter suggested that I use pink, but I'm a bit of a traditionalist). I also masked off the wood paneling on the cocktail itself, and painted the coin door and the corner trim.

The wooden corner trims look great, but I'm not so happy with the coin door and the control panels - I used a paintbrush, and you can see brush strokes. I also used a latex paint, and I suspect this will be pretty easy to scratch off. In the future, I'm going to use spray paint on any metal surfaces, to get a nice smooth (and durable) finish. Using latex paint and a brush seems to work fine on wood, though.

In any case, I also took an old toothbrush and some 409 to the control panels, and they look pretty sweet. The Player 2 overlay is pristine, but the Player 1 overlay has worn away at the bottom, as you can see in this picture:

I'm still undecided on whether to buy a new set of reproduction overlays, since the Player 2 side looks so nice. I'll probably just stick with what I have, unless I find some deal on eBay for an NOS Player 1 O/L. If I ever do get a new overlay, I'll strip the old paint off (including the coat of latex I just added) and just spray paint the whole thing while I've got the hardware off.

Oh, yeah - I picked up my new monitor glass yesterday. It looks great, but I'm waiting until I buy my underlay before I install it on the cabinet.

Sep 19, 1999
I got the underlay yesterday, and installed it. It looks great. I tried to put some thin foam under it to prevent wrinkles, but I didn't have any foam that was thin enough (my foam was 1/4" thick, which didn't compress down enough to let me get the clips on the glass). I think 1/8" foam would work perfectly. The underlay still looks great, though.

So, it's done! Here's the final product:

Final Note
Thomas Campbell in Chicago has offered to trade me his Tempest upright for this cocktail, and I'm taking him up on it. I think we are both happy with the deal, but I'll admit that I'm a little sad to give this baby up. I've gotten really attached to it over the last couple of months. I can't wait to find another one!