Saturday, June 19, 2010

Tempest : Act III

After buying and selling a few Tempests over the years and then regretting it every time, I know that this machine will never escape my clutches. With that in mind, I decided to go one step further with this Tempest in the way of a monitor transplant. This machine is certainly clean enough and being an early artwork model I deemed it worthy enough to be fitted with an Amplifone . I hauled the game into the laboratory to get a little "Mad Scientist" on it one last time.

I removed the WG K6100 and began putting the Amplifone pieces in place. The Amplifone high voltage board was rebuilt and upgraded as was the deflection board. This high voltage board was missing the brightness/focus assembly so I "borrowed" an assembly from an Electrohome G07 chassis. I was in uncharted waters with this focus assembly and would have to just hope for the best.

I had to disable the pin cushion correction circuit on the motherboard so the picture would look right on the screen. After following the steps outlined on the link at Ionpool.net the game was ready for a test. I powered on the game and everything worked like a charm, even the G07 focus assembly. The original mounting blocks give it a factory look and I am really happy with the outcome.



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The elements that brought this machine into my possession and the state that it is in now were some of the most satisfying experiences I have known in this hobby. The road trip to get the machine, the rebuilding of the broken corner, being able to salvage the overlay, rebuilding the monitor and experimenting with the G07 focus assembly, getting the sound working and then installing the Amplifone have made this machine one of my favorite pieces.

The End.

1 comment:

Darren said...

You are so lucky in the USA. We hardly find anything in the UK. We must have a different mentality towards saving thins.
I have an old 1983 Starwars upright but even this was imported form the US.