Tempest Restoration -
Inspiration or Insanity?

COST

NOTE: If you don't want to read my rambling story about buying/selling parts - scroll to the bottom for the spreadsheet!

It took me a few days from the time I won the auction for the cabinet until I could pick it up. I decided to start trying to find some of the parts I would need before I even had the cabinet, using the auction photos (the ones on the first page of this site) to determine what I would need.

I first emailed the ebay seller of a badly damaged Tempest cabinet, and asked if the winning bidder had picked up the entire cabinet or just parts. The seller was able to offer me the monitor glass retainer, speaker grille, power supply and wiring harness. The asking price seemed fair to me, so I agreed.

At the same time, I emailed a local collector that had a water damaged Tempest cabinet for sale about a year ago. I didn't think there would be much of a chance that he had any parts left, but it wouldn't hurt to ask. He gave me the email address of another local collector who had bought the cabinet parts, and said that he may be interested in selling them.

I emailed him and he responded that he had just about every part from that Tempest, and that he was in the process of buying a complete Tempest and would get in touch with me again when he got it. I looked at his email address, and thought it looked familiar. I then went back to the ebay auction for my cabinet and saw that he was the one I outbid to win my cabinet! I sent him another email to make sure there were no hard feelings, which there weren't.

When I picked up my cabinet I saw that it did have the Tempest power supply still in it. The auction description stated that it had been removed to go into another game, but it turns out that was the JAMMA power supply. So now I had a second power supply on the way. I figured I could sell it on ebay or keep it for a spare.

I was then contacted by the local collector, who told me that he now had his Tempest, so I could pick up the parts. He wanted to sell the whole box of parts as a group, so I asked if it would be OK with him if I sold any of the duplicate parts on ebay. He didn't mind, so I bought the box of parts. This meant that I had everything I needed apart from a monitor, monitor bezel, new overlays and some miscellaneous parts.

Once all the parts were here I started cleaning them up. They were all pretty dirty, but came clean with a damp rag. I then blitzed ebay with ten auctions of extra parts. All but a couple small items sold. This was a relief because I had ordered some parts from Arcadeshop and was getting a little concerned about how much money I had sunk into this project in such a short time. I was going to do it slowly... yeah, right. All I can say is thank goodness I have an understanding wife!

I had emailed another local collector about a monitor. He told me that he would sell me his spare when he fixed up another one he had. Well, before that happened another local collector (boy, there sure seems to be a lot of 'em around here) contacted me with an offer for a monitor. I ended up spending more, but I got it right away. He hooked it up to a Space Duel cabinet, and the picture was really nice - so I bought it.

The last piece was the PCB. I got one in the large box of parts purchase, but I was told that it had a video problem. The collector who sold it to me gave me the name of the local PCB repair pro, and I took it down to him to exchange the PCB, a non working Dig Dug board and some cash for a working Tempest. Now I had all the parts I needed.