Tempest Restoration -
Inspiration or Insanity?

Page 2: New Arrival
January 28, 2004

Wednesday January 28th, 2004 my wife and I picked up the cabinet. What can I say? I am one VERY lucky guy! Remember the pictures from page 1 - you know, the ones that look like the cabinet had been painted black? Well guess what..... It wasn't paint, it was textured vinyl!!! A few hours with a hair dryer and I had peeled off the vinyl to reveal the original art, in quite good condition too!

The next thing I noticed was that the power supply is still in the bottom of the cabinet. I have no idea if it works. There are also some remnants of the original wiring. Several wires are missing or have been cut to power the JAMMA game. There is an extra transformer as well, I'm guessing it was used to power the raster monitor - which has a fair amount of burn-in and no electronics.

Click on images for bigger pics:

	Well, it needs some foot work. Upper right is completely toast. Wheels are good though.
	Marquee was cut up. I need more pictures of a good one to tell if I can fix this one, or if I need to find a good one. Notice monitor area was cut up to fit a horizontal one. I need more info to tell if this will be a problem or not. I think the mounting points are OK, it's just a matter of whether the extra support on the sides is necessary.
	Here are the guts. Notice the power supply, also notice the extra transformer to the left of the power supply. No, the PCB in the picture is not Tempest - it's Konami's Aliens.
	Notice the wonderful conversion job on the marquee board, I guess it could have been worse.
	The plate that holds all the hardware and wiring is bent on the right. It's like someone seriously wanted their quarter back.
	Yes! Yes! Yes! I am so incredibly lucky that whoever converted this game chose to cover the original art with such an easy to remove substance! I think I just saved myself about $120 for new side art!!!
	Here is the right hand side. This is the better of the two, although both sides definately look good to me! The colors in the photos are a bit washed out. Take my word for it when I say it looks even better in person.
	The black bits that you see around the edges of the art is leftover vinyl bits. It was tucked under the T-molding, and I decided not to remove the molding yet as it provides a little protection from bumps. When I do replace it I will take off what little vinyl remains.
	Here's my other quandry. The only problem I see here is the Super Zapper button. There are extra holes on both sides of it, so I'm not sure the best way to patch it.

I can't put into words how happy I am with how things went today! The thought that I would end up with a cabinet that has complete side art after only a couple hours work never crossed my mind. I fully expected to spend the better part of a week working with chemical strippers, and even then I didn't dare hope that the results would be this good.