This was listed on eBay as non-working. I have read horror stories about how much of a maintenance nightmare these are (just llike Pole Positions) but decided this would be my winter project and gave it a shot. A winning bid of $129.50 and the game was mine.

When I got it home I decided to check the basics: voltage, cold solder joints and fuses. Fuses were good but I had to do some minor tweaking of the +5V and reflowing the header pins on the AVG and AUX boards. Powered the game back on and still nothing. I also noticed that the spot killer LED on the deflection board was on. So I ordered an AR/II and GO5-802 rebuild kit from Bob Roberts.

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I installed the AR/II and GO5-802 kits when they arrived and still had a non-working Battlezone. The Hi-Score Save kit, created by Scott Brasington at http://www.brasington.org/arcade/hs/bzone/ and also available thru www.arcadeshop.com, bypasses the onboard ROMs which are a common problematic area.

I eagerly anticipated the arrival of the Hi-Score kit and boy was it worth it. The kit installs in the 6502 socket on the Analog/Video Generator (AVG) board with the removed 6502 being installed on the kit itself. After a quick 3-minute install I powered the game up and immediately heard music. I walk to the front of the game and am greeted with this...

A working Battlezone!!! As you can see the monitor sits parallel with the floor and is projected/reflected vertically onto a slanted mirror. You can notice in the above picture that the monitor is crisp while the image on the mirror is doubled. A quick post to the forums at KLOV (http://forums.klov.com) revealed that the mirror was installed backwards.

I played a couple of games and noticed that the joysticks are a little sloppy and do not return to center when released. Reason is that there are rubber bellows that are supposed to spring the joysticks to center but after 30 years I guess they get a little worn and dry. I pulled the control panel and also found that one of the housings was cracked all the way around.

Luckily I was able to find a NOS joystick housing on eBay.

More to come....