Robotron Dreams Revisited

Well, as many of you know, I picked up my very own Robotron Cab recently and have been working on my high scores. One small issue is that currently the screen width is messed up and about 10% of the playing field on both sides is not visable. Check out the picture below for an idea of how much is "off-screen" and thus not visable while playing.

This issue is most likely being caused by old capcitors. Though there is a horizontal width control coil that can be used to adjust the size of the screen, it is apparently either frozen in place or maxed out and I cannot use it to shrink the viewing field back down. I frequent several classic Coin-op collectors' forums and have some local friends who are going to help me install a new "cap kit" on this machine. This basically involves replacing all the existing capacitors on the monitor board with new ones. This process also requires soldering skills, of which I have none. Finally, to get the monitor board out of the cabinet, it is necessary to discharge the video tube to avoid receiving a nice 20,000 volt shock and killing yourself. You can check out the video below for an example of how this is done.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV9Td8vAb0Y[/youtube]

Looks easy, but it a bit daunting if you have never tried it before. Hence why I am going to take my friend up on his offer of help this weekend. Hopefully by Sunday night, I will have this issue fixed and will be able to really start working on my high scores. Even with this issue currently in place, I was able to log a personal high score of 494,500 tonight, just shy of 500,000. If my machine was working well and I had taped this game, it would have put me at the # 21 ranked spot in the world currently for this game per the records over at Twin Galaxies (twingalaxies.com/index.aspx). My ultimate goal is to try to break Brian King's world record of 348,691,680 set in 1983. Obviously, I have my work cut out for me.

Added on 8-28-09

Just got these manuals in the mail today from an eBay auction. Heading over to my friend's tomorrow to do the cap kit and will hopefully have a fully visable playing field by early evening!