well, in fact it's not vinyl, it's laminate!

Laminate? OK, probably nowhere available anymore for our purpose. Then I stick to vinyl. Do you perhaps an intenet shop where good vinyl is available. I suppose it has to be smooth, not textured like on the side panels. and not glossy of course.

Are you sure you're going to paint the kick-plate ? Nicest would be some new vinyl IMHO.

Is it original vinyl? Then I didn't see it good. If it's vinyl, it will be vinyl again. don't worry.

why don't you use leg levelers instead of those wooden planks?

Because I don't have them in the kitchen drawer. And I don't want to drive a few weeks around with a centipede in my car until the leg levers will arrive (which I still have to order) 

Part 2 – unloading the cab

It stopped raining, therefore it’s unloading time

Take 1



Take 2



Take 3



Take 4



Done. Hey, I have a bug in the system, oh no  , it's in my garden

It’s Road Trip Season.  

This is my second road trip, and where I met an Ape at the first one, this time I’m going to see a lot of bugs. And although I’m not afraid of bugs, I’m still happy that they are trapped inside a game called …… CENTIPEDE.

Yes, thanks to Level42, who had a great weekend as we all know, I am able to get my second classic cab. Donkey Kong will meet Centipede.  

First the statistics:
Date: 1 November 2009
Author: ckong
Target: Centipede – Atari   http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7299
Trip: Everything happened in The Netherlands
Total length: 354 km and 7. 5 hours.

This is the trip I will make today



After preparing the car I left home at 09.50 AM. It was a little bit foggy, and the weather forecast wasn’t looking good, a lot of rain and hard wind. Oh well, let’s see what happens today.



10.46 – Coffee time





11.31 – Almost there. The weather was still dry, but I could see a lot of rain in the sky. I wonder how long before it will start raining. I arrived at Level42 at 11.40 AM. This was the first time we met, but because we both share the same interest there was a mutual understanding right away. We discovered that both our interest in retro arcade gaming was triggered (again) about 10 years ago after reading or hearing about Mame. We had a nice talk about this and after some coffee we went outside where Level42 had put the Centipede cabs (3 of them) to be inspected. And this one will be mine:  







The cab has been built in the Atari factory in Ireland and runs on 220V. It’s  in pretty good shape, with the sideart almost completely intact. The monitor bezel and the marquee are really perfect and all paperwork is present. On the control panel there are a few heavy cigarette stains and damages, but that’s all. I might replace it with new panel artwork from mamemarquees.



Level42 started to check if the cab is technically working 100%, and it is. Trackball is working (but I will refurbish it), buttons are working, as is the monitor and the sound. I am so happy. Level42 did get 3 faulty Centipede boards for free, and he gave me one. The game starts and plays OK, but the playfield is a bit scrambled with a lot of letters! However, this should be easy fixable. Here are another few pics of the (dirty) internals of the cab. A bit of cleaning will do miracles.







 In the meanwhile it started to rain and we quickly did put the cab in my car (no pics unfortunately) and protected the other cabs also from the rain.

After this I of course had to see Level42’s gameroom. It was a bit small, but filled with very nice classic cabs, like Joust, Galaxian, Mario bros., Missile Command, and his proud: the Starwars cockpit. This game really looked very stunning. Of course a bit of restoration/refurbishing work was already done, and I could already see that the game will be in excellent shape when it’s ready. Really a game one can be proud of. I played some Galaxian, Missile Command and Mario bros., and we talked some more about videogames and videogaming.

At 15.30 I went home and fortunately the weather was clearing up:  



After a while I stopped at a gas station for my usual (late) lunch



Some more pics of the scenery around me





Finally, almost 7.5 hours later I was at home again, 354 km. of road behind me.



This really was a great day. It was very nice to meet and talk with Level42, and I owe him my thanks for the great Centipede game. Because of the rain I will unload the cab tomorrow. As I am still in de middle of the restoration of Donkey Kong, this cab will be stored away for a few weeks (Although, I will order the necessary parts for the refurbishment, together with the DK parts).

1 November 2009 was a great day.  

Very nice catch indeed, 8 cabs in one go!    And those Berzerks are in great shape indeed. But also some of the Centipedes seem to have well-aged. Never seen a Centipede in real, nor a Berzerk of course. Well you never know, perhaps one day ....

And that's where the aforeshown spider came from, Centipede.

four cabs on a row. I have no clue 

Could be something with:

Yeah, good luck and have fun with the built of this beautiful replica. The last few days I read your other projects and they are very stimulating. Probably will do one also someday.