with the thread title being loosely based on julius caesar's famous phrase "veni, vidi, vici", it was me who came, who saw and who conquered!

what did i conquer? a dedicated atari vindicators arcade cabinet! well, in fact the battle wasn't too hard to win, because i got this game for free and as we all know:
nothing beats free!!!now on to the bad part: the cabinet is missing a lot of parts (monitor, pcb, power supply, speakers, etc.) and while its body is still in solid shape, it is going to need a lot of TLC (tender, love & care) to bring it back to life and make it playable again!
let's have a look at the cabinet first - full frontal view


the left side

as you can see, not much left of the artwork

tank chains look dirty, but are almost intact

the right side

fortunately, the sideart here is still there and in nice condition, which means i've got a new job for the vector king


tank chains are looking better here as well

the back side

as you can see, someone obviously tried to "break into the game" and smashed the wood and the grill


i guess i need some repro alu stickers for this one, too!

the fan guard is missing as well (more signs of a forced entry) and there are some heavy damages to the cabinet

at the front, the light fixture is present, but the entire marquee assembly (metal frame, glass, vindicators attraction decal translite) is missing ...

... and so are the speakers!


the good news is that the front decal is there ...

... and its condition ain't too bad


i guess it would have been close to impossible to repro the decal with all those shiny glossy colors - lucky me


on to the control panel where you can see the rust eating away the metal!


the two tank controllers


the german instruction decal seems to be in great shape - at least something


a look inside the cabinet reveals an empty pcb slot and no power supply at all with the wiring harness being cut!


the lower coin door has been opened and the coin bucket has been stolen, but the upper coin door (which hides the coin mechs, the coin counters and the audio pcb) is still locked - but not for much longer!

lock successfully "picked"


open sesame: coin mechs are intact!

a first peek inside reveals the audio pcb and the coin counters - everything seems to be present!

not too many games on the counters - i wonder when this game was played for the last time ...


up to now i haven't removed the control panel because it is being held in place by six of these strange screws

i've been into this hobby for some time now and i don't know how many times i had reached the point where i thought "now you have all the tools you need to restore games!". well, i guess i was wrong again and after a trip to a nearby hope depot a new set of tools has been added to my collection


all it needs is the right bit and the screws come off easily

top down view of the audio pcb - pure nastiness!


pure nastiness in detail - i wonder what happened to that pcb!!!

ok, i guess that's enough for you to swallow! as you've just seen, a looot of work to be done and you guy must be wondering "why is superully even taking on this endeavour?".
well, let me tell you this:
i have a masterplan!!!
to be continued ...