on his
roadtrip to the abandoned warehouse in hungary, bela discovered a couple of nice old cabinets in more or less rough condition. amongst them were an ikari warriors and a shinobi-converted taito jungle king. both games have been on my wanted list for a while and we eventually agreed on those games coming over to germany
. a couple of days later, bela showed interested in a tv ideal hyper olympic cab for sale in hungary. since i had one of those as well in my storage, we agreed on an exchange. while getting the stuff together, i realized that i not only had an original hyper olympics board, but also a pcb of the sequel: hyper sports which would also be included in the deal.
bela kindly agreed to arrange the transport of the two cabs from hungary to germany and the return trip of the hylper olympics!
we've been talking about possible delivery dates for a couple of weeks when suddenly out of the blue i received an email from bela this past monday:
"I've got a call from the forwarding company in my office an hour before, that they come and collect the machines in an hour. I ran home and packed the cabs the best I can."holy smokes, one hour to get home from work and wrap up two cabs - must have been a big rush! what shocked me most was the fact that they were going to deliver the games on wednesday afternoon. doesn't sound too shocking if bela can do it in an hour, but it was monday evening, i hadn't prepared anything, had no packing material at home and a full day at school ahead of me on tuesday
. but who cares, this needs to be done! i was lucky that on tuesday they were going to collect the used paper, so i jumped into my car, drove around for a while and picked up a car full of huge paper cardboards. i felt like a homeless person when i was going through the used paper, pulling out cardboards while being watched by pedestrians
.
i had a lot of spare parts for the hyper olympics as well which needed to be boxed / protected before wrapping up the cab. i also included some non-arcade goodies which bela will hopefully be able to enjoy soon!
fastforward to tuesday: right after school i loaded the rest of the stuff into my car
at the storage, i spread the packing material and the boxes to include in the wrapping procedure out on the floor
the first thing i realized was that one of the pcbs on the power board had come loose while moving the cab from storage one to storage two, obviously one of the pcb holders isn't very tight anymore. in order to prevent this from happening during transport to hungary, i taped the pcb to the board as tightly as possible. hope this works!
@bela: be sure to check all the connections carefully after removing the tape!
next up i placed the box with the spare parts / the goodies PLUS the hyper sports pcb on top of the monitor bezel, protected it with styrofoam and taped it to the cabinet as well! i don't have a perfect feeling about this one, because the box with the pcb board on top is quite heavy and it sits directly on top of the bezel, but i didn't have the tools to remove the glass to give it some further protection besides the styrofoam. the good news is however that IF it shouldn't survive the trip, it is not a printed bezel and therefore can be replaced easily. BUT: i'm pretty sure it's going to survive the trip!
on top of the cabinet i fixed a new coin door front plate which i also had. the old one was damaged beyond use, so i removed the coin mechs and all the other stuff and "transplanted" them onto the replacement coin door. unfortunately, when i wanted to install it to the new cab, i realized that it used different holes to attach it to the cabinet and it is slightly wider. because i didn't have any more time (and electricity at the storage) to fix that, bela and i agreed that this was going to be his first cab restore job
here's the coin door front plate on top of the cabinet
finally, i could wrap up the entire cab!
saying good-bye to hyper olympics
fastforward to wednesday: i had told bela that because of school i won't be home before half past three and that a drop-off before that time is simply not possible. at around noon i get a message from bela telling me that the driver is a little bit early and that he's already here
! that's one of the disadvantages of being a teacher: you can't leave work earlier! so right after school i jumped into my car, rushed home (i need roughly 45 minutes one-way), grabbed my camera and off to the storage i went. as bela had stated, the hungarian delivery man was already waiting for me!
open up wide
show me what you've got inside!
communication with "mr. delivery" is difficult, because he didn't speak any english at all and approximately 5 words of german. but no matter which language you speak, those damn cabinets are still heavy
while i'm transporting the cabinet into the storage, ...
... mr. delivery is moving the jungle king!
out it goes
doesn't look like a jungle king to me at first glance, but i know what's underneath that ugly exterior!
this time, mr. delivery is helping me with the transport
two are in, one needs to go out!
mr. delivery is trying to tell me something and from what i can piece together, he has to pick up some more stuff in germany on his way back, that's why we have to discuss where and how the hyper olympics has to go into the van ...
we're done with our little discussion
triple-i: in it is!
while mr. delivery is unpacking his tension belts ...
... i'm taking a walk around his van!
after being on the road for two days, this is what it looks like inside of the driver's cab
i return to the back of the van where mr. delivery is doing a nice job of securing that cab!
the usual paperwork
one copy for me
once the document stuff has been completed, mr. delivery is trying to tell me where he's heading next and what he's going to pick up. i hope he gets there in time, otherwise he will have to spend another night inside his van
wave good-bye to mr. delivery: thx a lot for your help, hope you have a safe journey home
i feel like i'm on top of the world!!!
i hope you enjoyed my
cab exchange adventure! a huuuge
THANK YOU goes out to bela for going back to the warehouse to pick up more games, for agreeing on the exchange and for arranging the transport. looking forward to reading (and seeing) your side of the story once the hyper olympics arrives at your place. ENJOY!!!
