Just a little bit tougher since I moved away... I shipped my Sorcerer and F-14 down with me

Still kicking myself for letting my dad's Vector sell when he moved shop. Been looking for another and not having much luck down here. If anyone ever runs into one with a silver decal for 'Space Station' arcade on the backglass and a smashed up backbox, I apologize for some of the wiring in that thing

Eh... If that showed up on Craigslist here there'd be a bidding war if it started at $400.

Yep, this was my experience with my Stars.

Learn from my folly... Pay real close attention when you're replacing GI wiring and connectors on Williams games, especially when changing between the two and four wire variations. I fucked up and accidentally shorted the transformer output in my Road Kings. About gave me a heart attack when smoke started billowing out of the cabinet.

Amazingly it was all working during and after the event (once the problem connection was corrected). I got lucky and it only really burned the wiring up to the first connector off the transformer. Could have been much worse if I'd left it powered up even a little bit longer. I'm going to replace the burnt wire run and repin everything in the circuit, and count myself lucky I don't have to replace that hard to find transformer or any boards, or deal with the aftermath of a fire.

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This High Speed I got today... First frog I've found in a pin!

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$300. Boardset is clean, hasn't been scavenged for parts, PF should clean up reasonably well. I'll find or make a new cab for it and have a beater player for cheap.

The frog was extremely dead.

Not sure how long it'd been out there. It was on the property when the current owner bought it, and they said that was a year ago. The wiring harness area exposed by the backbox being down was UV faded, which says to me several years as this is not exactly a sunny climate and the spot it was in had partial shade. There are some old batteries kicking around in the bottom cab, I'll have to look at the date on them.

$300 was the guy's ask and I thought it was fair enough I didn't balk. Just the playfield with all the trimmings is worth that, and there's plenty more to salvage beyond that.

I had a small hope I might be able to save the plywood parts of the backbox at least. But nope, it was rotten and had delaminated in several places, and started falling apart while I was inspecting it. So I broke that down today and found some more horror, but also good news. Mold, mildew, backglass chunks, and some spiders to go with my frog... But take a look at those boards! No fuses blown or obvious fried transistors either, just a couple old repairs.

There was some tape and pieces of 3M sheeting along the edges of the backbox front that I noticed too. I'm thinking the backglass getting smashed was what saw it put out to pasture and this machine was working or not far from it at the time.

The bottom cabinet is drying out nicely and I think might be able to save it, at least til I can find something better.

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Got the lower cabinet dried out well enough, found a suitable donor backbox thanks to a generous fellow collector in the region, and moved all of the electronics over tonight. Really looking like the only thing wrong with this machine was a broken backglass and maybe some of the displays being out. I was able to boot it, coin up, start and 'play' a game, no problem. Huge shame it was put outside for years like that.

Here's a video of what I found after getting it all hooked back up:

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Here's a fun one... This Dancing Lady don't dance no more. Probably salvageable with some work, but make sure to keep that dust mask on, that's a lot of mouse shit...

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