Man, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Three days in a row, three resolutions achieved. I’m like a resolution machine (watch me get down, watch me get down …)<\/p>\n

It’s been too cold to do any real gaming out in the arcade this week so instead I’ve been working on a couple of my “garage” projects, one of which is my Ms. Pac-Man cabinet. I paid $80 for this cabinet at an estate sale and let me tell you, other than my fully-working Q*Bert that I got for $100 at a garage sale (thanks again for the tip, Tim-Dog), this Ms. Pac-Man cabinet may go down in history as my luckiest arcade find yet. Although the cabinet wasn’t “quite” working due to some graphical problems, the game powered up and displayed “something”, which is 95% of the battle.<\/p>\n

Between some of my online friends and some research I did on the net we figured out that my Ms. Pac-Man had some bad RAM. I tried to fix it myself and CRACK POW OKAY WOW WELL THAT WENT BAD REAL QUICK. At that point it was determined that I needed a replacement board, at least for parts. For another $80 I ended up getting a refurbished board off of eBay. When I got home from work today the board was waiting for me on the front porch. After the kids went to bed I snuck out to the garage and installed the new board. Success!<\/p>\n

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By the way, this is how a redneck tests a board …<\/p>\n

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Tomorrow if I get some time I’ll remove the old (non-working) board and set it aside for repairs … that is, if I can quit playing Ms. Pac-Man long enough to get anything done! Right now the game needs some new t-molding (the black plastic that runs around the edges; you can see in the first picture that much of it is missing) and some touch up paint, but other than that, this thing is ready to move out of the garage and into the arcade!<\/p>\n

Pac-Man was a great game … and a great Saturday Morning Cartoon! P-P-P-P-P-Pac-Power!<\/p>\n