My new Nintendo Red Tent

[CaptainBreakout]

Hiya all friends in the community!

 

So this weekend I went on a wild quest, and acquired a Nintendo Red Tent from a saloon I frequented many years ago.

 

This thing has been in the same bar for over thirty years. In fact, I hadn't been to this bar in about 15 years and was surprised to see it still there!  The owner happens to be there and I made him a fair offer. (In fact he remembers me... I would make a low-ball offers whenever I saw him bitd, and he'd always say no.)

 

This time tho, he said yes.

 

 

It's had a lot of beer spilled on it, but is in otherwise pretty ok condition.

 

I just thought I'd post it here, since it would be fun to get feedback and I would like to have a place to post updates about it from time to time.

 

I'd welcome any feedback and questions.

[CaptainBreakout]

It works perfectly!  So I moved it inside from the garage to the living room.

 

 

Party on Friday night!

 

[CaptainBreakout]

 

Above is a "before" picture of the VS Golf side.  I'm about to start cleaning the crud and fixing the buttons.

 

The Castlevania side is finished... Here's a pic of my son enjoying it.

 

 

(I have a cute video of my daughter playing but I don't know how to share the Google link here)

 

Oh, and I want to put the word out... If anyone has 6 or so blank 2764 eproms, I'd love to trade them for something.  We want to replace VS Golf with VS Super Mario (who wouldn't?).  Please PM me if you are an arcader with materials.

[CaptainBreakout]

Yesterday a pack arrived from China with 10 Eproms in it!

 

I mentioned to my son on the phone that "the chips arrived".  He knew exactly what I was talking about.

 

"Don't do it without me!" he said.

 

Wow... So I really know he's invested in it now.

 

I'm referring to the project of turning one side of this cabinet into VS Super Mario Bros.

 

Sure, I could have bought the eproms preprogrammed from eBay (and probably even could have gotten the seller to program them for the special hacked version to use VS Golf PPU I'm stuck with), but wouldn't it be better to say we programmed them ourselves? I think so. Me and my son, that is.  Also it saves us about $35.

 

On the other hand... I haven't used my eprom programmer in 10 years... And it requires a DOS machine with an ISA slot. Hoy. 

 

I don't have a DOS machine up and running. I think I have all the parts in the garage (boy howdy). So my son is ALSO going to get an education on how to build a vintage PC.

 

Also, we have to clean all the buttons, joysticks and coin mechs. This is turning into a perfect father/son summer project.

 

 

Edited June 5, 2023 by CaptainBreakout

[CaptainBreakout]

Today me and my son pulled the board out and chopped off the AA battery holder.

 

Fortunately the batteries (it still has the originals!) did not leak.  They did catalyze some rust around a couple of the chips directly around the battery holder, however.

 

I don't think it did enough damage to warrant removing and socketing the chips.  We simply cleaned the legs with pink pencil erasers until they looked as good as any other chips.

 

Next we gotta trace why the second joystick on one side doesn't register "up".  Fun process!

[Austin]

Great score! It'll be fun to get it fully functional and cleaned up. I'm a little jealous.

[CaptainBreakout]

Sweet!  The 2nd joystick on the VS Golf side has been fixed!

 

It was a problem with the board connector. The plastic "key" broke off and was covering the pin for "up".  My son got in there with a file and flicked the offending plastic fleck out of there!  So proud of him.

[CaptainBreakout]

Success!!!

 

 

Now I just gotta make a VSSMB card and move the Castlevania one to the other side. And there's a little more cleanup to do... But yeah!  Really happy with this.

[82-T/A]

Dude, that thing is awesome!!!

 

You should see if there is a Nintendo multi-kit available for it so you can select the Nintendo game you want.

 

What do the insides look like? Is it basically just NES 8-bit guts in there?

[CaptainBreakout]

28 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:

Dude, that thing is awesome!!!

 

You should see if there is a Nintendo multi-kit available for it so you can select the Nintendo game you want.

 

What do the insides look like? Is it basically just NES 8-bit guts in there?

Yeah! Totally!  I'll take some pictures soon.  I'm going to upgrade the Super Mario ROM soon anyway.  I have to hack it with a hex editor before I program the Eproms.  Hopefully right at my skill level.  (Wish me luck, I could use it

[82-T/A]

3 hours ago, CaptainBreakout said:

Yeah! Totally!  I'll take some pictures soon.  I'm going to upgrade the Super Mario ROM soon anyway.  I have to hack it with a hex editor before I program the Eproms.  Hopefully right at my skill level.  (Wish me luck, I could use it

 

You got this. Are you on KLOV?

 

https://forums.arcade-museum.com

 

I don't want to steer you away from here, but when it comes to specifically Arcade stuff, you really can't beat that forum. But I would hope that you don't NOT post stuff here because I don't always go to KLOV and would love to see what you do with it anyway. But the guys on KLOV can tell you anything you need, and everything you want to know.