The 80's era lounge

[Longhaul 6,915]

Just now, Twilight Luna said:

There was a local one that we would go to for parties. It had an arcade where we lost slot of quarters playing Gauntlet. Good times.

Ours had 'tabletop' games.  Same video games, but the screen was set in the middle of a table, with controls at the opposite ends.  Like this:

They also touted their vast collection of music videos.  I only recall them playing one video, the entire time I was going there. Every single time.  

This one.

 

5 minutes ago, Pripyat Pony said:

I lived in a tiny village so we didn't have anything like that. Instead, we'd all go down the playing field and play football or rounders, then go catch the ice cream van. XD

 

Ours was kind of a small town, too, I guess we were lucky enough to have a roller rink. Our other option was a 30-minute drive down to the next big town.

[CypherHoof 26,483]

1 minute ago, Longhaul said:

Ours had 'tabletop' games.  Same video games, but the screen was set in the middle of a table, with controls at the opposite ends.  Like this:

They also touted their vast collection of music videos.  I only recall them playing one video, the entire time I was going there. Every single time.  

This one.

Ours was kind of a small town, too, I guess we were lucky enough to have a roller rink. Our other option was a 30-minute drive down to the next big town.

Yup. I think the completely flat layout is usually called "cocktail" (because two-player games in that format would swap the screen upside down when player two kicked in) - but most of the games (including gauntlet) seemed to have an extra-wide console to accomodate extra sticks/slots/buttons, and a normal, upright screen (similarly, TMNT and Simpsons four player games were in that format)

of course, that said, most "upright" cabinets actually had the screen flat, and used a mirror to bounce the image onto the front of the console area (this gave a larger visual angle and allowed the screen to be bigger without increasing the "depth" of the cabinet)

[Longhaul 6,915]

1 minute ago, CypherHoof said:

I think the completely flat layout is usually called "cocktail"

You're right, I wasn't sure of the name at first.  Doing more research I saw 'cocktail' pop up.  Shoulda remembered that from seeing it in MAME.

[SDP40F amtrak 2,447]

Lol the 80's lounge is getting popluar

[CypherHoof 26,483]

4 minutes ago, Twilight Sparkle is best said:

Lol the 80's lounge is getting popluar

What can I say? @longhaul dragged me here kicking and screaming

[Longhaul 6,915]

1 minute ago, CypherHoof said:

What can I say? @longhaul dragged me here kicking and screaming

[CypherHoof 26,483]

7 minutes ago, Longhaul said:

You're right, I wasn't sure of the name at first.  Doing more research I saw 'cocktail' pop up.  Shoulda remembered that from seeing it in MAME.

I did maintainance on them for a while - some of the early ones weren't even computers, they were completely analogue... crazy.

[Longhaul 6,915]

Just now, CypherHoof said:

I did maintainance on them for a while - some of the early ones weren't even computers, they were completely analogue... crazy.

There wasn't much to those old cabinets, just a circuit board, CRT screen, speaker, and controllers.  

[CypherHoof 26,483]

Just now, Longhaul said:

There wasn't much to those old cabinets, just a circuit board, CRT screen, speaker, and controllers.  

Yup, and out of that lot, it was usually the CRT that went bad....

[SDP40F amtrak 2,447]

Just now, Longhaul said:

There wasn't much to those old cabinets, just a circuit board, CRT screen, speaker, and controllers.  

Yep 

[Longhaul 6,915]

Just now, CypherHoof said:

Yup, and out of that lot, it was usually the CRT that went bad....

Better that than the ROM chips, I reckon.  Probably cheaper to get a new screen than to have to replace the chips.

Just now, Twilight Sparkle is best said:

Yep 

And yet, I could spend hours (and countless quarters/tokens) playing them.

[CypherHoof 26,483]

Just now, Longhaul said:

Better that than the ROM chips, I reckon.  Probably cheaper to get a new screen than to have to replace the chips.

Sorta. the ROMs were usually PROMs rather than factory set - so it was just a case of throwing a couple of blanks into the programmer, and cloning off from the image files.

PROMs weren't cheap, but still cheaper than the CRTs.

[Longhaul 6,915]

Just now, CypherHoof said:

PROMs weren't cheap, but still cheaper than the CRTs.

Hm.  I would have figured the screens were less expensive than the PROMs.  How about that, I learned something.

This place is educational AND fun.

[CypherHoof 26,483]

1 minute ago, Longhaul said:

Hm.  I would have figured the screens were less expensive than the PROMs.  How about that, I learned something.

This place is educational AND fun.

Depends on how many PROMs went bad I guess - they were pretty solid state though, so I never saw any go bad (but they weren't updatable, so if a new version of the game was released, you had to bin some or all of the old ones and make new ones)

they were pretty simple beasts - they started out as a rom set entirely to 1's, and you had to throw 24v across each bit you wanted set to 0 (it literally burned a trace off the chip, aka a "fusable link" - they made a sizzling noise when being programmed). Each one was just over 1UKP, while a b/w tube would set you back 20-30ukp (depending on size) and a colour tube twice that.

hardware faults (that weren't tubes) were usually transistors or capacitors - some of the latter failed impressively (literally exploding leaving two bare wires, and soot on the PCB, or for the can type, popping the top off like a party-popper). Some of the TVs still used valves, back then, but video games were invariably transistorized (at least, the ones we maintained were). Ironically of course, valves are now "in fashion" again, and a decent valve amp will set you back an insane amount....

[Longhaul 6,915]

@CypherHoof

... I really have no follow-up comments to that, that's an impressive history of how to maintain those old cabinet games.  I also never really knew how detailed the process was, either.  Thank you for sharing that with us.