DDR Machine Restoration (guides in description at bottom)

Initial pick up from 600 miles away.

It's in the truck! I was so excited at this point I didn't really realize that it actually looked pretty beat up.

3:30 AM truckstop nap in the uhaul.

In the basement

A friend of mine was kind enough to help me move this thing out of the uhaul and into the basement. I paid him in pizza.

Checking out the inside panel

Playstation connection, or so I'm told.

The previous owner "modded the pad" to make it connect to a ps2. Just wait. It gets better.

Oh wait

I meant worse

Solder is not wires. Stop it.

What's happening right now?

Oh

Oh my

WELL TIME TO GUT IT

Arrows off

Couple of the metal covers off

The back bar connection

All the side plates and bars off

A bit rusty, but it's ok

Oh man, maybe not

Sanding the bars

LOTS of sanding

Starting to paint!

Starting to pull some real guts out now

The number of rusty stripped screws I had to extract was pretty nuts, but this was just the beginning. If I only knew...

CCFL

oh no

OH no...

a handful of casualties

New sensor holder vs old one.

Doesn't make a ton of difference. It's just cleaner.

Using a chisel to loosen some of the REALLY bad screws

I know. I didn't want to. Chek my screw removal guide for some of the awful things I needed to learn while fixing this thing.

I already did some cleaning and it still looks like this.

A few more extraction casualties

Everything but the wires out

First pass at a full cleaning

Other pad almost empty

WHY NOT

The last screw on the last Lbracket was a security screw. Grabed it with and unscrewed it. Security bits are for chumps.

Second pad empty

Both pads preliminary clean out

What is SS, or is it 55?

Wires unhooked

Empty!

Labeled and ready

All the guts

And of course I cleaned up

The metal plates

More sanding!

Enough sanding. I can't take any more.

So much rust I just painted the whole thing with ospho.

Literally coated it.

Post ospho

Scrubbing the inside pieces

All this from just the frames and covers.

I don't have words for this.

Clean enough for right now. Moving on.

Sprayed these inside pieces down with a rust inhibiting spray.

Please, wear a mask. All of this would have ended up in my lungs.

How to wire.

It's messy, but it works. I don't need to impress you.

Started spraying!

Sprayed both pads!

Sanded down the plates

New pad feet!

Zip tie anchors for wires

Ties in, and color coded too!

Old ties still on the wires

Easiest way to get them off is to clip from the back.

Wired up!

L-brackets and corner brackets scrubbed and sanded

Cup of PB blaster rust prevention spray to coat new screws

I dipped literally every screw that went into these pads in this stuff

Feet PB blasted and screwed in

Gross old rubber corners

Drop them in a bucket of warm soapy water

Awww yeah. Both pads wired

Collect and clean the CCFLs while the rubber corners soak

Back to the rubber corners. Scrub 'em down.

Let them dry

Inserts back in

Spacers for the L-bracket screws

I dropped them in a bucket of ospho to take care of the rust and let them dry

Corners back in place

JPAC and ArcadeVGA5k hooked up to the computer!

Dark corners like that are not a good sign in a CRT

Foreshadowing...

Mounting tape for the sensor holders

This is the fastest way to put the tape on

IO boards back in, testing some sensors.

Something isn't right though... One of them went bad :(

Sensor holders back in and rubber corners back in

Bars back in!

bar cover plates back on

Metal plates back on

L-brackets on

Arrows on! Yeah!

Oh yeah!

Jumped to make them jpac compatible.

MY CRT DIED THE NEXT MORNING

Panels back in place

Wheels on

Put a new LED screen in

Removing the CRT is dangerous. A friend of mine walked me though this part. He linked me to this video http://www.arcaderepairtips.com/2009/06/10/safely-discharge-an-arcade-monitor/. I spray painted a piece of plywood and put a low profile vesa mount on it. Drilled holes in the plywood so I could mounted it where the CRT was and pass some cables through the back. Then placed the monitor in the mount.

All ready and cleaned up!

Time for a countersink mod

So nice

Got kinda bored doing the mod so I watched always sunny on the cabinet

Beautiful