I completed a lot of restoration work on my Asteroids cocktail during my Christmas vacation. I had to order some parts because my cocktail needed quite a few items “rebuilt” to make sure they were working properly and ensure it would keep working for years to come. I also ordered some new buttons because the old ones looked terrible.
While I was waiting on the parts I ordered, I worked on some of the internals of the game. It was really clean, except the normal dust. That made this much easier! The first thing I noticed when I heard the game playing during testing was the sound was really weak. I’m more used to the sound of the Upright cabinet, which was really more dynamic. The bass on this one was horrible and tinny (is that a word?). The speaker installed in this cabinet was really tiny, and held on with nails through a vinyl frame. Not a great design. The hole pattern on the speaker cover was the same standard hole pattern used my most smaller speakers in arcade games, so I pulled out the old speaker and replaced it with a better one. I had a really nice, magnetically shielded speaker from an old television I used to own. This speaker sounds MUCH better and more in line with what the game should sound like. It was an amazing difference.

You can see the old speaker laying above. Big difference!

As with most Atari games, the volume control was a tiny potentiometer with no knob. I don’t know if Atari was cost cutting or if these were just easier to turn 30 years ago. Now it’s really hard to turn without a knob. Thankfully I bought a couple about a year ago when I was working on my Centipede, so I put my extra knob on this volume control. Looks great!

They should have shipped with these knobs

Perhaps the dirtiest part in this cabinet, besides the control buttons, was the AC power transformer assembly. These are in all classic Atari cabinets and they always seem to collect all the dirt. This one was in the best shape of any I’ve ever had. I usually have to disassemble them and repaint the main frame, but for this one I only had to clean it up. I ended up disassembling it to better clean it up. I love how these look when cleaned up!

Before…

After!

By the time I finished working on the inside of the cabinet, I received my rebuild parts. Since I knew the monitor was not working, I started there. I installed a new cap kit which also included new transistors. This was an easy kit to install. The monitor was not very complicated so the parts were easy to get to. Once I was done I replaced the bad fuses and fired it up. The fuses held and the picture came on! I was very excited that it was such and easy fix.

Nice new caps on the monitor

Picture looks great!

I knew the game board worked but I wanted to make sure I rebuilt the power board and even replaced some parts on the PCB. Bob Roberts sells cap kits for both boards. They were also easy to install and now everything works great. I can also feel confident that this will work for years to come!

AR board with new caps and transistors

Once I was done with all the board work I decided to do one more repair that is recommended for most Atari games from that era. I wired up secondary power lines directly to the PCB so the wiring harness edge connector wasn’t the only power connection point. Atari games have a history of overheating these connections as the connectors start to get dirty. By bypassing this connection the game will be much more reliable. I also replaced the entire edge connector on the wiring harness to ensure all of the contacts were like new. Lots of crimping but just like new!

I ran the lines from the back of the AR board to the PCB with connectors so the PCB can be removed in the future if necessary

Nice shiny connector!

Now that I have the game working perfectly, it’s time to start working on the look of the game. The game was in solid shape but dirty. The glass had several scratches in it and the paint under the glass was peeling. I will need to replace the glass and purchase a new underlay to get this looking new. That will be my next parts order. Arcadeshop.com has a nice reproducion underlay.
The metal legs and glass clips were dirty and rusted. I had a friend at work that has his own powder coating line, and he was able to powder coat them. They came out GREAT! I bought new leg levelers for the legs but the threads don’t seem to match properly. I need to try another set or tap the legs to match the threads on the new levelers.

The powder coating looks great!

Glass clip with new powder coating

The next step was to work on the control panels. The painted graphics on the control panel were great and no wear whatsoever. The buttons looked horrible so I swapped them out with new ones. I didn’t like the look or feel of the new buttons, so I decided to clean up the original ones. They turned out pretty good!

Original, dirty buttons

New buttons. Notice how high they sit above the panel

The originals look much better and “fit” the panel better

This thing is really coming together. All I need to do is get the new glass and underlay, and this will look brand new! I can’t wait!

On my last work day of the year, I came across a Craigslist ad for an Asteroids cocktail. I made arrangements to go see it after work. The game did not work, but was in great shape so I had to pick it up. I really like the game Asteroids but never had the chance to buy one until now. I purchased this from an Engineer that planned to fix it up himself but it ended up just being in the way. Classic arcade games are great but unless you have the space and the time to work on them, they can be tough to restore.

The really cool thing about this cabinet it that it fit right into the back of my RAV4 without even having to lower the back seats. The car was made to carry cocktail cabinets! This is only my third cocktail I’ve ever owned, and the first that I planned to keep.

Fits perfectly in the back of the car!

Once I got the game home I was able to mess around with it trying to figure out what was wrong. The first thing to do when getting a new game is to open it up and make sure everything is connected and there are no visible signs of problems. If there are some bad connections or other problems, you could end up causing more harm just testing it with power. Everything looked OK so I powered it up. Nothing. I then reseated all of the connectors on the wiring harness. This time I got full sound. It looks like the game works, but plays blind! That’s great news because that means I can focus all of my time on the monitor. This game uses a Vector monitor, which displays lines instead of pixel graphics. It’s the second vector game I’ve owned and I hope it’s easy enough to get working.

It’s pretty clean inside. Just some 30 year old dust.

After checking out the monitor I found a blown fuse. I tried another but it blew immediately. I researched online and the symptoms point to a bad transistor in the monitor. Since I generally install cap kits to any new game I get, I went ahead and ordered a cap kit with new transistors from Bob Roberts. I also ordered new buttons, an Asteroids PCB cap kit, and a power supply rebuild kit. These should help me bring this game back from the dead! More to come later after I start installing the new parts. There are also more pictures available on my Asteroids Cocktail photo page.