cparsonsuk
Active member
- Credits
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So here it is, the photographic investigation and clean up of the mystery Sheriff cocktail cab I picked up yesterday... some photos not oriented properly, can't seem to convince the forum of the correct way up!
An early start to beat the traffic and I arrived in Forest Hill bang on 08:00 as planned. The seller was a lovely guy who seemed genuinely interested to know more about what he was selling and why it might command such a high price. When he bought it years back he'd wanted Space Invaders for his home bar but Sheriff was what he ended up just because it was all that the guy he bought off had at the time. Unfortunately he doesn't remember where he bought it but was pleased when I told him that a Space Invaders in the same condition would have netted him about £200.
Home at 09:40 ... "well done SatNav" *pats SatNav* <- BigTrak advert ref
And then an hour wait for a mate to come and give me a lift into the house with the cab! I manage about 5 minutes in the house before wandering back out to look some more at the cab and can't resist seeing just how stuck on the new vinyl is...
Turns out it comes off really easily and leaves no residue or trace it was ever there, lovely.
Finally into the house and a quick 2 player game before opening the cab up to inspect the innards and extricate the PCB.
The original "wood" is actually not that bad, coming away in a couple of places but I had imagined much worse for it to have needed covering up.
An old sticker but, like another inside, no trace of any print left on it... wonder if a UV light or something might show up what was once there... or maybe I've watched too much CSI.
A nice selection of old 10 pence pieces inside including one from 1973 (my DOB), neat!
The 1 and 2 player buttons are missing, anyone recognise the inner workings as Taito or other and able to point me at replacements? The guy said it never had buttons since he had it so I'll probably go with the blue and green colours used on the Nintendo cabs.
Ok, sticky vinyl removed, let's look inside:
Nice crisp, burn free monitor
A mystery button, no idea what it does... maybe it was for detecting the lid closing but it deems to do nowt.
2 halves of the only sticker inside the cab... mean anything to anyone?
Now a rather odd thing... the boards have no legs to separate them so an enterprising pub owner (I guess) has used beer towels, one between the boards and one to go underneath... new one on me!
And so to the PCBs... unfortunately there's no Nintendo, no TWG-nnn to show it's a Sheriff board or any other 3 letter code for another Nintendo board... bootleg then... so what of the rest of the cab... a mystery it will probably remain; anyway, let's look at the boards then the rest of the cab:
I'll take some high quality pics and link to them later for anyone wanting a forensic look at the boards!
Definitely at this point the PCBs not being branded in any way (Nintendo or any other make) has left me feeling a bit down on the cab, like it's let me down by not giving up any clues and by not having any magic words ("Nintendo"!) written inside it. I exchange some pics and chat with Alex "Chuckie Egg" "Nintendo Arcade" "Mother of Drago..." oh no not that one... and start to become a bit more philosophical about it... I have a unique cab, one that will look fantastic with quite a small amount of refurbishing and care, and I can play Sheriff, a great game that pretty much requires the custom controls to experience properly and that there are only a handful of cabs that can play it in the world.
So on with the cleaning and tidying to make it as nice as possible without more involved processes and dismantling...
Off with the metal corner clips and I remove the glass to see if the instruction cards are stuck to the wooden lid or if I can remove them to scan and the cab throws up another surprise... all of the instructions, decals, basically the whole underside you see through the glass is printed straight to the glass itself:
If I was creating a bootleg cab I'd print instruction cards and slot them under the glass, odd they'd go to this much trouble with the printing process... then again the control panels would be a lot of effort too so...
Any tips on painting the reverse of the glass where it is worn off appreciated... have a look at the printing process closely, it's even been done in stages to colour certain key words:
As the glass cannot be replaced because it has the instructions printed on it I'm glad it's in really good condition with minimal scratching, especially given it's about 36 years old!
A bit of scraping to remove some errant black paint, some Mr Sheen and it's looking pretty nice...
The monitor appears to be an NEC PWK one...
I will get the corner clips rechromed or find nicer replacements but for now I used the method of rubbing them with wet tin foil to make them look a little more presentable.
Thankfully when i plugged back the far too numerous connectors to the PCB the cab fired up and plays again, yay!
Any thoughts, theories, comments welcome!
cNp2016-07-10 09:50:26
An early start to beat the traffic and I arrived in Forest Hill bang on 08:00 as planned. The seller was a lovely guy who seemed genuinely interested to know more about what he was selling and why it might command such a high price. When he bought it years back he'd wanted Space Invaders for his home bar but Sheriff was what he ended up just because it was all that the guy he bought off had at the time. Unfortunately he doesn't remember where he bought it but was pleased when I told him that a Space Invaders in the same condition would have netted him about £200.
Home at 09:40 ... "well done SatNav" *pats SatNav* <- BigTrak advert ref
And then an hour wait for a mate to come and give me a lift into the house with the cab! I manage about 5 minutes in the house before wandering back out to look some more at the cab and can't resist seeing just how stuck on the new vinyl is...
Turns out it comes off really easily and leaves no residue or trace it was ever there, lovely.
Finally into the house and a quick 2 player game before opening the cab up to inspect the innards and extricate the PCB.
The original "wood" is actually not that bad, coming away in a couple of places but I had imagined much worse for it to have needed covering up.
An old sticker but, like another inside, no trace of any print left on it... wonder if a UV light or something might show up what was once there... or maybe I've watched too much CSI.
A nice selection of old 10 pence pieces inside including one from 1973 (my DOB), neat!
The 1 and 2 player buttons are missing, anyone recognise the inner workings as Taito or other and able to point me at replacements? The guy said it never had buttons since he had it so I'll probably go with the blue and green colours used on the Nintendo cabs.
Ok, sticky vinyl removed, let's look inside:
Nice crisp, burn free monitor
A mystery button, no idea what it does... maybe it was for detecting the lid closing but it deems to do nowt.
2 halves of the only sticker inside the cab... mean anything to anyone?
Now a rather odd thing... the boards have no legs to separate them so an enterprising pub owner (I guess) has used beer towels, one between the boards and one to go underneath... new one on me!
And so to the PCBs... unfortunately there's no Nintendo, no TWG-nnn to show it's a Sheriff board or any other 3 letter code for another Nintendo board... bootleg then... so what of the rest of the cab... a mystery it will probably remain; anyway, let's look at the boards then the rest of the cab:
I'll take some high quality pics and link to them later for anyone wanting a forensic look at the boards!
Definitely at this point the PCBs not being branded in any way (Nintendo or any other make) has left me feeling a bit down on the cab, like it's let me down by not giving up any clues and by not having any magic words ("Nintendo"!) written inside it. I exchange some pics and chat with Alex "Chuckie Egg" "Nintendo Arcade" "Mother of Drago..." oh no not that one... and start to become a bit more philosophical about it... I have a unique cab, one that will look fantastic with quite a small amount of refurbishing and care, and I can play Sheriff, a great game that pretty much requires the custom controls to experience properly and that there are only a handful of cabs that can play it in the world.
So on with the cleaning and tidying to make it as nice as possible without more involved processes and dismantling...
Off with the metal corner clips and I remove the glass to see if the instruction cards are stuck to the wooden lid or if I can remove them to scan and the cab throws up another surprise... all of the instructions, decals, basically the whole underside you see through the glass is printed straight to the glass itself:
If I was creating a bootleg cab I'd print instruction cards and slot them under the glass, odd they'd go to this much trouble with the printing process... then again the control panels would be a lot of effort too so...
Any tips on painting the reverse of the glass where it is worn off appreciated... have a look at the printing process closely, it's even been done in stages to colour certain key words:
As the glass cannot be replaced because it has the instructions printed on it I'm glad it's in really good condition with minimal scratching, especially given it's about 36 years old!
A bit of scraping to remove some errant black paint, some Mr Sheen and it's looking pretty nice...
The monitor appears to be an NEC PWK one...
I will get the corner clips rechromed or find nicer replacements but for now I used the method of rubbing them with wet tin foil to make them look a little more presentable.
Thankfully when i plugged back the far too numerous connectors to the PCB the cab fired up and plays again, yay!
Any thoughts, theories, comments welcome!
cNp2016-07-10 09:50:26
