Hello and Space Firebird

[Luch]

Hello everyone, totally new to this game... have done many a repair and mods on vintage games consoles and I run a Repair Cafe in my local town of Urmston in Manchester.

I've just bought a barn find Space Firebird cocktail table which I was super excited about. After a few days of inspecting it looks like the Space Firebird guts have been ripped out and a bootleg hardware version of Crazy Kong installed.

Currently it does not boot up but the CRT works and seems to be in a watchdog/boot loop. Not had much time to look deeper, voltage to the borad was 4.7v so I trimmed that up to 5v, next step is to remove/clean the socketed chips and I have an EPROM reader/writer on order to check the code.

Not sure what to do, the cabinet is in a hell of a state but the control panels are decent, I always have a preference to restore and enhance rather that completely convert but think this is too far gone to do anything but convert the cab to Crazy Kong or maybe switch up to a 60-1 Jamma machine.

Anyway, thought I'd say hello and definitely interested in thoughts or guidance of which direction I should take with this.

 

[69er]

Hello and welcome….. looks like a do-able task .. I’ve seen games in a worse state come back from the grave. It’s surprisingly clean already if it’s been in a barn ?

 

[Ronnie Dent]

Nice project, there are a fair few firebird cocktails around but not so many Donkey Kongs! If going back to Firebird basic parts would be easy enought to find, I have some inc boardsets but would need repair! either way it's worth saving

Ronnie

 

[Lurch666]

How do you know it's a crazy kong? Looks like it started out as a galaxian PCB that's been converted to maybe a moon cresta or uniwars.
The controls on the tabletop still looks like it's the original left/right only.

 

[Luch]

Hello and welcome….. looks like a do-able task .. I’ve seen games in a worse state come back from the grave. It’s surprisingly clean already if it’s been in a barn ?

Boards were cleaned by me, spiders evicted, case needs work

 

[Luch]

How do you know it's a crazy kong? Looks like it started out as a galaxian PCB that's been converted to maybe a moon cresta or uniwars.
The controls on the tabletop still looks like it's the original left/right only.

Only a guess by the ‘CK’ on the EPROMs and the fact the boards don’t match the firebird operators manual diagrams

 

[jerryspaghetti]

Original Kong needs -5v as well as +5v, not sure if bootleg does but maybe worth checking that.

 

[Luch]

Original Kong needs -5v as well as +5v, not sure if bootleg does but maybe worth checking that.

there is a -5v feed wired in but I'm ashamed to say I've not checked that yet... I'm stealing bits of time here and there to look at this so not really spent long looking yet... hoping to get an uninterupted weekend to get into this

 

[grobda]

Agreed it seems like moon cresta bootleg; easy enough to make an adaptor to put a 60 in 1 in there for playability (for 2-way joystick games).

Looks like its wired with DC galaxian pinout - https://www.arcade-museum.com/pinouts-game/galaxian

Fixing the PCB will probably be a bigger challenge unless you're lucky and its just a bad contact on an eprom. Decide whether you want to go down that rabbit-hole. It is deep. Careful with removal too, chips that old can shed legs.

If you do decide to try and fix it there's plenty of info on galaxian hardware, a test rom, and some hacks to make things easier.

 

[Luch]

CPU Socket is a little bit dirty !!!

 

[grobda]

that is cruddy, some contact cleaner and a toothbrush might get it going.

I have a moon cresta on the same pcb, but looking at it there's way less bodge wires and piggybacked chips so less likely to be MC.

 

[conan]

How do you know it's a crazy kong? Looks like it started out as a galaxian PCB that's been converted to maybe a moon cresta or uniwars.
The controls on the tabletop still looks like it's the original left/right only.

Yes that looks like a galaxian board chopped in half hahah.

 

[conan]

I have a tub thats in good condition with good top etc, ill trade for some parts if you are interested.

 

[Stickman]

I think that is ripe for a good restore, I had a Space Fever that was probably worse than that, it actually had no insides, got lucky and managed to get a full internal setup. Powder coated the tub and upper leg sections, new formica and glass on the top, new CP overlays from Arcadeartshop, It is like new, added Phils multi kit and it is a great addition to the games cabin.