Namco Pole Position Cockpit Restoration
- Thread starter Jon-A-Tron
- Start date
Jon-A-Tron
Active member
Here's the update.
In February 2020 I moved up north to Staffordshire and everything moved into a nice large double garage that came with the house we were renting. Plan was to do restorations and make my dream arcade in this garage. Then covid hit a month later. Everything was put on hold. After a month of being furloughed I finally got to work in the garage putting together my game room. Pole Position took a back step and was used as a nice background piece which then turned into a holding place for boxes, parts and tools for the next 3+ years. I could never bring myself back to work on it knowing that the PCB was no good.
In the meantime I had managed to open up my own arcade, Pixel Busters, in Stoke-on-Trent with my wife. Pole Position moved from garage to storage unit and eventually workshop where I could put it on the priority list. It jumped to the top of the list when I was able to buy a P4Position PCB from Arcade Jason this summer. I had resisted earlier PCBs like the PiPosition due to some issues with sounds and some poor feedback. But the P4Position was getting good feedback and had some great features.
As it was designed for the Atari Pole Position and my cabinet was a Namco I needed to make and adapter for this. So after finding the pinouts for both is made a crude adapter to link the PCB to the cabinet wiring. Unfortunately the power supply I had restored previously would not work so I have gone with an arcade PSU.
Another issue with my cabinet was that the Namco PCB had onboard audio amplification. The Atari used an AR2. So in order to get sound out of the P4Position I used the top AV board from the Namco PCB stack and routed the audio through this. It's great to be able to say that this cabinet is still using some original hardware 😆
Anyway, the cabinet was cleaned up and moved into my arcade. Turned on and ready for my guests to play. The P4Position is great. I can't really tell any difference from the real thing. Sound is also great although the Namco PCB is getting really warm so may need to make adjustments.
I did have a couple of attempts at making a rear plexiglass window. Both cracked during the bending but the second attempt was repairable with some gorilla tape. I'll make another attempt soon.
This will be a bit of a work in progress as I touch up the cabinet artwork and bits and pieces.
Really happy to have it in the arcade after all this time. 🏁🏎️
In February 2020 I moved up north to Staffordshire and everything moved into a nice large double garage that came with the house we were renting. Plan was to do restorations and make my dream arcade in this garage. Then covid hit a month later. Everything was put on hold. After a month of being furloughed I finally got to work in the garage putting together my game room. Pole Position took a back step and was used as a nice background piece which then turned into a holding place for boxes, parts and tools for the next 3+ years. I could never bring myself back to work on it knowing that the PCB was no good.
In the meantime I had managed to open up my own arcade, Pixel Busters, in Stoke-on-Trent with my wife. Pole Position moved from garage to storage unit and eventually workshop where I could put it on the priority list. It jumped to the top of the list when I was able to buy a P4Position PCB from Arcade Jason this summer. I had resisted earlier PCBs like the PiPosition due to some issues with sounds and some poor feedback. But the P4Position was getting good feedback and had some great features.
As it was designed for the Atari Pole Position and my cabinet was a Namco I needed to make and adapter for this. So after finding the pinouts for both is made a crude adapter to link the PCB to the cabinet wiring. Unfortunately the power supply I had restored previously would not work so I have gone with an arcade PSU.
Another issue with my cabinet was that the Namco PCB had onboard audio amplification. The Atari used an AR2. So in order to get sound out of the P4Position I used the top AV board from the Namco PCB stack and routed the audio through this. It's great to be able to say that this cabinet is still using some original hardware 😆
Anyway, the cabinet was cleaned up and moved into my arcade. Turned on and ready for my guests to play. The P4Position is great. I can't really tell any difference from the real thing. Sound is also great although the Namco PCB is getting really warm so may need to make adjustments.
I did have a couple of attempts at making a rear plexiglass window. Both cracked during the bending but the second attempt was repairable with some gorilla tape. I'll make another attempt soon.
This will be a bit of a work in progress as I touch up the cabinet artwork and bits and pieces.
Really happy to have it in the arcade after all this time. 🏁🏎️
