Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. I published an arcade progress report just recently and Robotron 2084 was one of those games I just haven't been able to acquire in 2022. Well, I'm happy to report that I am now the proud owner of a Robotron 2084, thanks to Castles and Coasters. I was able to work a deal for a Robotron Moon Patrol and a Nintendo Super System. The good, I got a Robotron. The bad, it's pretty beat up. Needless to say, I was super excited, but I decided to get right to work and start the restoration process. There's a lot to do, so let's not waste any time and dive right in. The first step is we got to get this thing out of garage gate. We're going to strip it down pretty much completely, and we're going to take almost everything out of it, starting with the monitor. First, we're going to need to remove the back panel to gain access to the monitor. Next step, let's discharge the CRT. This is always important as we don't want to get electrocuted. Although it might be interesting for a video, I don't want to see how my body handles 30,000 volts. Okay, all discharged and good to go. Let's unscrew the chassis from the shelf and get this thing out of here. Be careful when lifting and removing the monitor. This one is only a 19 inch, but they're still heavy and awkward to move around, so be careful. With the CRT removed, it's time to take out the coin door. It's actually not a coin door at all. This has the Castles and Coasters card reader system, so I'm going to need to purchase a new coin door or see if Cole can find the original one. I think it's actually up in that secret room on the roof that we showed on Chasing Nostalgia. Anyhow, on to the power supply. Unfortunately, someone replaced the stock linear power supply with a HAP one and cut up the cabinet in the process. It's a bummer, but I'll likely replace this one with another switching power supply. This one is failing anyway and not working consistently, so it's gotta go. Next up is the coin box. This is the original part and I'll probably just clean it up, give it a fresh coat of paint, and poly it to keep it looking nice. Take note of the bottom of the cabinet. We're going to need to bondo quite a bit of this. There's a lot of chipped wood, so it's looking a little rough. I always hear from people in the hobby that they find money in the coin box. I'm unfortunately never that lucky. There's nothing here but some stains and a whole lot of nothing. You're probably wondering what this weird metal square is on the cabinet. I think it was an older card reader system. Remember, this was on the floor since 1982 so it probably took quarters at one point and then multiple card reader systems as they upgraded them. There's also a button hole right above this that was used as a free play credit button when they would bring Robotron to a gaming convention. We're going to need to use some Bondo and plug this up too. Here's a shot of everything stripped down. I did notice something as I was panning up and down. For whatever reason the latches that hold the control panel have been modified with bolts that go all the way through the cabinet side walls. I'm not sure why they did this maybe people were breaking into the cabinet and giving themselves free credits I'm not really sure but I'm gonna patch these holes up and put it back to the way it should be I also noticed that the speaker grill is completely tore off it kind of like a metal material and I see this a lot on Robotron cabinets I not sure why I have an extra one from a joust cabinet in storage so I going to swap it with that one. Arcade shop used to sell these but I think they're out of stock right now but I'll put a link in the description just in case they come back in stock and you're looking for one. All right let's stop digging around and get to the good stuff. The T-Mold is practically fused to the cabinet so I need a pair of pliers to pull it off. Ah there it goes nice and easy. I'll be replacing this with the same original leather looking T-mold to keep it as original as possible. I'm going to make a suggestion here before we start sanding this thing down. I'm already low on brain cells so here's my PSA for the day. Take it or leave it but I need all the brain cells I can get. You should probably wear a respirator because you don't want to be breathing this shit in. I'm going to start by using a 60 grit sandpaper to get all the tough stuff off and then I will smooth it out with a 220 grit. It's coming off pretty good but the bottom of cabinet is going to need quite a bit of bondo work. Here's how it looks after I hit it with the 220 grit sandpaper. Now it's time to mix up some bondo and get to the real fun stuff. Time to mix up some bondo. Just mix it up. Yeah, just mix it up. I use these plastic mixing boards to make things easier. The bondo is just a standard all-purpose Bondo. We need to mix a little of the hardener in. They suggest about a three inch strip but I like to use a little more than that. Mix it up really good. I usually spend about two minutes or so mixing it up and it makes a huge difference in the outcome if you do that so just be patient. Applying Bondo to me is more of an art than a science. I sometimes use too much but I would rather have too much than have to reapply it. This bottom area had a lot of damage so I'm trying to make sure I have proper coverage and then I can shape it the way I need it with the sander once it all dries up. I usually try to wait about 30 minutes before sanding, although the package says 15. Now let's fill that old card reader area and the button for free play. I stapled a piece of cardboard to the back to make this task easier. Some people will fill it with wood pieces, but I'm just gonna go for it. Don't be afraid to use a generous amount here since there's quite a bit of space to fill in. I would let this part dry a little longer since it's so deep and compacted. Alright, it's time to sand and shape the area. I typically use 80 grit to sand and shape it, and then 180 or 220 to smooth it. Whatever you feel comfortable with, but don't use a sandpaper that's too low grit to sand or shape it, because the Bondo might chunk off and you definitely don't want that. It's looking good so far. Alright, let's get started on the control panel. The original control panel had plastic control panel plates. From my research, most of these were metal. I was able to source a pair of reproduction control panel plates from a community member, Brad Rydell. He's known as the Williams Ninja. If you need a Williams game fixed, he's your guy. You can see the dust caps float inside, just like Midway did on a lot of the 90s games. I find this kind of annoying but it does look really nice on the finished product Okay let apply the artwork I completely lost my squeegee to apply the art so please don do it like this Hopefully it comes out okay despite my lack of preparation I would suggest clamping the art down as John Youssi me doing here and doing one side and then continuing with the other once you have it all laid down. This lip on the control panel can be tricky, so I would suggest pulling on the artwork as you apply it so it doesn't wrinkle up on you. I gotta say, it wasn't easy sourcing all the parts for this control panel restoration, but after I got the control panel inserts, the correct artwork, and the control panel itself, this thing is looking really good. All right guys, we're out in the garage, and this is what the cabinet looks like right now. Now that speaker grill I was talking about, that's this piece right here, and the metal is missing. This is actually what it should look like from the bottom. A lot of these, for some reason, if you find Robotrons out in the wild, you'll notice like this is punched through sometimes, and this has become a little frail over time, but I happen to have one in storage. I may freshen it up and just spray it, put a little poly on it and make it look a little freshened up. But this one was in my storage unit. It looks pretty good. So I'm going to replace that with that. The other thing is the marquee that's on it. That looks good. So it's the stock marquee. I'm just going to leave it. There's no reason to replace it. It looks great and it's original. The control panel came out really good. And the, you know, the Bondo work I had to do in the front of the cabinet came out really good too. So everything's all plugged up. It looks real nice. So really at this point, it's just the artwork. You can see, if you look at the side of the cabinet, let me just move the cabinet across real quick. You'll see that I haven't touched the sides yet. The sides actually have some Bondo work I got to do at the bottom. So I'm going to do that. But obviously right now I got to figure out what I'm going to do because these were stencils. So they're painted on in layers. So I can get the stencils and redo that. I think Sabo has the stencils. So I may do the stencils or I might do, he has this really cool artwork package for it that's kind of different. It's definitely not, it's a take on the original artwork. I know I'm going to get beat up in the comments for it, but it looks really cool. I'm kind of digging it. So I could do that. It would be less work than the stencils, obviously. I've never done a stencil before, though, so I'm very curious and wanting to do that and try it out. you have to layer it on and you you know I'll go to clove or whoever and try to find the original paint colors it's the better option so it might be what I end up doing but anyway so the project's a little bit on hold I hooked the monitor up to the rejuvenator just to test the guns everything reads out pretty good the blue gun was a little bit low but it was still in a good rating so I think the CRT is actually going to be fine it was a later revision CRT so it's one of those, like, it's one of the models I'm not as familiar with, but it's a later model, it's not a common one, really, but it's in good shape, so that's a good thing, and then I just scrubbed all the Robotron boards last night, so those are all looking really nice and clean they actually drying out right now in the corner I just used some alcohol and like a really really soft bristle bristle bristle a really soft bristle brush That hard to say Bristle brush bristle That really hard to say But yeah so the project looking pretty good I am probably going to put the original boards in it run it on the original boards but have it ready to go if I need to do a J So I have an extra J-Rock, so I might as well mount it in there just in case anything goes wrong with the original PCBs. Which, you know, these are, what, coming up on 40 years old? Yeah, 38, 7, I don't know, I can't do the math. They're old, right? So they're going to fail at some point, and sometimes you can repair those things. 90s boards seem to be a little bit more easier to deal with than the 80s boards. So I haven't done a whole lot of fixing of 80s PCBs. So, you know, if it fails, I may have to send that out to someone because that's not something I'm as familiar with. But yeah, everything's coming out pretty good. I'm pretty excited about this. It needed a lot more work than I thought, though. Like when I first got it, I was like, this is sweet. And then I noticed, you know, it had bat tops that had half competition bat tops. It didn't have the Wicco sticks. so there was a bunch of things like the wiring had been kind of janky and messed with because they put the card reader in and they kind of hacked and spliced and you know just normal operator stuff you know trying to get the game up and running so I'm not I'm not judging I know they need to get games running and they do what they need to do plus this one was literally at Castles and Coasters since 1983 so it's got some history to it there's probably some people here in Phoenix a lot of people here in Phoenix that have played this exact Robotron and hopefully my plan is to get it back to its former glory, and we're well on the way, so it looks like there's a lot of work to do, but it's not too bad, we're rounding the corner, and I'm gonna, I'm sorry that I didn't film everything, so there's pieces that are missing, but I'll try to keep all the links in the description of products that I used and things like that, if that's helpful to anybody, but anyways, if you enjoyed the video, give me a thumbs up, consider subscribing to the channel, put your comments below, I want to know what you think about it, are you a fan of Robotron, I mean, who is it, you're trying to save humanity the robots have turned on us we created them and then they turned on us it's like Skynet before Skynet was a thing Eugene Eugene was like he was seeing into the future he knew what was going to happen and now Elon Musk is creating robots and those are going to so we just can't get away if Skynet doesn't happen then Elon will us with his robot army that he's building to do uh this isn't this is sounding political it's not political I mean he is building robots to take, take like people's jobs, yeah, then they're gonna f*** us, crap, I can't really say f*** in videos, Mason, can you bleep f***, then people are gonna think I'm swearing and be confused, anyways, thanks so much for watching, guys, we will see you on the next one.