I picked this up off Craigslist for $280. As if Atari cabinets are a pain as it is being they are so heavy, this had to be manueverd up a flight of stairs with two bends.
Everything is original. The game works all the way and looks pretty good. The monitor is nice and crisp and the backdrop is flawless. This game looked as if it had not been opened in 30 years. The inside bottom of the cabinet was super clean. The monitor and mirror did have a nice coat of dirt/dust buildup that needed to be cleaned. I also had to add a leg leveler and new starter for the blacklight.
The bezel was replaced as there were a couple of scratches in the middle and the control panel underwent a good cleaning.
I was lucky enough to get on the beta testing list for for Scott Brasington's Asteroids Deluxe Multigame. When the kit arrived I was eager to test it out and see how the games played.
Installation was pretty simple. Scott had a very-detailed install guide on his site. A brief synopsis of the kit and install follows. The kit consists of two daughtercards; one for the CPU/multi-game and one for the vector ROMs. The larger PCB replace the CPU at C3 (the large 40-pin 6502). The 6502 is then inserted into the 40-pin socket on the multigame PCB. Next both vector ROMs at N/P2 and R2 are removed from the game PCB. The vector daughtercard is then inserted into N/P2 (there are 3 pins on the vector daughtercard that get inserted into the socket at R2).
Once installed I booted the game into test mode and was greeted with this...
One slight problem with my ADL game I noticed prior to the install of the multigame kit was that occasionally there would be some flickering on the left side of the screen during gameplay but more noticably during the initial entering at the hi-score screen. It did not detract from gameplay but once I installed the multigame kit and tried to play Lunar Lander, it became apparent that I would need to fix the monitor.
I capped and replaced the transistors but the flickering persisted. After some research and reading thru the Black and White Vector Monitor FAQ I saw several references that lead me to believe that R100 and R101 on the deflection board were the culprits. I removed the two resistors and replaced with heavy guage wire.
I powered the game back on and wouldn't you know. The picture was steady and looked great.