Welcome everyone. I recently purchased a Defender arcade game from a local thrift store. I will be using this thread to detail its restoration back to a fully functioning game. Comments welcome, enjoy. At the thrift store. Not bad for $230. Good view of the side. The other side looks just as good. Wrong overlay and button colors. Looking for a N.O.S. overlay if anyone knows of one let me know. Otherwise I found a place to get a repro. First I had to drill out the backdoor lock to get at the power cord to see what I had. Missing 5vdc on the power supply. Re-flowed all solder in the 5vdc section and replaced the regulator i.c. Still have a poor connection somewhere as the 5v still drops out if I tap on the board, good enough for testing though. Power! I am stuck in program mode. It won't let me out. Talk online indicates a bad 5101 ram i.c. (on order). Monitor is in good shape. Pulled the ram board to work on the 5101 problem and found completely corroded batteries. I will need to remove that holder and clean the area to neutralize the acid from the batteries. In its place will be a 2032 lithium battery that should prevent this from happening again. UPDATE: 7/12 Good news. I got most of the parts in, minus the socket for the 5101 i.c., I really want to put it into a socket. I removed the old battery holder and cleaned up the area from the battery leak. Installed the new 2032 battery mod. Bad news. While doing a re-seat of the cpu I managed to break of two pins from the header that goes to the rom board. I now have to track down a replacement for that. If I could I would kick myself. I also should get the HS5 cabinet out of my apartment so I can move Defender in and be able to work on it more often.
man, i wish i was lucky enough to fine a video game arcade in a thrift store. i would buy almost any game.
