And suddenly you own two Atari Hard Drivin' cockpits...
Sorry for the crappy mobile phone pics.
On the left is what I will be calling HD1. This is the machine I got from "the warehouse".
On the right is HD2. This is the one that I found thanks to ChrisChris' earlier trip and pics (thanks !!!)
To start: both machines are complete (apart from some tiny exterior parts). Original 25K5515 monitors and all electronics are in there.
HD1 is the best looking one. The top plastics have no cigarette burn. the sides are pretty nice. (Although transport to Holland caused some extra damage, apparently it wasn't fixed properly enough).
HD2 looks a bit less. Cigarette burns on the covers and the general condition is less. This one has served in lunaparks along the Belgium coast for many many years (notice the URL in plastic letters, apparently it has been running quite some years !!!)
HD1 is almost completely dead. The monitor did give something on the screen when I tested it in the warehouse, but once we tried it (that is Polderarcade and I) again, we had some extremely nice fireworks around the fly-back
....I checked the CRT and anode but both seem to have survived the trip...
The only signs of live that this one gives are correct credit sounds, and the wheel moves a bit now and then.
HD2 shows more signs of life. Although the monitor produces a very unsynced and "wrapped-around" picture, we can make out some test screens. Earlier the seller went through tests and found that 3 VRAM IC's are indicated as dead.
I already have 5 of these received so that won't be a big problem.
The tests also indicated that the sound board gave errors, but we sure heard a lot of test sounds.
We tried to adjust the monitor to get a better picture, but it only got worse. I was already happy to get it back to its first poor state....
Although the pic doesn't show it, there was also a marquee with HD2, it looks even better than that of HD1.
Now, my initial goal was to make one good working HD from both machines. After that I'd try to either sell the remaining and/or keep parts like PCBs etc.
However, Polder (who kindly offered some temporary storage space for these two AND helped with the move of HD2) mentioned he was definitely interested in the "lesser" machine.
So, now our goal is to get both working !
The first digging through the net has been done and I found some info about the monitors. There are fly-backs available (again!).
Note that these are medium resolution monitors and so we can't use standard res monitors for test work.
First goal is to either get one of the monitors in good working condition or hook up something else so we can see what the PCBs do...
The machines are very complicated and challenging.
They have full force-feedback on the steering wheel, and I don't mean some weird shaking, but serious electrical motor power. The wheel spins in attract, one of the great things about this game IMHO.
There is the shifter and of course gas, break and clutch pedals.
The seat moves out and turns to allow easy stepping into it. Once you moved into the cab and start a game, the seat is supposed to be fixed by an electromagnet. The cab also measures the distance between the screen and the seat. If the distance is low, it figures there must be a kid in there, so force feedback is reduced and vice-versa.
This is going to be a fun, but long running project...but for the short term we want to get both into a state that we can move one of them into my game room...
