My son did a British soccer camp last year (in America) and we were a host family for one of the coaches. This year he was back, and brought 2 new British coaches to see the arcade for the first time.

For the Youtube video to the left, the little girls voice you hear was my 2 year old daughter begging for quarters for the candy machines, sorry about that. According to the lead coach, they really don't have arcades like this in the UK anymore, at least none he has seen. Enjoy the video below and I also took a few photos that you can click on in the image gallery.

Road Burners is an amazing motorcycle driving game from Atari which came out around 1999. Most of my later Atari driving games along with Golden Tee Complete (2006) have hard drives in them. This is to hold the large amount of code need to generate extensive 3D environments. I love 45 jukebox and my vinyl, I most certainly do. However, hard drives still run on record player technology and that's a bad thing. Inside each hard drive is a spinning metal disc which holds magnetic code. Between the spinning and heat generated, most hard drives have a failure rate within 3 to 5 years. I actually had a few hard drive failures in these games. Being that I have scores of 30 year old games in the Vintage Vault Arcade, I want to make sure these driving games last for a long time.

Enter a new technology blended with the old, and that is an IDE to Compact Flash adapter. These arcade hard drives use IDE connectors (not the newer SATA), so as you might guess an IDE to Compact Flash adapter will allow the arcade game to interface to a flash card. Flash cards have no spinning parts, therefore no high failure rates and no heat generation. Flash also has faster access time to the data so the games will actually boot up faster. At the current time I have upgraded both Vapor TRX's, both Rush the Rocks, and Golden Tee Complete to compact flash. Next in line for conversion was the Road Burners. How do you convert your arcade game to compact flash?

• Use an older Windows computer with IDE connectors.
• Purchase a compact flash card and IDE to compact flash adapter. The flash adapter I use was from Amazon (part# Syba SD-CF-IDE-DI IDE) and then I used Kingston 4GB compact flash cards.
• Download Mame CHDMan backup utility and put it on the Windows computer.
• Hook up your arcade hard drive to the windows computer, then use CHDman to create a hard drive image.
• Remove the arcade hard drive and insert the flash adapter with card installed. Use CHDman to restore the hard drive image to the flash card.
• Install the flash card in your arcade game and boot it up.

In my case the cheaper Kingston flash worked in all my driving games, but for some reason the Road Burners wouldn't take it. In the end, I had to get the more expensive Sandisk Ultra flash card (part# SDCFH-004G-A11) for Road Burners to boot from it. At the present I now have 6 games converted over to flash drives for years of problem free play time. The first image above is the Road Burners running on flash. Second image below is the Compact Flash adapter with Sandisk card. Last image is a picture of the flash drive plugged into the mainboard. You simply plug in the card to the existing IDE connector and plug in the power connector. You game's power supply or your particular flash adapter may not have matching power connectors. If that's the case you need to purchase a simple power adapter plug which changes it from a larger power connector to a smaller power connector. There are dozens of pages dedicated to using the CHDman program which explain the command line functions much better than I can so please google those if you need help. That's it! Road Burners...In a flash!

This video was shot 2.5 years ago for a documentary. Although the layout and game lineup has changed a little bit, it occurred to me that this video contains some information and stories that will give you some more insight into this "dream" arcade.

Recently I have picked up a few garage sale items along with an ebay poster to stash in the arcade. What sets a good arcade apart from a great arcade, is the period decor. Granted many arcades we frequented as kids look like dark, dank dungeons, but better ones did have some pretty nice decor. That's why Showbiz pizza and later Chuck E Cheese did so well. It was not just the games and cafeteria pizza, it was also full of eye candy. People do come into the arcade and just like to have a look around at all the different items. I often get asked questions where I got such items.

Like my games, I am a bargain hunter when it comes to my arcade decor. Hanging at the end of drivers row is a poster from Back to the Future (1985) which I got from ebay, nice! If you were an 80's kid then you like everything about Back to the Future. Even my last Rock Dad episode has references to the movie using the hit song from Huey Lewis & The News - Back In Time.

Other vintage items include a Rubiks cube with original case (1980), a Sony Walkman (1984), and a Milton Bradley Comp IV (1977). Also included is a Billiard Clock (non-vintage) to go with my pool table and bumper pool. The Rubik's cube was a gift from my friend Josh Davis. The other pickups were from garage sales. Finally, I recently picked up a Technics Vinyl turntable SL-D202 (1981) at a garage sale. After having a 45 jukebox, I wanted a nice vintage turntable to play a few LP albums I've acquired. I didn't want $100 cheap turntable junk they sell at Target and Best Buy. This turntable has direct drive and sounds superb for all that vinyl which doesn't fit in the jukebox.

Come stop by, play some games and have a look around. Its not called the Vintage Vault for nothing!

Two weeks ago I hosted another church gameday for the kids and adults. A month ago I hosted a gameday for another church's youth group. This time it was for my home church where I am a children's pastor. This is a free gameday for the kids. Think of Chuck E. Cheese with unlimited soda, pizza, two 6 foot sub sandwiches, commercial popped popcorn, chips, candy, temp tattoos and arcade games. Yeah, better than Chuck E. Cheese.

We had about 40 in attendance. Favorites were the newly acquired bumper pool table, driving games and as always the Revolution X.

The only casualty of gameday I had was that I blew a remote control power strip. Five driving games, Golden Tee, Simpsons and 2 neons blipped out and went black. Luckily I determined the cause immediately and put in a regular power strip to get the games up again. After gameday, I used a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure power coming off these games. Apparently I was running 16.5amps through a remote power strip rated for 15 amps. I decided to order 2 remote power strips and split the machines between the two so the power load was balanced. No big deal, better than a game going down. Enjoy the photos below.

Bob the Bot is stranded in prehistoric times.
Rock Dad has to find the time portal in the arcade to rescue Bob.
Playing video games, music, family and robots. It's a Rock Dad life.

My arcade is called the Vintage Vault arcade for a reason. It is filled with vintage video games, in working order, with original parts. I am all for "keeping things original". That being said, there comes a time when supplies are no longer available. Such is the case with my Narc. Both my Narc and Paperboy are blessed to have the more rare 19 inch medium resolution monitors running in them. Paperboy's monitor has been solid since the day it entered my arcade. Narc.... not so much. For those not knowledgeable on the subject, most vintage games in the arcade run on a 19 inch standard resolution monitor. They are in plentiful supply, and easy to rebuild and fix. Medium resolution monitors, not so much. They run at twice the resolution, and stress the electronics twice as hard. That being said a few years back the monitor on the Narc went out. I tried for months to repair it. No luck. Finally I sent it out for a costly repair. It came back, and worked great for a few years. Then it blew the HOT and flyback about 4 months ago. I replaced both of them and had the monitor in working order again for what I hoped was another several years.

A few weeks ago I had a friend over for his birthday party. Half way through the evening I hear a familiar *pop* sound. I run around and check all the games and sure enough Narc was black. I opened up the back and the sparks are literally flying out of the flyback. That's right, sparks. So do I spend MORE money trying to fix this monitor? I have repaired it twice. A professional has repaired it once. This monitors days are done. Can I find another working medium resolution monitor? Not likely, and if I do its going to cost me an arm and a leg. So what do you do?

Most LCD's nowadays are widescreen, and any emulated or vintage game displayed on them would be disproportionately stretched. Terrible, nasty looking. Just don't do it. Furthermore, standard resolution games like Galaga and Pac-man look absolutely terrible on them. Luckily, Narc is not a standard resolution, highly pixelated game. Also, I have been storing a 19 inch 4:3 fullscreen LCD monitor for years for just such an occasion. The size and aspect ration was a perfect retrofit. The next piece of the puzzle was a converter to upscale the EGA monitor resolution to VGA resolution. I pick up a cheap converter from ebay and install. Three hours later, I can't get the picture to work through the converter. For those who stumble upon this site, some of these converters require composite sync and not separate H-V lines. It turns out Narc had an undocumented composite sync signal on its mainboard. I run a new wire from the main board to the converter and shazam! The medium resolution game is now running on an LCD. Click the pictures below for a close up of the converter board and first test of the LCD.

The final step was getting it "professionally" mounted into the game. I used the LCD's 4 VESA mounting holes to mount to a cross bracket I installed in the game. Next, I cut out a black cardboard bezel to lay on top of the LCD similar to the card bezels used in Nintendo games and others. Finally, I install the Narc plastic shroud and front glass art. The result is stunning and most visitors would never notice. Personally, if you can rebuild your monitor, please do so. If you can't, find a 19" full screen LCD (not widescreen!) to keep the correct size and aspect. In my case, it was either decommission this game and part it out or do an LCD conversion. For those horrified at an LCD conversion then don't worry, I have 41 vintage games with running CRT's in them so I'm keeping the dream alive. For now...Narc lives again! {Top photo does have the LCD in it}

Two weeks ago I hosted another church gameday for the kids and adults. A month ago I hosted a gameday for another church's youth group. This time it was for my home church where I am a children's pastor. This is a free gameday for the kids. Think of Chuck E. Cheese with unlimited soda, pizza, two 6 foot sub sandwiches, commercial popped popcorn, chips, candy, temp tattoos and arcade games. Yeah, better than Chuck E. Cheese.

We had about 40 in attendance. Favorites were the newly acquired bumper pool table, driving games and as always the Revolution X.

The only casualty of gameday I had was that I blew a remote control power strip. Five driving games, Golden Tee, Simpsons and 2 neons blipped out and went black. Luckily I determined the cause immediately and put in a regular power strip to get the games up again. After gameday, I used a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure power coming off these games. Apparently I was running 16.5amps through a remote power strip rated for 15 amps. I decided to order 2 remote power strips and split the machines between the two so the power load was balanced. No big deal, better than a game going down. Enjoy the photos below.