Pick Date: 12/03/16    Many years ago I owned a Defender. I was presented an offer I couldn't refuse. Someone wanted to trade a working Tempest and a working DigDug for my single Defender game. I loved Defender, but I could pass up a 1 for 2, with one of those being a color vector. I performed the trade, sold the Digdug (I already own a Digdug cocktail) and the Tempest still graces the gameroom. You can read about my this awesome trade roadtrip here at The Trade - Tempest / Dig Dug Road Trip .


Since that time, I always knew there would be another Defender in my future. Enter December 2016, and while browsing Craiglist I stumble upon a non-working Defender. I mention to my wife that this Defender would make a great Christmas present. With that little comment, the adventure begins. She tells me that she arranged the purchase for this Defender the coming weekend after my boys indoor soccer game. That morning we hooked up the trailer, swung by the ATM and headed to the soccer game. My boy scores a goal, we leave the game, and take the family on a little road trip to Potosi, MO.

The location we are traveling to happens to be 10 or 15 minutes from the Starlite drive-in. You can read about that Starlite drive-in raid here at The Starlite drive-in Road Trip . We finally arrive at our destination, and are greated by Ed who is one of the nicest guys you could meet and also a collector. Since my wife arranged the purchase, I didn't know who I was meeting up with, but was pleasantly surprised to meet Ed who is a KLOV forum member. Until this time, I had never met him in person and only knew him online. Since we met at his workshop, I didn't get to see the personal collection at his house. However, he had a number of pieces at his location which I took pictures of. I did spy a Track and Field which I asked him to keep me in mind in case he ever decided to sell it someday.

Finally when I get the game home it was time to dive into it and resurrect it back to life. All power wires to the lighting were cut or missing, so I had to rewire that. You have to have a lit game marquee and coin doors, that's a must. Next, the CPU main board had a video decoder ROM plugged in upside down. A new video decoder ROM fixed that up and I pulled and reseated all RAM which tend to have flaky socket issues. Finally, the ROM board had issues with a 40pin PIA chip. A new ROM board fixed that issue and I will be replacing and fixing the PIA in the future for a spare board. Defender has now roared back into life and has taken its place with its brothers on Williams row in my arcade. Currently that line-up is Narc, Defender, Robotron, Joust and Sinistar. I want to thank my darling wife for my early Christmas present and will always remember this one.
Merry Christmas everyone!

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