Pick Date: 12/02/07    Forecast: Freezing rain. Actual weather: Freezing rain. For Pete's sake already. I think 90% of all my arcades were brought home in the snow, rain or ice. What gives? This is the day that I brought home my first driving game. I watched that Ebay auction for a week and it never budged from $50. It was listed as having a steering problem. Far be it from me to pass up a bargain, especially a bargain with a working monitor. So I put in my bid with 10 seconds to spare before the auction ended, and next thing I know the screen says I won. All right, Madison, Illinois was 1 hour and 10 minutes away so this was going to be a quick road trip.

I take all the passenger seats out of the van except for 1, so the baby's car seat can go there. Check out the 3rd picture below, now that's hilarious. I'm breaking the little guy in early. Anyways, I measured the space left and there was just enough room for 1 arcade. Good enough for me. I pack the little lady and the baby in the van and leave for Illinois. We stop at Casa Gallardo to munch on some grindage before we get there. So we get to this guys house and it is the same place that I claimed the monitor and cabinet for my Soul Edge arcade for $10.50. I turn on the game to make sure the monitor was working and then load it up in the van.

I brought this baby home and set to work at diagnosing the steering problem. After plugging it in I noticed there wasn't any sound either so that was another issue to figure out. It turns out both the steering wheel and gas pedal were both missing the +5v wires s o I hooked them up and went to the setup screen. Bingo! Steering is now working along with the gas pedal. In the setup screen I went to the sound setting and it was set to "0". I cranked it up to "32" and what do you know, we have sound! So I exit the setup screen and go to play the game. Hmmmmm.... game comes up but no sound and no steering. What gives? I went back to the setup screen to check the settings. They were all messed up again. So I reset everything and try again. Still nothing. This goes on 10 times before I come to the conclusion that the setup screen is not saving the settings. A quick search on the internet came up with a an EEPROM chip which tends to go bad in this game and then loses its settings. So I order a new chip for $5 and plug it in. Here we go, everything is now working great! I tweak the monitor for a clean bright picture and we are all good to go! A great driving game which makes an excellent addition to the basement arcade.

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