This channel is a gem in the rough. I don't even think you are under rated, i think you're just undiscovered. You will eventually hit the algorithm. I envy your skills, collection, and most importantly the relationship you and your wife share! The only problem with this channel is your too busy with everyday life to upload more than you do. I really look forward to each new upload. Im constantly going backnand re-watching your older videos. Thanks for sharing your passion!
Thanks so much! Yes, I have too much going on to dedicate more time to the channel right now, but maybe someday :) As long as people are enjoying the videos I'm going to keep making them!
I've been doing this off and on since I was in dental school and the biggest lesson I've learned is to take your time and do each step right. Otherwise you can get to the end and have something working, but with nagging issues. So patience is definitely a virtue. Thanks!
Man, that seller kept raising up the price every time you talked to him. It’s like “Yeah, the machine has 2 screens… oh wait, it doesn’t, so that’ll be another 50 bucks on top.”😂 I love that you’re showing the process in such great lengths. Even if I have zero clues in the field of electronics and repairs, it’s still very interesting and educational (not to mention therapeutic to see things get repaired!). This is wayyyyy better than those junk repair channel where it’s people happen to come across perfectly salvageable devices in the middle of nowhere and with only a little bit of scrub-a-dub-dub, they’re practically brand new AS IF they were bought beforehand and swapped in…
It's just me (or me and my wife), my phone, and whatever I find. I definitely want to make videos that anyone can relate to. Especially those who know nothing about the technical side but are curious how someone even starts this kind of process. I love watching videos of things going from a wreck to beautiful, no matter what it is, and I'm glad that appeals to others as well. What's even funnier is that I'm always looking for a really terrible project to fix up and when I find one that's seemingly simple, there are unexpected twists that make it that much harder (see Pole Position video, for example). And I'm experiencing exactly the same thing on the project(s) I just started last week. Makes for good viewing but more headaches for me :) Thanks for the kind words and I'm glad you enjoy my content!
@@tcurtis49 That's another thing I like about your video is that you also showed the parts where you came across certain obstacles and difficulties. It's not always a smooth sailing as others tend to show, making restoration seems like the easiest things to do with just some toothbrushes, cleaning detergents and paint sprays. XD I just subbed to you and was planning to go through other videos starting from the Pole Position! Please keep up the good work and do take care! (Seriously, working with all the power tools and rusty parts sure is dangerous!)👍
@@tcurtis49 so I suppose there'll be two isolation transformers for the two CRTs right 🤔 cos some arcade machines sometimes have two transformers one a isolation and another which is for the main power supply
I've been addicted to all kinds of restoration videos for the last few months, from lawns to cars to antique tools and other vintage electronics. This is the most satisfying one I've seen. Astounding.
I'm the same way and I'm usually surprised when I put a video together just how bad these projects were at the start compared to the end. It's definitely satisfying for me as well :)
Dude you are an absolute master! I thought no way that could be saved. Thank you for restoring and preserving these amazing machines and sharing the adventure with us.
My grandpa who worked for Pizza Hut states that he remembers these machines. They were supposed to be exclusive to Pizza Hut's but because of their popularity they were placed in arcades and even some service stations. This was pretty neat to watch you build this thing!
Unfortunately no the red hats were based on other japanese cabinets at the time, the red was so they only had to do single color reverse stickers. The jp arcade shipping box came with 3 different sticker packs it predates the us version by a year oddly comes with like 15 different button shapes and colors.
@@PotatoeSnow All I will say is that Tod is not an average person. He's ridiculously resourceful, intelligent and determined to find answers by any means necessary - not to mention just a real decent person.
Disclaimer "I am not a professional..." says the guy more professional than any professional out there. Well, you didn't get paid for your work so technically you're correct but I'd say that's about it. Incredible job :)
I’m really not, and I only do a couple of major restorations a year, but I do try to do them in the best manner I can. It’s just a hobby but I have picked up a lot of knowledge over the years, and I try to keep experimenting with new techniques. Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the kind words :)
I wanted to say a few things. 1. I've watched this whole thing a half dozen times now. Excellent video and excellent restoration. Truly fascinating work. I see being an orthodontist has given you a gift for fabricating solutions. 2. I have a PC-10 (Duel Monitor) and I've eyed getting a Red Tent since 2017ish. I suspect if I worked on one I'd end up doing LCD screens because of the effort to find that weird size and I kind of don't want to be electrocuted to death by a CRT. 3. I used to go to Arcade Warehouse in Hagerstown where the guy collected, repaired, and resold arcade cabinets for more than 30 years. He got Red Tents occasionally which sold quickly, but he lamented in the 90s and 00s he and others were throwing them out because nobody wanted them. Makes me flinch thinking about it. 4. I only saw one Red Tent in the wild at a Pizza Hut. In many small towns your only "arcade" was at Pizza Hut where they would have about a dozen games. I recall it having on one side Dr. Mario and a PlayChoice-10 conversion on the other side. Even had the toppers bolted to the top with some of the games. I'm unsure if Nintendo ever released a conversion board for a Red Tent to make one side a PC-10 or if the vending company just put a PC-10 single monitor board into a Red Tent. Probably was around 1991.
Thanks so much! I am a real do-it-yourselfer when it comes to most anything, and luckily we have the internet full of information (along with the bad, but there's still good!) to pull from when fixing up these games. I definitely remember when it was hard to even give away arcade games. In fact, I went to some arcade auctions where I got games for free because nobody would bid on them. I bought my PlayChoice 10 upright for $5 at one. I don't exactly know what the official stance was on PlayChoice conversions on the Red Tents but it was somewhat common. I hope you do find one and nobody will fault you if you have to go to LCD screens. It is definitely a tough unit to completely restore!
I remember playing on these . They had one in a game store in Woodbridge Center mall called Game Room Store . The games they had were baseball and pinball . Classics for me
I just picked one of these up the other day, and stumbled on this video. I thought mine was in rough shape, but compared to how you found yours it seems pretty minty. Huge respect for taking the time to restore this part of gaming history. I’m so glad you found that machine. This is better than a movie!
man my grandpa had one of these from when he ran a roller rink, after he died we couldnt find a buyer and it went to the junk yard like 10 years ago. Wish I had the room to have kept it at the time it was in great condition
Please, don't call this "restoration". This is more like "resurrection". It was damaged beyond any repair, yet you managed to bring it back from the dead. Wonderfull job!
This was incredible to watch! I don’t know why I’ve never considered using donor parts from a spare tv to fix one I care about. The cabinet looked so good by the end!
My mind has been blown. I’ve done a few arcade restorations but nothing on this scale. I wouldn’t have given that red tent a second look. The time and dedication to see this restoration through is commendable 👏
A master class in restoration. I sat in disbelief in the first half part of the video just shaking my head at the state of that thing, thinking that surely no-one in their right mind would ever take on such a project... Thank you for including so much teaching about crt's as well, I'm sure I'll eventually get some use for it somewhere down the line!
I spent the first part of my first day with it shaking my head at the state of that thing as well...and Cindy definitely thought I was out of my mind. I'm still a bit amazed at just how nice it turned out and it has been a focal point of my collection ever since. Thanks for the kind words!
This. Is. Incredible. I have so much respect for and envy of people who are able to pull off something like this. It was sitting out in a field!!!! If you don't have a degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering then I just don't know how you did this. Amazing! Also your video is very well produced. Wow!
Thanks for the kind words! I wish I had more formal training in those areas but it’s amazing how much you pick up over the years by necessity. Luckily there are a lot of resources out there and good people willing to help when I get stuck on something.
It certainly helps that I had so many years of fine tuning with my hands and working with small objects. And to understand patience and taking things one step at a time. I find that a lot of dentists are craftsmen and hobbyists as well. Thanks!
This seems like one of those moments where single sided, through-hole PCBs saved the day! I absolutely love refurbishing, restoring, and saving electronics from the bin. My ability to metal work is so very limited compared to your level of skill... I have a tendency to remove as much rust and corrosion I can and basically paint a cool color to call it good. I enjoyed every moment watching you dedicate yourself to this labor of love. A tip of the hat to you, sir!
@@tcurtis49 Surface mount is probably my specialty; my first job out of college was at a small electronics manufacturer... Learned it all from pick and place, reflow, defective board repair, and of course my absolute loathing of lead free solder. You've given me the inspiration to get back into a couple of old projects getting dusty that look nowhere near as bad as this did but felt was out of my scope. No time like the present!!
I can't get over your insane Nintendo collection display, and your understanding wife. This was so fun to watch. Dude, those boxes Atari games just bring my childhood back. Excellent job!
I'm so glad I found your channel. Your rebuild and restoration videos are fantastic. The fact that you even have the patience to photograph, video and document the process over so many months is mind blowing. The pacing, editing and content of your videos is just top notch. It blows my mind that you aren't in the 100k range for subs and rocketing beyond.
I’m glad you like it! Lately I’ve gotten a lot more views so hopefully more people can enjoy them. But I’ll keep making them no matter what because it’s fun to do. I appreciate the kind words!
Dude, this is awesome! I just love watching you work your magic. Kudos especially to your very supportive family! Semi-joking here, but in most households, a reaction of "you spent how much on WHAT?" would have either been grounds for divorce or worse, justifiable homicide. Fortunately, my father was able to persuade his very loving wife of thirty years (they celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary this past October 2023) that if he was working on his boats, he wasn't out there gambling, going to strip clubs, or doing anything else detrimental to the household. She always knew where my dad was and what he was doing. Huge bonus is that your wife and son are occasional accomplices in your projects! Kudos on restoring this. Most of us would have looked at that Nintendo Red Tent and saw a bucket of tetanus instead of an arcade game to be restored. Another item that brought back memories was Pizza Hut offering dine-in table service. I actually worked in one of these places in the mid-1980s and I still miss dine-in Pizza Huts! Thanks for another awesome restoration!
Thanks for sharing all those cool tidbits. Yes, I m super lucky to have a family that loves this stuff as much as me. And in general there are far worse things to spend money on :)
Absolutely incredible, I personally did a Red Tent restoration as well but my machine was no where near this level of decay. This is just amazing, fantastic job! Those monitors are really hard to find! Makes me happy another one of these were saved as people used to buy two+ busted machines in an attempt to save just one.
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it and were able to get yours restored. It’s a labor of love and preserving history, sometimes. I am about to wrap up saving a Tron cabinet from a fiery demise and hope to add that to the playlist before long. And yes, those monitors are extremely hard to find :)
Amazing restoration work! I remember playing on one of these at a pizza place when I was a little guy back in the 80's. What a cool project and awesome collection!
Super interesting restoration.. had never heard of this cabinet before! And damn man.. your skills are impeccable, thank you for giving this unit a second life.
Played all of these for hours on end in the late 70's into the 90's and even early 2000's... Used to flip over the score on asteroids with dozens of ships across the screen...
I was pretty good at Asteroids myself. It was at the very front of our arcade in the entryway and I always made sure to get my initials at the top of the high score list for all to see :)
I think even those who take all the precautions shock themselves from time to time. I have once when a HOT shorted itself to the metal shielding next to it and I touched it while adjusting a powered on monitor. Nice jolt :) But a good reason to remember to never touch the monitor with both hands--you'd much rather have the current run through you to ground than through one hand, across your heart, and through the other back to the live current.
Seriously one of the best restorations to anything I have ever seen. Extremely amazing work, makes me happy to see this left for dead machine working again!!
Thanks! Glad you liked it Hopefully the Tron and Pole Position (and maybe other) videos will also be fun watches for you. I’m in the early stages of more projects and look forward to making more :)
Having seen this machine in person, the video doesn't really do justice just how great it looks. Can't wait to see more of your incredible work documented.
I repair vintage electronics on a daily basis and love old games, so these videos is right up my League, nice work. so sad that old arcade machines are so rare here in Norway, i would love one from Nintendo or sega 😁
It is definitely hard in other parts of the world to find this kind of stuff. I’m in a good location not terribly far from Chicago, which was an epicenter for arcade and pinball manufacturing back in the day. On the other hand you get to live in Norway so you have it pretty good! That’s often the country that people I know dream about living in from a cultural standpoint :)
Playing this at my local Pizza Hut was the "arcade" for me for a few years. They had this an a standup Outrun. I sucked at Outrun so I played this more, even when I got an NES and had the same games at home I'd still play this waiting for the food or waiting to get a table.
I've done a few restorations, and I was VERY impressed by this restoration. If you think arcade cabs are difficult to unload, you should try a full size video slot machine, they are also made to repaired ONLY by factory service techs. Consoles and arcade machines are SOOO much more approachable, ...except for units like your Red Tent. After seeing how badly the cabinet was rusted through, I thought the only solution was to fold and weld up a new one, ...I was mistaken. I hope to see a lot more of your restoration videos.
Thanks! I got the feeling these were designed to last a few tears and then be discarded. That metal doesn’t stand the test of time. I may eventually come across a slot machine so I consider myself warned!
Wow, what an amazing transformation. Brings me back to when I was in grade 9! There was an illegal arcade in the basement of a pizza store that had two of these.
@@tcurtis49 This was in the early 90's. Literally a main floor pizza joint in Toronto Canada and in the unfinished basement that you access through a side door without any sign they had two of these same machines down there and a dirty bathroom for the visitors and pizza shop employees. I guess they let the word out to some of the local students. Super sketchy then, would be even more sketchy today. I put a lot of coins into those machines.
Tod, this was an awesome project and I really enjoyed watching this. I loved the little interviews with your wife and son. And I really liked the clips showing the work itself and the music choices are spot on. I'm looking forward to your next project.
Thanks, Kim! Hopefully next time I plan ahead and include a little more commentary from friends and family along the way. And I really dug the music as well-I found some tracks on Uppbeat that fit perfectly.
I never really understand RU-vid recommendations, but I'm very happy your channel showed up! You do such an awesome job and you're really enjoyable to watch. I know I'll never take on an arcade restore, but I can live vicariously through you. So, so good! I've been wanting to chop up some Wiis to turn into custom systems so you might finally convince me to try it out just because you look like you're enjoying yourself throughout all of this (even if like 50%+ is sanding lol).
This was a fascinating video, and I loved watching your excellent work. So. Pin pullers. I've had one for about... 15 years. The key is to shove the wire forward, hard, and then shove the pin puller as deep into the connector as you can. This is usually fine on newer connectors (I use em for ATX / EPS / PCI-E / Modular PC cables). I find that the older style 6 pin connectors are... very very tight. Those ones you have to keep pulling, almost inevitably until the outbound wire gores your finger. Those ones are like working on mid 90's PCs... you aren't done until it draws your blood.
"I have orthodontic tools, because I'm an orthodontist" Yeah. That tracks. Spending a whole lot of time staring at things that are... "Not optimal" and making a whole lot of small adjustments to get them to meet the vision. Do you have any of your cabinets / displays set up at the office for the youths?
I have heard that and I will keep practicing. It seems like sometimes pulling pins is simple and other times they are just jammed in forever :) Thanks!
Being an orthodontist is really analogous to being an engineer, and in fact the head of our graduate program was a former engineer. And I have a degree in computer science. Both involve multiple short, logical steps and analyzing results along the way. I was drawn to it because I am math/logic oriented and like to fix things up. Plus it pays the bills :)
You did an awesome job. Price bidding is a very alien bidding practice to me, I like how you shared it, it made it a valuable fun point in the video, I love your positivity over that whole thing. I love you information generosity and linked in my brain that the generosity may be the only info bank for people to fix this thing again in the future without you. I love this whole video. Ive gained arthritis on projects like this outside which included acorn projectile injuries too and i also work on unsolved consoles issues like ps4 base model rebuild, i was first to solve. Im relating to you. Thank you so much for this man! subbed big time.
I’m glad you liked it. All of this is just for fun for me. I like seeing what I can fix. Both of the sellers that I bought from in this video were great people, super helpful, and kept track of how the restoration was going and watched the video at the end. It’s not weird for people in Indiana to haggle and try to work the best deal-it’s just something we do. I’ll keep trying to find cool stuff to restore and share my journey with others. Thanks!
Another amazing restoration, well done, I bet it was a very rewarding feeling completing that challenge. I play a lot of old 8 bit Games on Emulators, but nothing compares to the origional Arcade Machines. Thanks again for the Video, you've got me hooked. The only thing I don't miss is getting zapped by the CRT's. ⚡ 😵💫
Haha, thanks! Yeah, I've gotten mini-zapped a few times but nothing too serious. And there is something definitely more satisfying about playing games on their original hardware, but I do a little of both myself :)
Excellent work. Yeah it's an enjoyable hobby. Like welding for me. It's always something I enjoyed. Relaxing and a great escape mentally. Awesome video
Couldn't agree with you more. When people say it would have been easier just to start with new, they perhaps don't understand the joy I get from patiently working something back into form. I'm never in a hurry with these projects--they are the perfect wake up on Saturday morning and tinker around with for a few hours hobby :)
@@tcurtis49 oh absolutely 💯. It's more enjoyable looking at all the hard work, effort, and patience put into a project. It's easy to start with new but it's not much different than spending money on a game to just win easily. It's more enjoyable to grind, and work. Your efforts express themselves through hard work and patience. Much more enjoyable to look at instead of paying to win do to speak.
I hope to get a job over the summer at an arcade repairing the games and stuff. I already am pretty proficient at fixing consoles so I hope I can do this type of stuff too. Great video it was really inspirational especially for me who may be doing stuff exactly like this in less than a month. :)
looks great! fantastic that you saved it. One suggestion is that the smoked glass requires it to be run at a higher brightness and that will wear out the tube faster. swapping for clear glass will hurt the contrast a little, but it's really better in the long run to preserve the tube
