The light at the end of the tunnel is so close with this cab! 
With the video issues now solved, it’s now time to get the cab back to working order – first order of business was doing a general clean and fixing up a few nuances on the cab.
When I opened the coin box, I noticed the coin counter count and boy has this machine made some money!!! Over 100K on the counter!!
During my testing, I noticed there were sparks on the transformer when I turned the machine on, it turns out, the AC wires were just twisted on the input section of the Tx – nice! . As a quick fix, I’ve just soldered it on, but I will most likely go back to it and put heat shrink on.
Can’t have glass without getting some windex on it!!
Mirror, monitor and glass shield all clean, it’s time to put the monitor bezel artwork for Point Blank 1 in the machine.
Sadly, the original monitor bezel art is 745mm x 148mm VS what I received 730 mm x 144mm. I’ll fix that up in due course and get a reprint or try to find an original with the namco seal!
Having all three point blanks in one machine would be ideal, but finding the arcade pcb of Point Blank 3 (or gunbalina) is proving to be quite difficult. For now, I’ll have to stick with just Point Blank 1 and Point Blank 2.
Fortunately, the cage that PB2 uses is perforated and the holes on them are perfect for the screws that I used allowing it to sit on top of the cage and both PCB’s slide in without catching anything. It fits like a glove!!
Doing it this way, it’s a simple unplug of 5 connectors to be able to switch games – I will try and make something in the future to be able to switch between the pcbs, but that’s not a real priority right now.
Next up is the marquee.
I started noticing that my Point Blank marquee just didn’t have that “pop” and isn’t as “bright” as others I’ve seen online. I thought it may have been due to a dull light, but upon inspecting the marquee itself, I found a layer of film behind the marquee which has been baked on. Scratching it revealed the true backing of the marquee!!
After a decent amount of work, IPA and general scrubbing I managed to remove all the baked on gunk.
Unfortunately, some parts of the baked film was a lot harder to get rid of which resulted in taking some parts of the proper backing
With the light coming through in the same section. It’s nothing major, but it’s just annoying as the rest of the marquee is looking pretty good.
![[​IMG]](https://thingsgeek.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image-80.jpeg)
Now for the before and after – as you will see, it’s like the white balance has been corrected, but it’s quite evident that it now “pops” more and is much brighter than when I first started.
With the Xenon lights working, I need to find a Japanese marquee to take advantage of the lights as it’s the only marquee that has the translucent blue. It seems all western releases of the game didn’t have this translucent blue on their marquee because none of the releases had the Xenon lights.
I can definitely understand why it would have been taken off, every time it goes off, it’s the same feeling as a flash going off and it’s quite frequent on attract mode.
Last but not the least – the control panel!
As previously mentioned, I wanted to go for the point blank 1 control panel as it just completes the great artwork of the cab.
The panel was primed, wet sanded, primed, wet sanded, first coat of the base coat, wet sanded, second base coat and then 2 coats of clear resulting into this
I then let mother nature do her work soaking the Aussie sun for a number of days
A good spray of soapy water allowed me to get the alignment as perfect as I could
The final touch of the panel restoration was the rubber seal to prevent it from scratching the glass
New solenoids, new gun screws, new shells, new gun hose covers, new decals, fresh paint – this is as new as I can get this panel!
And finally…. installed on the cab!!
Over the next few days, it’ll be time to move the cab into position to finally enjoy!
My son will forever say “dad, do you remember when I shot the leaf with that one bullet?!” (he must’ve been 6 or 7) so I’m sure it’s time to get a few rounds in again . Him and his sister can now battle each other as I only had a 1p setup for the majority of the time I had my PS2 to Time Crisis 1 setup.
