Friday, December 30, 2011

iPad repaired.

A while back I dropped my iPad 2 from a height of about 3 feet onto some concrete.  I had a Smart Cover attached, but that was the only "protection" it had.  It landed right on the corner and ended up looking something like this.

I went to the Apple store and they wanted me to pay $319 for them to swap it out for a new one.  With Christmas coming up, I didn't have the extra cash to fix it so I waited a while before looking for other options.  I found several places selling replacement screens and I watched several "how-to" videos about replacing the screen myself.  I was just about ready to tackle fixing it myself when I stumbled upon iRepairNational.com.  Their service looked good so I gave them a shot and sent it off for repair the week before Christmas. Their price was $139.95.  Despite the timing, their turn around time was great.  The Post Office held the shipment longer than I would have liked, but I was very happy with the repair job.
You can seen where they had to reshape the corner to get the glass to fit correctly, which is just fine with me since I didn't want to have to replace the back as well as the front.  Overall I'm very happy with the job they did.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Controls Are In

My X-Arcade Tankstick arrived today and I dropped it into the cabinet.  I had to do a little work to get it to fit, but it's in.  I tested it out with a little Centipede.
I know the hard core cabinet builder will scoff at my addition of the pre-made controls, but it was the best fit for me right now.  I would like to eventually salvage the parts out of it and build my own, but I'll wait until after Christmas to break it.  I'm going to enjoy it with my kids a while first.

If you look closely you can see that I changed the way the marquee is mounted.  I went with aluminum retaining frames rather then the weaker pvc j-moulding I was using.  It's much stronger now and I don't have to worry about it falling apart.

I also installed two rails inside the monitor area to hold the bezel and front glass.

It's really coming together, a few more weekends and it will be basically done*.  I still need to enclose the speaker box area and clean up the keyboard drawer as well.

*I don't think projects like this are ever really done.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Coin Door

Earlier this week I got my coin door from X-Arcade.  Here is how it looks.

 I was impressed by the quality of the door.  It seems to be well made.  The coin return has a red LED that has it's own AC adapter attached.  The coin mech seems to work well, it accepts quarters and rejects other coins.   I haven't tested the microswitch yet, but I expect it to work.

The Tankstick I ordered last weekend is on back-order but I should have it in another week to 10 days.  Then I can wire the coin door into the controls.