Curbside Snag to be Restored to Raise Funds for ACAM

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While on the way to work today, I received a call from one of my coworkers who lives on the South Shore. He said that he saw an arcade cab on the side of the road with a "FREE" sign on it. Knowing that I collect coin-ops he figured that I might like to check it out. He said it was "some basketball game" which didn't sound too promising. However, since I was on my way to work in Hingham anyway, I figured I would check it out.

Well much to my surprise 1) the cab was still on the curb when I got to the house and 2) It was a converted (to Super Basketball) DK Jr. cab. The wood was in fairly rough shape, but the important things like monitor, PS and boards looked pretty good. So I loaded it up in my baja and went to work where the cab sat in the parking lot all day.

I get home tonight and manhandle the thing inside by myself. I checked the connections and decided to fire it up. On the first try nothing happened, but I heard a very nice hum from the monitor and thought I saw a bit of a glow to the neck. So I turned the power off and checked the connections on the very odd conversion card sitting on top of the main boards (this is a two-board DK Jr. setup) and noticed a few unused connectors, so I attached those where it seemed logical and turned it back on.

The monitor fired up but was all white, no pic. So then I noticed that the conversion board was not actually connected to the two main boards. Popped it in place, hit the power and voila!

Here are some more pics of the cab.

So my plans are to restore this cab to a DK or DK Jr. then use it to raise funds for ACAM (www.classicarcademuseum.org/) during PAXEast in conjunction with 2old2play and our presence there. I was thinking of having an open tournament where people would make a pre-determined donation to ACAM for the opportunity to play the game for X number of times. After those attempts, if they wanted to try again, they could pay for another "ticket". The idea is a bit like an active raffle. Top score at the end of PAXEast gets to take the cab home with them. We did a similar, single elimination Street Fighter II CE tournament at our Gamers Gone Wild event last year at PAXEast and it was a hit. I still need to connect with Gary over at ACAM to confirm that this is something he is interested in, but I am hoping he will like the idea.

Also, I was wondering if I should keep the cab as a DK Jr. or try to go the DK route, figuring that a dedicated Donkey Kong cab cab would garner more interest and thus more funds for ACAM. Let me know what you think and help me spread the word to people planning to head out to PAXEast 2011.