How did you start?

[wax 0]

Basically, how did you get into the CCTV business and where did you get the experience from? Where was your beginning?

[scorpion 0]

I repaired Pinball machines, and video games.

 

I got involved because a camera was dead, and the owner said, "while you are here could you take a look at this for me"?

 

It has been down hill ever since!

 

This was the tube style of cameras before CCD.

 

As prices came down more, and more people were having them installed.

 

When prices came down in the 2006 time frame I could not keep up with the installs. I used to do 20 installs a month.

 

Boy! Do I miss those days!

[wax 0]

Hey, that's pretty cool. Did you repair arcade machines?

[scorpion 0]

Yes.

 

My best recollection was the proud day that i bought a table top game called PONG. This was the very first "electronic" video game that started the coin op frenzy of the modern day era.

 

I got a call from the pizza owner screaming at me to come and fix this machine, and now as the customers were upset, and they wanted to play this game!

 

I went down there, and opened the door. It had choked on it's own quarters, and could not take another coin. The hard part was trying to unwedge side, by side quarters in the drop slot.

 

That was a pain!

 

The worse memory was learing that people would show up at a convenience store, and tell the clerk that they are taking the game for repairs.

 

I show up, and I ask where is my game?

 

Your guys took it to do some repairs!

 

I do not have any employees!

[wax 0]

Damn, that's pretty funny. Someone got a free PONG machine!

[scorpion 0]

The ones that were stolen were Robotron, Stargate, Donkey Kong, and Mrs Pac Man.

 

This happened over a period of time from separate locations.

 

Also I had a coin op pool table stolen!!

[wax 0]

The old Donky Kong that had Mario as the hero? I'm not sure why but I loved that machine! It was the best.

[scorpion 0]

I loved the original Donky kong as a player, but I hated it as an owner.

 

You could stand on the ladders all day, and never get hit with a barrel.

 

As a coin op owner you could not turn enough players over to make any money, or customers would get pissed because they waited 3 hours, and had to leave, and they never got to play it.

 

They finally came out with a kit to fix this. You just solder this board above the main board.

 

They also had other kits such as the Pac Man Zoom that many might be familiar with.

 

I used to take a resistor, and attach it to power +, or ground to see what would happen when I tapped around on the IC chips.

 

On asteroids I found that I could manipulate the size of the rocks, or the space ship. I created "megasteroid".

 

The rocks would come out, ant there would be no place to go! The rocks appeared bigger, but it was still "electronically" the same size on the screen. You could go inside of the rocks as long as you did not hit the original outline.

 

It was great to see the looks on people the first time they played it!

I could make the ship the size of a pin point, and I called that microstroid!

 

I took the sound board out of a Black Knight pinball machine, and I placed in inside of my 62 Nova that was painted black, and I had a black knight mural on the hood.

 

I put micro switches throughout the car, and I put push buttons on the dash to fire off a sound effect such as the Wolf whistle when an attractive lady was within ear shot.

 

It got a lot of stares at the "burger joint" car shows!