In my last bavacade repair log I was all but certain Cheyenne was going to be on the bench indefinitely given power issues. But as it happens, Cheyenne rides again in the bavacade thanks to a fairly simple fix of identifying and repairing a shorted wire going from the pwoer supply to the monitor. At some point during its long slumber—this game has been out of rotation for at least 8 month—a taped wire seems to have come undone and was shorting the circuit and blowing a fuse. I unplugged everything going into the power supply (coin door, monitor, interlock switch, and the game board) and then plugged them in again one-by-one to figure out which one blows the fuse. It was the monitor wire, and I knew this because it wasn’t even connected to the chassis. So, after that I inspected the wire and saw the electrical taped area exposed with some slight burn, so repaired that and plugged it back in and…..magic!
Now the discerning eye will realize that this cabinet is running a Crossbow board in a Cheyenne cabinet, the two games are essentially interchangeable and I enjoy both games a lot, but the campaign/choose-your-adventure aesthetic of Crossbow makes it special.
You can also see in particular scenes from Crossbow how it borrows the desert graphics from Cheyenne. I would really love to get a Crossbow cabinet as well, which would have, you guessed it, a crossbow rather than a rifle as the control panel interface.
But these Exidy cabinets are big, and the way the power supplies work is unique to say the least. In fact, the other game game that gave me all sorts of issues for months was also an Exidy cabinet: the ever amazing Venture! I do love these cabinets, but they also are a lot of work. I had the 440 dev kit in this one to allow a single cabinet to play multiple games, but the GAL chip went bad and caused some of my board issues. If I ever find the time, I would like to see if I can get that kit repaired, but we’ll see.
At this point this game is working really well, which puts me a K4600 chassis away from perfection, a fully functioning arcade—maybe by week’s end? We’ll see, but I will take this win for now, there is something truly gratifying about bringing a game back that has been out of commission for a good, long while.
