bavatuesdays

G07 Monitor Boy and His Trusty Arcade Assistant, Part 1

Posted on March 23, 2026 by Reverend

[NB: I started this post over 10 days ago, but sometimes my hopes and dreams of what AI can do aren’t as clean and tidy as I’d like. So, this is now just the first part of an ongoing monitor repair saga.]

I already wrote about my recent updates at the bavacade swapping monitors with G07 chassis between Condor and Make Trax. Turns out another game I’ve been working on, Robotron, also has a G07 monitor that gives out a terrible hiss. I’m not sure if it’s the vertical frequency pot or something else, but I started thinking it might make sense to swap that one out with the Make Trax chassis and monitor, so I did just that.

Monitor and G07 chassis from Make Trax swapped into Robotron frame (notice how the metal frame sits flat against the ground)

In the spirit of nothing can ever be easy, I was hoping to just take the monitor and chassis from Make Trax* and put it directly into Robotron. I figured it would be an easy win given both monitor mountings were designed for horizontal monitors. I was wrong. The mountings where both for horizontal monitor alright, but Make Trax chassis was now in the Condor monitor frame and the bottom doesn’t sit flat, which meant it did not fasten cleanly into the Robotron cabinet. FML.

Disassembled monitor frame for Condor after learning it would not work in Robotron

So, I definitely got my full of swapping monitors to different brackets, and when finally getting the new Robotron monitor and chassis installed and ready to go the image was significantly tilted. I figured the monitor mounting was lopsided, so I adjusted that but it was still tilted. Hmmm, after some more jiggering and pulling out a level, I realized the call was coming from inside the monitor. WTF! The actual image was titled, which means I must have moved the yoke while swapping monitors … not good. I tried re-adjusting the three yoke wedges hoping to get lucky, no dice. Now I have a beautiful Robotron image that is badly tilted. Sad arcade panda.

Offsetting the tilt with a piece of wood to straighten out the Robotron image

The solution is to loosen up the yoke and try shifting it to get everything aligned, but to do that effectively I need some courage and at least one more person. I had neither, so I decided to offset the tilted image with a “shim” underneath the monitor mount. I put shim in scare quotes because it’s closer to a mini block of wood.

More than a shim, but less than a 2 x 4

I imagine this is a pretty common hack given rotating the yoke can create all kinds of issues if done wrong, and I just don’t need the headache right now—I’m manic enough. What’s more, any trace of the tilted image was gone, and it looked near on 100%.

At some point I’ll reckon with the yoke on this tube, but not today, Satan! I was a bit concerned about any unforeseen issue that could arise from having that piece of wood wedged between the monitor platform and the mounting bracket. Turns out there’s no real concern, at least according to ChatGPT. I started a quick chat to make sure I was not overlooking any safety hazard, and it promptly reassured me—something it’s good at.

3 G07 “Pots” (or resistance adjusters) that control elements of the image on the screen

All that finally gets us into the meat of this post. Long story short, the chassis and monitor I pulled out of Robotron because of the loud hiss/screech was destined for the Condor† machine in my basement. While the chassis and monitor worked fine in Robotron, it was afflicted with that awful hiss/screech I mentioned earlier. So after installing the monitor in Condor I tried adjusting the vertical hold pot (pictured above) with a screwdriver and the pot broke. So I pull it out and replaced two of the four pots, the vertical hold and vertical linearity pots. I was sloppy and assumed both were 200 Ohm pots, but turns out vertical hold needs a 10K Ohm pot—not good. Below are the values for the various pots on a G07 CBO:

Vertical Hold = 10K
Vertical Lin. = 200 ohm
Vertical Height = 200 ohm
Horizontal Freq. = 5K

Given my sloppy work, after re-installing the chassis the image was even worse, what’s more adjusting at least one of the pots I installed was useless. I then tried adjusting the Vertical Height pot with a metal screwdriver (STUPID—do not try this at home!) and I shorted the chassis. This was frustrating. I temporarily bricked a perfectly good chassis. On top of the monitor going black the resistor R903 was burning red hot and the F901 pigtail fuse wire melted, so something was rotten in Denmark.

I took the chassis out and at this point I would usually dig in on the KLOV forum, but I decided to take an alternative path, I summoned the machine. I described the glowing resistor to ChatGPT and the melted fuse wire and the monitor shorting out and it immediately started providing me troubleshooting tips.

F901 fuse (partially hidden) and R903 resistor. Image care of pinrepair.com

I have to say this was a bit of a brave new world to have the machine immediately map out potential causes as well as detailing for me how to troubleshoot. It immediately identified the B+ filter cap (the big grey capacitor in the image above) and the Horizontal Output Transistor (HOT) as two things for investigation given they both deal with the the high voltage supply. It kept pushing me towards the HOT given the monitor was dead, there was no neck glow, and no high voltage made it a likely candidate. This was pretty cool, I must admit, and on top of all that, it took me through the specifics of testing the HOT with a multimeter, which is huge struggle for an amateur tech like me.

Horizontal Output Transistor assumed to be shorted

For example, with the HOT the legs you are supposed to test are not necessarily labelled, so it can walk you through that:

ChatGPT identifying the detail of the HOT on a G07 chassis

So five minutes after shorting a G07 chassis I’m already tracking down potential fixes. Previously I would be wading through the KLOV forums prepared for the inevitable “pot shots” [pun intended] about how stupid I was for shorting it in the first place. To be fair, there areas many awesome people on that forum as well, but it would be impossible for them to take me through the basics in context like ChatGPT can. This kind of painstaking tutelage would be too much to expect of anyone, so the impulse to help would quickly become a source of annoyance or, even worse, resentment—all of which is understandable.

On the other hand, the machine provides that kind of direct instruction without concern. I still have to assume everything I’m being told might be wrong (and some of it is), but I assume that about everything on the web. I know this because I write a blog.

ChatGPT taking me through testing the HOT to see if it is good or not

After that it took me through testing the HOT, as well as ultimately warning me I might need to desolder one leg of the transmitter (the emitter) to ensure I get a reliable reading. This is valuable information. Turns out the HOT was shorted and I just happened to have another G07 chassis in the arcade that I could pull a working one from as well as replace the R903 resistor given when it overheats like that it can quickly become unreliable. The last bits of work I did before testing it again are the following:

swapped out the rest of the pots that control the image
replaced the F901 fuse that melted
replaced the horizontal width coil given the existing was looking pretty beat up

With all that done I re-connected the chassis and fired up the game and I got an image again.

This white gauze with vertical lines on the screen was what I first got when resurrecting the monitor from the short

I still had to adjust the size and positioning given it now has all new pots, as well as reflow solder joints on the neck board around the RGB pots and bright and contrast pots. In the end the shorted chassis was brought back to life thanks to some very focused advice from the machine.

What’s more, the chats around the chassis issues helped deepen my understanding of how certain elements of this monitor works. But regardless, I now have all the cabinets save Scramble working again, and that’s simply a replacement piece for a joystick that I haven’t gotten around to ordering. Things are looking good in the AI-assisted bavacade repair world …

[10 days later]

While AI did help be bring a shorted chassis back to life—which is awesome—the screeching and hissing was even worse than when it was in Robotron. Refusing to leave well enough alone (although the screeching was not well enough) and having new found courage with my AI assistant, I continued digging.

Describing the symptoms to ChatGPT, it recommended I take a plastic tool or wooden spoon (not a metal screwdriver you idiot!) and push down on the flyback or the driver transformer (T503) to see if the high-pitched noise changes. Bingo, that was it, when I pushed down on T503 the noise muted. I had a smoking gun. So not only do I have a clean looking monitor now, but I’m about to solve the noise issue.

Driver Transformer (T503)

I was in my kitchen having a coffee with Antonella prior to performing this final procedure bragging that I might just be turning a corner with monitor work thanks to ChatGPT. I’m finally making real progress …

Famous last words.

I changed out T503 with one I had on my parts chassis and also decided to add a real yoke connector given the yellow, red, brown, and blue yokes were loose, and that’s not ideal. If a yoke comes loose it will lead to horizontal or vertical collapse of the image.

Yoke connector on a G07 CBO

My real problem here was I decided to two two things at once. Swap out the driver Transformer and add a new yoke connector. Anyway, I did these two things and I got a small green dot in the center of the screen. Which means there has been both a horizontal and vertical collapse, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. How do you like your blue-eyed AI now, Mr. bava?

I figured out that the vertical collapse was being caused by a bad connection in the yoke connectors on the vertical wires, so I fixed that, but the horizontal collapse is ongoing. I have swapped the original drive transformer back in after crazy gluing the casing, but still nothing. So, I had to throw in the towel, at least for a little bit, and get back to my life. They arcade projects can become all consuming, but I am hoping after some time away and a little reflection I can get this thing up and running again. Hope springs eternal in the human breast 🙂

Total Horizontal Collapse of the Heart

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*If you are keeping score at home, this is the second time I swapped the Make Trax monitor and chassis into a new metal frame mounting—he metal frame mounting it was in before this second swap was the Condor mounting.

†Ironically this was, in fact, original home of that chassis, it went from Condor to Make Trax to Robotron and now back to Condor in just a couple of years.

Posted in AI, bavacade, bavarcade, video games | Tagged AI, bavacade, ChatGPT, classic video games, condor, Make Trax, Robotron | Leave a comment

I Shoulda Turned Left at Albuquerque

Posted on March 23, 2026 by Reverend

I found myself down a deep monitor repair rabbit hole as of late, but I’ve finally resurfaced (at least temporarily). What’s more, the map is out and I am re-orientating, so I’ll find my way back to the blog shortly. In the meantime, enjoy this supercut of the greatest running gag in cartoons.

Posted in blogging | Tagged bugs bunny | 2 Comments

Reclaiming Women on the Web

Posted on March 19, 2026 by Reverend

Lifting my head out of arcade repair mania just long enough to help Jason and Alexis celebrate the “Women Who Shaped Open source and the Web.” Jason’s second installment in his “Support Systems” series shouts out women leaders in open source over the last two decades, such as Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker and former GNOME Foundation executive director Stormy Peters.

What’s more, earlier this month Alexis took to the blog making a call for folks to promote web projects built by women. You can read (and submit your own example) on the original post, but I’ll excerpt the heart of it here:

In honor of Women’s History Month in the U.S. and International Women’s History Day this past Sunday, March 8th, we’re highlighting the incredible work being created by women across our community.

Throughout March, we’re inviting our female-identifying users to share projects they’ve built, launched, or are currently working on using our platform. In a future blog post, we’ll feature a showcase of submissions to celebrate the creativity, innovation, and impact of the women of Reclaim.

Pretty cool, so we’re currently taking submissions that will be featured and celebrated, which is something we should do a lot more of on the web. So if you have a project in mind and a second to share it, we would be much obliged, as I’m the women who created it would as well.

Posted in reclaim | Tagged reclaim, Women in Technology | Leave a comment

bav-o-rama, Now with More Panelling!

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Reverend

Can you save links and formatting for WP classic editor but clean up spelling and grammar issues? One of the recent features we added to the bav-o-rama is removable panelling. The idea occurred to me when we setup the Tetris diorama with a TV, console, and The Shining carpet.

I kept the walls covered with the black garbage bags I used as a quick solution for over-sized Silent Night, Deadly Night diorama, but even then the question was percolating: “What would make a good background that could be re-used when the diorama was not necessarily a scene from a film?”

Turns out the answer wasn’t exactly blowing in the wind, but rather hanging on the wall.

Turns out the art Michael Branson Smith made for UMW’s Console Living Room back in 2015 was what I was trying to reproduce almost unconsiously. The CRT TV, Shining carpet, and, of course, cheap wood panelling on the walls. That was the missing piece, the bav-o-rama needed wood paneling and the great Alberto was up to the task!

The panelling hangs on top of the existing composite board, and can be easily removed and stored away for when we have a different diorama to install. I have to say it adds the perfect finishing effect to the space. What’s more, it essentially brings MBS’s art to life—a theme of the bav-o-rama for sure.

Add a 19″ Sony Trinitron, Panasonic VHS player, a random console, in this image the Atari 7800, and you got yourself something of a diorama series focused on that whole console living room idea.

The next step is finally building out the bit that enables people to actually play the console from the street. That is definitely something I know is possible given I tested it out with Tetris, now I just need to acquire and hack a few old school controllers that can be securely mounted in front of the window. To making it an ongoing, changeable piece I need to find a way to securely mount various controllers from the various systems—so something of a modular solution. So that idea of having folks play games remotely will not get lost in the wind, but rather become part of the permanent bava.studio collection. That is super fun! Actually, this whole thing might have a life of its own, or at least a name of its own, but I’ll save that for the next post.

Posted in bav-o-rama | Tagged bav-o-rama, bavastudio, diorama, panelling | 4 Comments

Roemer Film Festival Proposal

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Reverend

My friend Andrea asked if I would be up for proposing a mini film festival for a local film culture society here in Trento. Ever since I’ve been chatting film on the regular with MBS as part of the Family Pictures Podcast (FPP) I feel ever more confident—not sure that’s entirely a good thing. So when he suggested the idea I immediately thought of a NYC in the 80s festival, showcasing movies like The Warriors (1979), Times Square (1980), Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981), The New York Ripper (1982), and C.H.U.D. (1984). My undergirding argument would be highlighting how these movies showcase both the decaying NYC infrastructure, as well as the rhetoric of gentrification in the not-so–rotten apple. In fact, I think I already wrote about that on this blog:

Of Punks, Pimps and C.H.U.D.s: Gentrification in NYC as told by 1980s film

But after podcasting with MBS this last year or so, I’ve been falling down all kinds of film-dug rabbit holes. In fact, one film we did on a lark, Michael Roemer‘s Vengeance Is Mine (1984), has turned me into a huge fan of his work. There’s a commitment to independent cinema in his films that can be read into the strange fact that his work often peaks in popularity decades after it was made. From feature films to TV documentaries to PBS American Showcase specials—there’s a consistent vision of a quiet, looming realism that haunts quotidian life on the margins.*

So, the idea is to put together a four-film retrospective featuring his films. They’ll be projected in 4K, and I think I have a special lady friend who can help ensure the translation into Italian is solid. The idea of introducing folks to an under-appreciated figure of American independent cinema is very cool. What’s more, the fact that it is a local film community kind of marries nicely with my last post about blogging as a place on earth. It would seem I’m starting to come out of my shell a bit in dear old Italy. Although be sure to manage your expectations, any intro to the films will have to be in English, but I’ll try and have some real-time translation technologies—if they even agree to this thing. I told my friend Andrea, “I can try and do it in Italian.” And he looked at me sympathetically and said, “You should do it in English.” [Lol and sigh.]

All this said, I could be pissing in the wind. At this point, it’s just an idea, and the film society has no shortage of compelling films—so we’ll see. But like with FPP, it just feels life-affirming even to think about the possibility of talking about movies with other people. I love them so!

Outsiders and Moral Reckonings: The Cinema of Michael Roemer

This four-film retrospective brings together Nothing but a Man (1964), The Plot Against Harry (1969/1989), Dying (1976), and Vengeance Is Mine, also released as Haunted), offering Italian audiences a rare opportunity to encounter one of the most singular and under-recognized voices in American independent cinema. All screenings will be presented in English with Italian subtitles.

Michael Roemer’s fiction features are marked by psychological precision and an unwavering attention to social reality. Nothing but a Man offers an intimate portrait of a Black railroad worker navigating racism and dignity in the American South, rendered with emotional restraint and moral clarity. The Plot Against Harry, long unavailable after its initial release, shifts into dry, observational comedy: a small-time Jewish bookmaker drifts through family and community life in New York, his bluster masking vulnerability and displacement.

With Dying, Roemer turns to documentary form. This four-part television work confronts terminal illness directly, following patients, families, and medical professionals with unsentimental attentiveness. Refusing melodrama, Dying becomes a profound inquiry into mortality, autonomy, and the ethical dimensions of end-of-life care.

Vengeance Is Mine returns to fiction in a quieter, more interior register. Centered on a divorced woman who returns to her childhood home and enters a fraught new relationship, the film examines emotional dependency, memory, and the lingering force of family history. Where Dying faces death in its immediate physical reality, Vengeance Is Mine explores the ways the past inhabits the present—how unresolved attachments and private wounds continue to shape adult life.

Taken together, these four films reveal a filmmaker of remarkable range—moving between documentary and fiction, social realism and intimate drama—yet consistently committed to questions of dignity, responsibility, and the fragile structures that bind individuals to family and community.

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*Something we discussed recently on FPP while extolling Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages (2007): why did she have to wait ten years between films, from 1997’s The Slums of Beverly Hills to The Savages? That almost Roemerian 🙂

Posted in film, films, movies | Tagged Dying, Harpo Lab, Michael Roemer, Nothing But a Man, The Plot Against Harry, Vengeance is Mine | 3 Comments

Ooh Blogging is a Place on Earth

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Reverend

With all apologies to Belinda Carlisle, what if blogging, not love, were a place on Earth? That’s what hit me as an idea for a presentation at the Irish Learning Technology Association’s annual EdTech conference in early June while walking to get my afternoon coffee last week. The conference theme is “Digital Learning from How to Who,” with a focus on exploring “Who was, is, and should be the people of your/our Edtech community?” This is a somewhat unique question for me because, while most of my work has been online for 20 years (thanks to this here blog), my physical context has shifted dramatically from working with an awesome team at a small liberal arts college in Virginia to working for a distributed hosting company from a small city in Northern Italy — completely outside the English-speaking higher ed scene. Add to that a few years of some serious COVID lockdowns, and the “freedom” of the online world had increasingly become a Zoom-driven prison house.*

Creepshow‘s “Something to Tide You Over” was the first bav-o-rama

And while I did spend much of the early part of COVID helping Timmmmyboy design and build an arcade, I was still 4,000 miles away on an island in the Alps. So, as the lockdown started to ease and Trento Centro had more empty storefronts than occupied ones, I decided to get out of the basement and into the physical world. While part of the motivation was a search for daylight, the other piece was returning to a sense of open that always attracted me most: an open door. A space in the middle of town that was not about selling or buying; moreover, it needed to have something of an open-door policy so that people could drop in and ask, “what the hell is this place?” That really appealed to me. Not only would it force me to work on my languishing Italian language skills, but more importantly to become a part of the community I live in. For years, I’d been using my job and the affordances of the web as an excuse to exile myself from the reality I inhabited — like a tourist overstaying his welcome.

Someone posted about The Shining diorama on social media, but we’re not just computers, Sebastian, we’re physical

So, the conceit for what has become known as bava.studio (although it has many possible names like bavacade, RGB, The Consolate, etc.) was trying to imagine my blog as a physical space. What if a storefront were not transactional, but rather wonder-full? For me, the key was having a space that engages the public in some kind of playful dialogue. This was really the idea behind the window-based diorama, or what has come to be known as bav-o-rama. I had an early blog post, as soon as I started leasing the storefront, titled “Space is the Place”, wherein I’m thinking through what the space might be, and all the elements were there from the start: it being a physical outgrowth of the blog; free from the transactional logic that increasingly rules the social web (and has long defined our physical downtown spaces); and, possibly most important, creating a space that engages the local community outside the limiting, viral logic of social media.

John Carpenter’s Halloween diorama promoting the Halloween haunted Arcade Event

“Promoting” the space with next to no social media† has been somewhat slow-going, but I think that is also dependent on who it is you want to include in the experiment. The “who” here is key, because I think social media—and the goal of going “viral”—erases any particularity of the who into a faceless they. To quote Edmond O’Brien from The Wild Bunch, “Who the hell is they?” I work sporadically at the space throughout the week (mainly afternoons) and keep the door open when not writing or on a call. Most of my interactions are person-to-person, and I think those are the most powerful for what I’m trying to do. I’ve said it again and again: I think the real reason for doing this is so that some 10- or 12-year-old kid who sees the space can reflect back on it 10 or 20 years in the future and say something along the lines of, “Remember that crazy store in Trento that sold nothing and had a window with movie scenes and a full 1980s arcade? What the fuck was up with that guy?” That said, even in the face of my attempt to limit the space from simply becoming “viral” clickbait, at least one of my kids and his friend think it’s a disservice not to have an Instagram or TikTok account. They may not be wrong according to a certain logic.But I’m not sure the space would be well-served as a social media-driven destination (which to be fair, is already assuming a lot). Some idealist in me is still set on the idea of this space being a wonder-filled surprise for the unknowing, and a the best kept local secret for the knowing.

Tetris Tournament Recap

What’s more, we’ve had a pretty good turnout for the two low-key events we ran without social media. It was all OG flyers, stickers, and word-of-mouth promotion — I kinda think that’s how it should be. The actual bav-o-rama is a advertising blog post of sorts, that not only alludes to the event but also attempts to capture the imagination and interest of the random passerby. As a result, some may wander in; or even we have a conversation; and if they take the bait entirely they are on the hook for a full blown tour: pointing out a DVD, VHS, and Laserdisc collection; old school arcade cabinets; toys and various video game consoles from another era; and much more. It’s like the actual space is both an archive and some part of my physical brain that can be re-fashioned as a window presentation every so often. The real key — and it has been happening — is getting more folks involved and making the space a communal hub. That’s work, and there’s no doubt I could and should be doing more, but little by little, the space is building a core group of folks who want to help with events and design the dioramas. That’s the coup; no longer is it simply the mad ravings of one person’s myopic interests — it’s about connection, and the analog is actually digital: a physical blog in space and time that creates a hub for interfacing old and new tech and building an “edtech” community outside my traditional role in higher ed, given my current circumstances.

We’re not computers, Sebastian, we’re physical

I’m realizing, as I come to the end of this post, that I already wrote some version of this very idea as part of the Reclaim Open 2025 Blog-a-thon. So, the challenge will be to re-fashion this as a respectable submission for ILTA; we’ll see how that goes.

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*Worth noting that we had it easy at Reclaim because we were already distributed before the proverbial shit hit the fan.

†There’s a Ghost blog at bava.studio with about 30 subscribers and my occasional post on bavatuesdays.

Posted in bav-o-rama, bavacade, bavarcade, bavastudio | Tagged bava-o-rama, bavacade, bavastudio | Leave a comment

High Score Chasing on Pac-man

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Reverend

Crossing over that 419K line

It took some time, and I had to dig deep to reconnect with my Pac-mania, but I’m getting there. I’ve started to unofficially open Saturday afternoon and I’m usually joined by Mattia and Zeno—the studio’s number 1 fans. They got bit by the Tetris bug after the tournament, so we setup the 27″ Trinitron with some OG Tetris on the NES.

I also convinced Mattia to play a game of Pac-man 2P which I always prefer. He joked it would be like a half hour between lives for him to wait, and that wasn’t entirely false 🙂 We played and I finally broke through my 419,000 point bottleneck which lasted more than 18 months.

I’ve been chasing the half million for a long while, and I finally got close. Mattia caught me crossing the 419K mark at 423,000 and the game ended with me hitting 460K. I love it when I get in a groove.

It’s J-I-M all the way down, and I’m getting the feeling this might be my month.

Posted in bavacade, video games | Tagged bavacade, pac-man, pacman, videogames | Leave a comment

bavacade Update 3-1-2026

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Reverend

One of the disappointments of the Tetris Tournament (which ruled) was that both Dig Dug and Make Trax were out of commission. I was trying to get the cleaned-up wiring harness and switching power supply installed, and I did, but the monitor was not getting power. Turns out the 3A 125V fuse on the G07 chassis was not inserted cleanly. What’s more, anything I did to get it to stay proved futile, so I had to park the game for a bit until I could remove the chassis and take a closer look.

G07 monitor chassis from Make Trax with bad fuse

Dig Dug was having the same issue with a dead chassis, which was a surprise given I recently cleaned up the Molex connectors for the monitor power. I swapped out the Molex connectors with plastic wire connectors to see if that helped, but still nothing. I could confirm the chassis was getting 120VAC, so I was flummoxed. At this point the event was just an hour or so away, so there was no more time to troubleshoot and I had to put the game on ice.

Dig Dug looking good when the monitor actually turned on

So, feeling energized by the event, I returned in earnest to getting Make Trax up and running (it had been offline for over a year at this point for wiring clean-up), figuring out why Dig Dug‘s monitor had gone black, and even testing out the cleaned-up power board and power brick for Robotron. So a few things to deal with in this update.

Make Trax Monitor Swap

Make Trax was the first to get addressed, and the issue here was pretty simple: just a fuse that needed to be either soldered in with a pigtail fuse or have the clips replaced. That said, I have a lot of G07 chassis and monitors in my fleet of games, and one in particular, Condor, arguably has the best monitor and chassis of the lot (it used to be in Robotron). So, rather than simply fixing the fuse, I decided to swap out the monitor and chassis from Condor to Make Trax. Given both games have vertically oriented monitors, I assumed I wouldn’t have to change the metal mounting bracket—I was wrong. The Condor bracket didn’t clear the back door, so I ultimately had to remove it and swap the metal mounting brackets for the two monitors, which was pretty simple in the end but added a bunch of time.

Post by @[email protected]

View on Mastodon

Once that was done, however, Make Trax looks absolutely gorgeous. The painted maze with the fluorescent green and pink really looks amazing, not to mention the earthy brown color that shows up in level 3. That monitor pops now, and the swap made sense because Condor sits in my basement, whereas Make Trax is at the bava.studio and can showcase an oddball early ’80s game like this one in all of its CRT glory.

That lime green paint in Make Trax/Crush Roller popping with new CRT

The only thing left with Make Trax, if I want to go down the completist path, is to find the original power supply board and test it with one of the two Make Trax power bricks on hand. I’m reluctant to make this a permanent solution given how often Williams games have issues with power boards, but I still like the idea of having it there and in working order, even if I use the switching power supply. Also worth mentioning is that there is no shortage of extra boards for this game: two Make Trax boards and a Crush Roller board. A hack that would be fun is having the ability to switch between the Make Trax and Crush Roller boards. It’s totally superfluous given the gameplay is identical save for the name on the splash page, but I’ve seen other folks do it and I think it would be a cool “little” project.

The Dig Dug Power Gremlins

The Sunday after the Tetris tournament (a week ago), I went into the studio to take a closer look at Dig Dug. I took it out of the arcade and brought it to the front of the space where I do most of the diagnostics on these bad boys. I plugged it into the US power converter and it worked on the first go. It looked gorgeous and I was pretty sure I was being gaslit by the ghosts of Atari. I let it run for a while and no issues.

Later that afternoon I plugged it into a two-socket US step-down power converter simultaneously with Robotron and the monitor did not power on. So odd. The game played blind, the marquee lit up, the sound worked, but nothing on the screen. I unplugged Robotron and it worked as soon as I turned it back on, so it might be related to sharing a step-down transformer with another game? I don’t know. Gremlins. But it might be worth converting this one from 120V to 220V to see if that helps at all. This is something I need to do anyway, so I think that’ll be the next step for this one—otherwise it is solid.

Robotron‘s Power Board, Heatsink, and Brick

Along with the wiring for Make Trax, I gave Roberto the power board, heat sink, and transformer brick for Robotron to clean up some of the very ugly wiring. There were wires soldered directly to the board and it was pretty much a nightmare.

Wires from transformer soldered directly to power supply board on Robotron

I finally got those all back after almost a year and figured I would try them out. The reason I wasn’t in too much of a rush is because the extra power brick I had for Joust, along with a switching power supply with a Williams adapter, allowed me to keep running this game without issue, unlike Make Trax. Given I was in arcade work mode again, I dove in and re-mounted the power board and heat sink. I also swapped out the transformer brick and was about to plug it all in, but decided to test the voltages coming off the transformer brick to make sure they were right—they weren’t. The readings were off: 27 VAC where there should have been 6 and several 10 VAC where there should have been 20. Completely inconsistent, and that’s potentially the issue that led to all the wire hacks and burnt Molex connectors that were just cleaned up. The problem was my ignorance, not the transformer. Turns out it’s giving out decent voltages; I was just grounding them incorrectly to the switching power supply. You have to measure pins 1 and 3 together, 8 and 9, etc. It’s like I forgot how AC power measurements work. Google AI mode is a boss.

Williams transformer readings into a Robotron power board

I confirmed that this afternoon, and I got the power board working with the FPGA board to run the game, so we could avoid the switching power supply altogether, even though LED 2 for 12V on this power board was not working. This led me down a bit of a testing rabbit hole, because this game has a full board set that I had tested with Mike and was A-OK. When I brought it back and connected it, no dice. I assumed it was a power issue, but the switching power supply should have solved that—no go. So I unplugged all the Molex connectors from the FPGA board to see if the original power supply worked with the board, and still no luck. So I’ve yet to figure out why the Robotron boards are not working in this cabinet. FPGA with the switching power supply it remains, but I at least have a working transformer, power supply, and heat sink.

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The other thing on this game is that I found quarters from 1982 and 1985 while cleaning out the bottom, and the ’85 coin was oxidized all to hell. I thought maybe there was some water damage, so I ultimately had Alberto take a look, but he said it’s solid—so no structural work, which is a relief. The only thing to do is swap out the cheap wheels it was put on and make it a bit more solid.

Robotron due for some wheel work and the original boards not running still has me confounded

Posted in bavacade, bavarcade, video games | Tagged bavacade, condor, Crush Roller, Dig Dug, Make Trax, Robotron | Leave a comment

Tetris Tournament Recap

Posted on February 24, 2026 by Reverend

I alluded to it already on the bava, but I’ve been all smile since Saturday’s Tetris Tournament at bava.studio this past weekend. It was an absolute blast, and folks turned up to play some Tetris, the world champion Giogi was awesome, and Riky made it all happen. I just want to give a special thanks to everyone from coming and having fun.

Paolo and Giogi talking Tetris strategy

I already posted about doing my part to promote the event by creating a Tetris console in the window. It was really generative, and I think that whole ongoing console/tech feature in the diorama over time has legs beyond this event. But event is where it was at, and Riky had the idea to bring Giovanni (“Giogi”) into the space and make it an event. It was a good idea, and people showed up and had fun.

Riky and Zeno working for the prize

We did no social media—I’m still a hippie hold-out—but there were stickers for the front door, posters above the door, and an e-mailer sent through bava.studio site (built on Ghost and sends event info to subscribers).

The Tetris door sticker (all Riky!) and the poster hyping Giogi above the door.

But to my surprise folks showed up over the course of the afternoon and evening and played games and had fun. The Tetris tournament was key. It really anchored the event with a shared object of desire, and the play was both fun and competitive—although I sucked. We also got to see Giogi casually break 1 million a few times throughout the afternoon and evening.

Watching someone that good at something is inspiring, and he really brought that energy. He was just fun to be around. Filled with passion and more than willing to share everything he knows about Tetris so you can get as excited as he is. An absolute gem of a human being, and everyone there fed on that energy and it was just a delightful afternoon and evening—so Giogi really brought his A game, and we were all the better and happier for it. I AM A BIG FAN! See image below for visual evidence:

The cornerstone of the evening was the tournament, and that was its own thing entirely. Folks came out and were quite good. I was particularly happy that a fellow GenX’er Cristina showed up and took home the gold.

The GenX grand champion! Yeah!

It is pretty cool because Cristina is Riky’s mom, so there was a definite “proud son” moment going on in the audience. Playing Cristina tough was Claudio, who I believe was the first one on the scene and he closed it done well.

Giogi and Claudio celebrated second place

Coming in at #3 was Andrea, who was also at the Haunted Arcade event on Halloween, so we are starting to get some critical mass. Congrats to all three of you for making it so fun, and being so cool all the while.

Andrea brings home the third place award

The other part that was cool is when you were waiting for your turn, you could wander over to the video games and get a few reps in.

They are so beautiful!

And we had the line-up pretty strong, but Dig Dug and Make Trax were down with monitor issues. I fixed both already given minor issues, but it viscerally hurts when I have to take any one of my babies out of the line-up.

The success of this event has me really excited to figure out what’s next. We are working on a They Live diorama next, so the idea might need to be to tie something fun to that for an opening. What kind of Carpenter-themed game might we be able to make out of it? Maybe try and figure out who is a “Thing”? Take everyone’s blood and start heating up some wire and preparing the flamethrower. It was really a lot of fun, and thanks again to Riky for both conceiving and executing so well. And to Giogi for being so open and willing to share your passion, you exemplify everything I want bava.studio to be.

Posted in bavacade, bavastudio | Tagged 3, bavacade, bavastudio, Tetris | Leave a comment

Tetris Diorama and the Birth of Console Windows

Posted on February 24, 2026 by Reverend

This is the fifth bav-o-rama in less than two years. This means I’m starting to move on this part of bava.studio after letting the first two linger for months (but The Shining and Creepshow windows were oh so good!). This Tetris/Console window was number five, and Mattia and I already have the sixth roughly mapped out. We might even make a They Live-themed event out of this one, maybe titled “The 1% are Aliens from Hell.” That would be a blast, just need to figure out some kind of shared event around expressing our concern at the grifting aliens leading this stupid world.

The Tetris diorama in all its glory. Like the Haunted Arcade event, the Tetris Tournament had a diorama to promote it, and this time we gave the window a “header” of sorts—with an image from the Tetris video game on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). This small detail that Andrea and Riky came up with really makes the bav-o-rama feel like a blog post that much more, with a “featured” image at the top. So awesome. You can see the details in the following video run-through, but I’ll also map them out below.

The basic setup was having the NES version of Tetris playing on an old CRT. I have a couple of retro-gaming emulators at this point and a MiSTer on the way, so let’s go! For this one I took the Batocera gaming emulation machine that’s running on a Raspberry Pi4 and connected it to the TV with a little HDMI to composite convertor.

Nice thing about the Batocera is it’s easy to force a game to default load when it is turned on, so every time I restart the system it always opens NES Tetris. That was the most technical piece of getting NES Tetris on the TV (dead simple). The real coup was getting a wireless remote from AliExpress for 8 euro and a small bluetooth speaker that would allow people on the street to both play and hear Tetris.

The only bit I need to figure out is how to mount it cleanly so that the controller is secure and the speaker out of arms reach, but still hearable. I didn’t finish that piece in time. That said, I also never got the paneled walls that I mentioned in the in-process video above. But that got me thinking that this setup could be a recurring diorama that highlights a different console or technology on the CRT. I already have The Shining curtains and rug, which are absolutely perfect, and once I figure out a way to mount the controller and speaker, I can have the bav-o-rama double as a place for folks to play the old tech. Now it may only be emulated to start, I like the idea of figuring out how to get them on the OG consoles eventually—fun to experiment with this over time, especially with a MiSTer on the way—is FPGA emulation? Also this means hacking hardware like controllers which would be a blast.

If you look closely you might notice that the tapes next to the early 80s Panasonic VHS player (my childhood model) are four tapes that are actually an Easter Egg. If you have been playing along, those are all the dioramas to date. I’M ALL IN! The other bit is while I do turn off the TV and Batocera when I leave for the night, the blinking 12:00 on the VCR remains aglow. Is that not as true to life as one can get with 80s tech?

So not only was this diorama a bit different in that it moved away from scenes from 80s films, but it also is somewhat modular and experimental, and I really do love that idea. Laserdiscs were not really a thing here in Europe, so it might be fun to have one demonstrating that tech and highlighting the unmodified Star Wars New Hope disc 🙂 Fight the control freak sell outs!

I also picked up a PAL NES and a few tapes, but it is remarkable when you watch PAL vs. NTSC how much faster PAL can be for a game like Tetris. I have heard about it, but never was able to see it so clearly. I also go t the games Blades of Steel (my favorite) and Skate or Die! in addition to the OG Super Mario Bros. game, a true classic almost of Pac-man proportions … almost.

One of the reasons I’m using Batocera and not the actual console for the diorama is that the TV is NTSC and the console is PAL. We needed the other two PAL CRTs in the office for the competition, turns out two NTSC TVS would have even been better given the world champion prefers NTSC. Over the years I’ve learned a bit about switching between the two systems, which has been fun.

Anyway, major props to Mattia for helping me get the rug installed, which was probably the hardest piece of this one. This diorama was a bit more tinkering than actually building, which was fun. I went down a whole rabbit hole of hacking the NES Classic Mini with Hackchi2 CE and installing Retroarch and various gaming systems given I thought it might make more sense. In the end, however, the Batocera was much more versatile for the bluetooth for the speaker and controllers.

The day of the actual tournament I swapped out the NES with the Atari 5200 running the demonstration screen of Joust, a hint of the Console Windows to come 🙂 But this whole diorama was actually towards the great purpose of the Tetris Tournament with the great Giogi, so let’s get this blog party started …

Posted in bav-o-rama, bavacade, bavastudio | Tagged bav-o-rama, bavastudio, NES, Tetris | Leave a comment

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Tetris Tournament Recap

Tetris Diorama and the Birth of Console Windows

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