LimaTek

Love this series! The 80's vibe and story telling are amazing! Im setting up a projection system with sound this weekend for my wife and I to binge watch the first season. Season 2 is already in the writing stage.

I knew one of the animators who worked on that film! It was a real challenge for them to do any kind of 3D animation back in the day because, well, the software for it didn't exist. So everything had to be designed with simple shapes in mind so that they could do 3D transformations (e.g. translation, rotation, scale, squash/stretch) more easily. Thats why everything had a 'simple' design to it. For example, that light cycle sequence is ALL math, from rotating 90 degree angles manually to all those shapes to translations. Those guys were pioneers. They used a Evans & Sutherland Picture System 2 system to produce the 3D graphics. To think, most of that film was shoot using green screen techniques. We wouldn't see anything like that for nearly 22 years later with 'Skycaptain and the World of Tomorrow' and shortly after that, 300.

I soooo want that portable!!! Look so fun and hackable too...

Yup. Been through it first hand recently with two projects for a company I work for. Project Managers lowball project budgets and then expect it done in an unrealistic deadline. "We need this widget to do 30 different things, plus be new an innovative. Oh, by the way, you only have two weeks, There's cake in the break room, okay - bye!"

You know what grinds me gears?! When electronics and technology just don't work. Oh man that makes my blood boil. For example, you pick up a smartphone, swipe to make a call and the ONE THING a cellphone is used for decides to crash in the midst of dialing. Like... Why. Or when a modern console decides to freeze, lock up or glitch-out. Yeah that drives me nuts. Coming from my computer science background, I'm really particular in the way things are coded and assembled, so when I see things like that happen, it just drives me nuts because I know that SOMEONE in that particular company probably knew that glitch existed or cut a certain corner on purpose and couldn't care less to fix it, so they'd just release it instead. That, and a lot of companies now-a-days knowingly choose to hire cheap (and lousy) software engineers and cheap components to sell it at the most absolutely low price possible because so many electronics are now considered a cheap 'throw-away good', so why bother in actually making it GOOD? Yeah, I could rant for hours regarding this.... *takes a deep breath*

From what I can see (so far) are they splicing these cables to ground? I think it may be good to trace these wires that are spliced with a multimeter in tone-test mode and go into continuity mode, see if you can get two probes, one on the socket and then trace the cables around the cabinet and see if it beeps. I'm thinking many of those weird, spliced cables may be grounded to the coin mechanism If I were you, I would trace each one of those cables and remove those janky looking cables with some newer cables that are not oxidized in any way, they may be brittle now. You mentioned your cabinet is in a bit of rough shape, I would recommend doing that once you get a good idea of where these cables are going. While you're at it, get some of this: https://www.amazon.com/Hosa-G5S-6-DeoxIT-Contact-Enhancer/dp/B00FC4YO60/ref=pd_lpo_236_tr_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=1E3GS6GR65RRRW3QA1G3 I totally swear by it, it removes any kind of oxidation (safely) from any electronic component. You can actually get some at your local Radio Shack, too!

I'll take a look at the schematics and see what those wires are doing. It doesn't look pretty, I hate hack jobs.