stlpaul
Beginner
Hi! 
I was born in the 70's and when I was a kid my dad ran his own small coin-op amusement company, so our house was always full of pinballs, video games, jukeboxes, slot machines, etc. He would bring home the games being repaired or refurbished so I got to see lots of the internals of the machines, watching my dad fix them and he had a test bench which always had different boards hooked up. Changing out the chips to upgrade old machines to new games, etc. So I got to see and play a whole bunch of different games, mess with the dip switches, read the service manuals etc.
At one point he had turned part of the house into a mini "arcade" for the neighborhood kids. I can remember we had Pac-Man, Gorf, Tron (with the black light), Frogger, Donkey Kong, Bubbles, Mr. Do, Super Cobra... along with 2 or 3 pinball machines... all at the same time. All on free play. There was also an old 1930's Coke machine with the little 6oz bottles, temperature set to where it was almost about to freeze but not quite. I think it took dimes. It was a great time to be alive.
My favorites were Pac-Man and Super Cobra.
When I was 10 years old or so he let me "lease" a couple games from him instead of collecting an allowance, I think it was Donkey Kong Junior and Crazy Climber, and helped me to put them on location into a business, so I had my own "route" collecting quarters every week, counting and rolling them and giving the business their cut (I think it was 50/50) and then I would split the rest with my dad 50/50. So that became my allowance for a while.
Sadly the business was next to a river, there was a huge flood and the games were destroyed.
I was born in the 70's and when I was a kid my dad ran his own small coin-op amusement company, so our house was always full of pinballs, video games, jukeboxes, slot machines, etc. He would bring home the games being repaired or refurbished so I got to see lots of the internals of the machines, watching my dad fix them and he had a test bench which always had different boards hooked up. Changing out the chips to upgrade old machines to new games, etc. So I got to see and play a whole bunch of different games, mess with the dip switches, read the service manuals etc.
At one point he had turned part of the house into a mini "arcade" for the neighborhood kids. I can remember we had Pac-Man, Gorf, Tron (with the black light), Frogger, Donkey Kong, Bubbles, Mr. Do, Super Cobra... along with 2 or 3 pinball machines... all at the same time. All on free play. There was also an old 1930's Coke machine with the little 6oz bottles, temperature set to where it was almost about to freeze but not quite. I think it took dimes. It was a great time to be alive.
My favorites were Pac-Man and Super Cobra.When I was 10 years old or so he let me "lease" a couple games from him instead of collecting an allowance, I think it was Donkey Kong Junior and Crazy Climber, and helped me to put them on location into a business, so I had my own "route" collecting quarters every week, counting and rolling them and giving the business their cut (I think it was 50/50) and then I would split the rest with my dad 50/50. So that became my allowance for a while.
Sadly the business was next to a river, there was a huge flood and the games were destroyed.
!
(Cause the rest is just too painfull!)