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Defender Ram Chip.
Another one of Defenders annoying little problems is Ram errors. These can happen at any time, but as the boardset has a self diagnosis program, it will tell you were the Ram error is, so you can replace the offending chip. The Ram used is 4116 and these are getting harder and harder to find, so when they turn up on offer, its best to snap them up. These again were sourced through U.S. Ebay and at $20.00 including postage i thought was pretty good. I got 26 of them in total all brand new, so now i have a solution to any Ram errors that may occur in the future.

Defender Power supply loom.
Well here is the missing loom, what a piece of luck, only days after discovering it was missing from my cab, one turns up on U.S. Ebay (cant you tell this is my favourite place to source things...) And better still i won it for only $11.00 which is about 7 quid to us Brits.
Now i just got to hope for quick postage, if i'm going to get it running in time for Christmas. All this leaves now, is to do the re-furb on the P.S.U. and wait for the Monitor to arrive !

Defender Power supply Fitted.
Here's the p.s.u in its place in the bottom of the cab, i got a Bob Roberts rebuild kit for it and replaced both the IC's and re capped it. Once i had finished it i fitted it in the cab, as an exercise in making sure things go where they are supposed to and to make sure that all the wires are pressant, with no missing connectors etc....

Still no sign of the monitor yet, but as its a New old stock one, i have to be patient and wait for it to arrive, even though its driving me nuts with anticipation !!

Missing loom fitted.
The missing loom in place and Horror of Horror's i'm still missing things, talk about a pain in the arse !! Before i went looking on Ebay i decided to find out exactly which bits i was still missing, so that i dont take it for granted again that i have all the bits. Whilst i had the chance, i took a look at 2 of Oll's defender cabs and it seems i am missing not one but two more looms :(
Defender must have about 6 different looms inside it, and the two i have left to get are, the one that runs from the sound pcb to the speaker loom, that ends in a connector just by the side of where the monitor should go, but clipped to the inside of the cab, its only 2 wires a red and a black. The second missing loom is the one that goes from the rom pcb to the monitor, which supplys RGB etc to the monitor, this one looks like it is nearly all purple wires with different colour tracers, hunting these down again could take some time, and now that i am so close to getting it running, i have Dave 2084 making me these, for £20.00 the pair inc postage. Dave is a handy guy to know and you can find his Web site on my links page.

The last 2 looms.
Well here they are, so i have to say a big thankyou to Dave2084 for a quick turn around on these. I could of made them myself, as i have the tools and know how, but what i didnt have was the connectors and measurements for them, so this has saved me a job. When i get round to fitting these, i'm also going to replace the electrical flex on the cab, as its well dodgey and has some really big chunks taken out of it.

Replacing the mains flex.
The origional mains lead on the cab was not in the best of shape and had large chunks taken out of its rubber sheathing, plus it still had a European plug on it. This lead is soldered straight to the transformer. So i unsolderd this and replaced it with a brand new piece of flex i got from B&Q and then attatched a u.k. mains plug to that. Once this was all in place, i could power it up for the first time and see if the origional p.s.u worked. And by pure chance it did ! i then checked all its output voltages with a multimeter and they were o.k.
Even though i am still missing the monitor, it was now possible to connect up the game boardset to the p.s.u. and see if it worked, as i have said before, it has come all the way from the states.
I plugged it into the mains, closed my eyes, crossed my fingers and switched it on.....
And Bingo it came to life with that lovely sound it makes when it is first switched on. Because it had no batteries in it, it went straight into book keeping, but pressing the advance button (inside of coin door) 28 times gets you out of book keeping and into attract mode.
It was now alive for the first time in god knows how many years and i could play it, even though i could not see what was going on.
So just the monitor to go !!

Stray Coin catcher.
When i first got the cab, in the bottom of it were some odd bits, screws, washers, clips and this piece of card. I didnt have a clue what it was for, so when i was over Oll's one time i took a look inside one of his Defenders and saw that it should be stapled along the edge of the piece of wood, that the coin box sits on. Its purpose is to stop stray coins falling onto the power supply and possibly causing a short !
So armed with my trusty staple gun i stapled it back in place, going in line with where the staples once went, but putting them in slightly above the origional holes.
Its little details like this that often get overlooked. My motto is, if it was in there in the first place, it must of served some purpose and so needs to be put back. Sometimes you just cant get that missing part, but if you've got it, use it ....

Temporary Monitor.
After what seems like an eternity, waiting for my Monitor to arrive, i could stand it no longer and decided i had to do something, the thought of having a working Defender i couldnt play was driving me nuts. So i looked at a couple of the Jamma cabs i have. The vertical one i have i use the most for me Shmup games, so that was out of the question, but i have two horizontal Jamma's a 19" one and a 26" one. Obviously the 26" one wont fit, but the the 19" did. It is a Wells Gardener monitor and even though a snug fit, it fitted lovely. The monitor power connection plug was even the same and just clipped into place. The video connection (RGB,gnd,sync) would be the problem, as i knew Jamma cabs run on negative composite sync and Defenders run on positive seperate horizontal and vertical sync. Thanx to a friend on #Jamma (Kipster) he supplied me with video pinouts for this monitor and by pure luck WG monitors have inputs for positive and negative sync as well as composite sync. But the best piece of luck was, they use the same style connector as the Electrohome GO7, just a few less pins, but with the pinouts in the same corresponding order !!
Which meant all i had to do was line up the connector with the correct pins and plug it in...

Voila, one working Defender !
In less than 10 months, i have managed to re-build from an empty shell to a complete and working Defender. The sense of achievement makes for a great buzz, but nothing beats playing it for the first time.
There are still a couple of odd little jobs, such as paint the odd nicks in the sides of the cab, but nothing major.
Also replace the t-moulding which is a bit tatty, but again an easy job and finally, to fit the GO7 monitor when it arrives...

Thanx go to all those who helped with sourcing parts or technical advice, it is appreciated...

So what cab to go for next, Asteroids ?
Watch this space......

Monitor update.
Well, my NOS Electrohome G07 never came, and i wasnt happy about the fact that the Wells Gardener monitor i had put in there sat slightly high. I asked around and was told that as long as i used a Defender monitor cage to mount my monitor in, it would fit perfectly as it should.
So i managed to get a WG 4600 cage off a mate (cage on left in pic) and transfered my tube, chasis etc..into this. As they were both WG everything bolted into place exactly.

The monitor now fits perfect inside the cabinet and bolts into its orgional holes !

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