
Rescuing vintage arcade video games from an abandoned ship (2016) - videotopia
https://arcadeblogger.com/2016/05/06/arcade-raid-the-duke-of-lancaster-ship/
======
sheepdog
Perhaps this is just my inner poverty showing, but how does something like
this even happen, from a monetary perspective?

I'm assuming the owners had investors or loans or some other financial reasons
that would prevent them from spending a lot of money and then simply parking
it forever.

And wouldn't property taxes or city nuisance abatement fines nibble away at
the property over the years? It can't be completely free of carrying costs,
right?

Even if there is no ongoing cost for the ship, wouldn't the owners rather have
sold the furnishings rather than leave them to rot?

I did some research and found that there was a huge court case that didn't go
in the owner's favor. So perhaps the owner is too emotionally invested to cut
their losses?

Or perhaps they are tremendously wealthy and using the loss to write off other
business gains? Or maybe it changed hands through inheritance, so the owner
doesn't care about recouping the initial investment? Or maybe I'm
overestimating the remaining value, and the thing is already a total loss?

This is all speculation. But it would be very interesting to learn how such a
large venture was left to rot...

~~~
na85
I'm no expert in arcade games but often the case with niche assets is that the
cost of getting them off the premises can outweigh their market value, and
assets are only worth something to creditors if they can be sold to recuperate
accounts receivable.

For example via my employer I technically own a large multi-engine aircraft
that is worth some $70 million dollars but requires significant repairs,
engineering and refurbishment to restore to airworthy status, to say nothing
of the cost of logistics to actually get the thing to a repair and overhaul
facility. Even the cost to move it to a disposal facility (shredder) is
prohibitive and requires significant logistics.

So it languishes in an aircraft grave yard providing a valuable service as a
bird habitat.

~~~
mgsouth
You can't post a tease like that :) Details? You got a blog?

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andygcook
This article is nearly 5 years old. I'd be curious to know where all the
arcade games ended up and what the total value of them were all worth after
resale.

As for the ship, apparently in 2019 there were plans to host a zombie-themed
event on it, but the plans are now delayed indefinitely:
[https://www.dailypost.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/zombie-
ev...](https://www.dailypost.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/zombie-event-
abandoned-ship-delayed-15551822)

~~~
videotopia
Many of the cabinets are now in use, either in classic arcades here in the UK
or in the hands of collectors. Most have been restored and are now fully
functional.

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jackhack
I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require
before starting up again? I imagine, at the very least, cleaning corrosion
from the contacts of all mechanical switches and changing out the filter
capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be
suspect? Are the boards salvageable or would the cabinets just be gutted and a
modern (MAME?) machine be substituted (or is this just sacrilege?)

~~~
pwg
> changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else?
> Would every capacitor be suspect?

Given the timeframe the article quoted for the most recent cabinet
(1980-1981), they all predate the capacitor plague [1] by nearly two decades.
It is possible that the capacitors in the PSU's of these games might still be
close enough to spec. to not need any replacement. But given the folks who
picked them up, they are likely to test everything extensively and then decide
what to replace based on that testing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague)

~~~
ChickeNES
That's more true for early 1980's and earlier electronics with through-hole
caps (though a shorted cap could easily ruin your day), but I've seen a lot of
mid-80's and newer vintage computers and game systems destroyed due to leaky
SMD electrolytics.

~~~
pmarreck
I recently fired up an old Mac Plus that has stayed in the family and
everything seemed to work fine until it started smoking, the display started
to go wonky, and then it quit... Almost certainly an old-capacitor issue

~~~
ChickeNES
That sounds like the RIFA brand AC line filter capacitor blowing. Cheap and
easy fix provided you have a soldering iron and the long Torx driver to get at
the screws in the handle. :)

~~~
pmarreck
Do you have a guide or something on how I can DIY this? I know soldering from
my past military experience. The Mac has been in a shop for 8 months now
"waiting on a part", I'm considering reclaiming it and repairing it myself,
but I know nothing about the details.

There is a lot of nostalgia invested in that thing, it was my family's first
computer and my own personal first experiences gaming and programming.

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lostgame
What on earth is with this website?

Literally half the page is covered by a massive photo.

I expected scrolling further down the article would rid me of it, but it
doesn't - furthermore, it's aligned to the right instead of the left, which
breaks my brain while I'm trying to read it.

I can't imagine any benefit to this layout. Shrinking the screen causes the
article to display properly, I learned, and I couldn't find a Reader mode...

Great article - extremely poor formatting in Desktop mode.

~~~
samplatt
It's a readability thing. Many designers are taught (or organically arrive at
the conclusion) that the ideal width to read an article at is roughly "book"
width. There's some merit to the idea; it's easier to keep track of where the
last line ended by seeing the shape of the words without needing your eyeballs
to dance all over the place.

Once readability is founded, their argument is "who gives a rats arse about
the rest of the page?" It's not the BEST design philosophy, but it's far from
the worst one.

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geuis
I somewhat recently came across this youtube channel
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9mrDyAw2EvsnFozzrxLrmQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9mrDyAw2EvsnFozzrxLrmQ).
"Joe's Classic Video Games". They frequently produce fairly lengthy and in-
depth videos about doing maintenance and restoration on older arcade games.

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agentbellnorm
I loved this story. In 2016 I glanced out of a window of a train between
holyhead and liverpool and saw the ship sitting there. I had no idea.

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at-fates-hands
The one thing about these old cabs I still love is the artwork that adorns
them. I know there's always been a huge market for skateboard deck artwork,
but I still wonder if there's a market for this type of art - some of it was
just magnificent in its heyday.

~~~
Jamwinner
Most is now reproduced for restoration. Even a well perserved cabinet has a
bit of fading and wilting of the marquees and screen frame by now, not to
mention the sides and control surfaces.

------
pmarreck
Watch a teen rescue an old IBM z890 mainframe from the dead in his parents'
basement:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk)

------
867-5309
who would believe it - northwest Wales. if you're not familiar with the area,
be sure not to ask George Bush
[https://youtu.be/S0ZG5-WB_ho](https://youtu.be/S0ZG5-WB_ho)

~~~
pmarreck
The United States has the following states that have a town named Wales:

Alaska, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Dakota, Utah, and
Wisconsin.

If she met him in the States, it is entirely reasonable for him to first ask
her what state she's from.

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rbanffy
I know that somewhere there is an old IBM mainframe connected to a bunch of
3278's, 3279's and 3290's waiting to be saved.

~~~
contingencies
If you're in to period dumb terminals see if you can figure out what the hell
this thing I uploaded to Wikipedia used to connect to:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/4800-52-...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/4800-52-mainframe-
dumb-terminal-keyboard.jpg)

~~~
nitrogen
Not that I would be able to help, but do you have a picture of the back and
the connectors?

~~~
contingencies
Nope. It was donated to ACMS
[https://www.acms.org.au/](https://www.acms.org.au/)

~~~
rbanffy
Anything written on the PCB? Switch type/brand?

A lot of equipment used keyboards that are not necessarily dumb terminals.

~~~
contingencies
Sorry, never opened it and I don't recall opening it (it was all I could do to
photograph my hardware, upload to Wikipedia and get it to a potentially good
home in lieu of losing it to the rubbish). However, I just noticed it has an
interesting character: according to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde#Similar_characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde#Similar_characters)
it is the _REVERSED TILDE_. Maybe that is a clue. Not being maths trained, I
also stumbled on ∺ (geometric proportion) which seems interesting and appealed
to me as a potentially n-dimensional 差不多 :)

