Back to the Neo Geo Cabinet...

Today is my birthday. Nothing like celebrating doing...nothing...I like a lazy day.

But I really didn't want to just do absolutely nothing. I got up and worked on getting the control panel on the Neo cab.

I started by labeling all the wires going to the buttons, joysticks, and other panels inside the control panel. Yes, I could have easily just looked up color coding for all the wires, but I had masking tape and a sharpie, so why not.

Here it is, freed from the cabinet. Notice all the rust on the bottom of the control panel. That needs to go.

I had to snap a pic of the joystick assembly simply to make sure the orientation of all the bits of it are correct when I put it all together later. The bottom pic shows the actual housing for the joystick with a strong spring inside of it. I figured I should just open it and clean out all the gunk that has built up from all the use it's got. There was some build up in there, I'm thinking it's just plastic shavings from the motions of the joystick. Easily removed and cleaned up.

This is the overlay for the control panel. After unscrewing it from the panel, I took this out to clean it up. HOWEVER...

There was A LOT of rusting by the button holes on the metal control panel. In turn, it scratched up the overlay, leaving these marks on it. I tried cleaning all the rust stains on the back of the overlay, but I didn't want to risk scratching it up even more.

This is what was behind the overlay...Yup...that's A LOT of rust there. Looks like there was something spilled and it wasn't cleaned up properly. I have my work cut out for me here.

The next part of the project involves getting this metal control panel cleaned up of old paint and rust, get primer on it, and spraying it down with a matte black paint. I'm probably gonna use a paint/rust stripper bit for my drill and take it down that way. But I'm not sure how quickly I'm able to pull this off, since it is fall here in the Pacific Northwest, and it's getting kinda cold...and I really don't want to just paint this in the garage. I may attempt it, but only time will tell.

I got new switches to replace all the button's and joystick's switches. Before I installed them, my daughter assisted me in getting the switches from the buttons removed and separated. I immediately got all the parts soaking in hot, soapy water. I had to change the water a couple of times because of how dirty it was.

Most of the buttons on the left player side had a lot of grot inside the buttons themselves. A lot of scrubbing with an old toothbrush and hot, soapy water got rid of most, if not all, of the gunkyness that was inside. It looked like a whatever was spilled on the control panel leaked all inside the buttons, in turn, making the switches semi gunked up as well. I still have to get rid of the rust on the joystick shaft, but that should be relatively easy.

I let the parts dry for an hour or two, before reassembling them and installing the new switches. They all have that nice, clicky feel to them.

Up next, getting that metal control panel prepped for new paint.