Dynamo HS-5 restoration Part 1

I finally got my dream arcade machine! It's not something fancy, super old, or dedicated even. It's a Dynamo HS-5. The Dynamo HS-5 is a special cabinet to me even though it's just a run of the mill change-the-board out cabinet. Back in the 90's, my friends and I were obsessed with Capcom fighting games and a majority of the time we were playing Capcom Fighters on an HS-5 or Big Blue. Since the death of the arcade scene (well we're kind of in a revival right now thanks to bar-cades), it has always been a goal of mine to get an HS-5, restore it, and pop a Marvel Vs Capcom CPS2 PCB in there so it could be just like the one my friends and I would play on during the Summer of 1999 at Smiles Entertainment Center/Milford Rec in Milford, CT.

Ehli Auctions had a big arcade auction sometime last year and in this auction was a non-working HS-5 with Deer Hunter (yuck.) I playfully bid $50 with the intent of being quickly outbid and ended up winning! Luckily, the storage site was a few miles away so my u-haul pickup only cost me about $50. $100 for everything up front! Score! The best part is that I was able to sell the Deer Hunter PCB and gun for well over $150!

Probably rescued from a shit-kicker
bar in Black-Diamond.

After work that day, I threw caution to the wind and plugged the machine in to see if it would work and if anything was broken. The machine started up and everything seemed to work without a problem! Did they give me the wrong cabinet or something? My goal for the next week was simple: strip the cabinet of buttons, stickers, the CP overlay, give everything a good scrub down and give the cabinet a good once over to see what would need to be fixed. There weren't many cosmetic problems with the cabinet. The sides had a few dings that could be bondo'd and the back of the cabinet had been kicked in causing a few chunks of MDF to pop off. The biggest problem that I could see was the control panel... this thing was NOT intended to be used for a six button fighter.

Can you imagine if every hole had a button in it? What kind of hellish nightmare game?

I spent a short while trying to find a replacement control panel on KLOV but had no luck. The fact that I couldn't find a replacement led me to accept the challenge of trying to get this panel function as a 6 button fighter panel. The plan was to attach a thin piece of plywood to the underside of the board, fill in the button holes with Bondo, and then drill new spots in for the buttons and joysticks.

Success! The control panel was easily the hardest and most time consuming part of restoring this cabinet. Resurfacing the sides, front and back of the cabinet was done in under a day thanks to how fast Bondo dries.

Top-Left: Bondo / Top-Right: Sanded Bondo / Bottom-Left: Primed Bondo / Bottom Right: Bueno!

Now came the matter of finding the Marvel vs Capcom PCBs. I was able to get a great deal on a Mother board from a member of KLOV. The game board ended up coming from eBay. I took a chance and bought a caseless MVC1 board for about $80, risking that it was going to be bootleg. Luckily, it was the real deal. No clue what happened to the original case.

Reverse Seppuku: Expose you innards and experience new life!