Restoring a Golden Tee Fore Arcade

Introduction

Marketplace recently listed a free Golden Tee arcade cabinet that I ended up getting. The owner (and his wife) were delighted to get rid of this giant eyesore that sat too long in their house. The cabinet was in good shape and missing almost everything. It did come with the LED marquee, speakers, marquee light and brackets, some AC wiring, and the power button.

KLOV along with a buying a used TV off of Marketplace , took care of all the parts needed. Here is the list of items that I needed:

• Control Panel
• Golden Tee PCB
• Compact Flash Drive
• Marquee
• TV
• Power Supply
• Instruction light
• Phone cord

Some Assembly Required

With all the pieces gathered, I started to assemble the machine back together. Since the control panel is the largest item, I started there. It only required screwing it to the cabinet, which made for an easy install. I had a power supply and compact flash drive on hand, and printed a 3D bracket for the power supply. The compact flash drive needed formatted and did this, too.

The PCB and flash drive both tested fine my test bench! The TV (28” Visio, Model number: E28h-C1) tested fine, too!

To use a TV as the output source, I had to switch a dip switch to allow it to show on the TV screen. The control panel needed a few wires installed and added +5 volts and ground to two buttons with the lights. I also added volume + and volume – to the two buttons that light up.

The wiring for the volume was connected to the preexisting speakers and avoided the speaker in the TV. A 12-volt LED light was installed to illuminate the instruction card as well as powering the LED marquee. A quick trip to my local store, and bought a phone cord for the LED marquee. I wonder when was the last time someone bought a phone cord at the store?

Both the power cords for the TV and power supply were spliced into the existing AC wiring. This way everything is tied together and the game will power off or on with the power button.

Conclusion

This project came together really easily. The trackball got new bearings and shafts and will need a little bit of time to break them in. Golden Tee is a fun arcade game that most people recognize and can step right up and enjoy the game. It is currently in my game room.