Restoration: Vintage Electronic Basketball Game

In this video I restore a Tiger Half Court Computer Basketball Game. The stickers on the front are mostly scraped off and there's something rattling inside. It has four leaky AA batteries that appear to be from the 80s.

The shell has unusual "tri-groove" screws. I don't have a driver for these, so I had to carefully turn them with a small, flathead screwdriver.

The inside was fairly clean considering it's age, and I found the source of the rattling. I desoldered the battery contacts and put them in vinegar for a while to neutralize the battery leakage, and then sanded off some of the loose plating and debris.

I washed the shell and buttons with soapy water. The instructions sticker on the back was damaged and needed to be removed. Then I cleaned the circuit board with some IPA. There was one electrolytic capacitor which I replaced to future proof it, and I replaced the corroded wires with new ones.

The adhesive holding the switches in place was kind of grungy. I peeled it off and replaced it with individual pieces of Kapton tape. I sprayed some contact cleaner into the switch. With the shell open, the speaker wires were a little too short for the speaker to sit where it's supposed to. I swapped them out for longer ones to make it easier to work with. I glued the cap in place to hold it.

Screwing the tri-groove screws back in was more difficult than removing them. I 3D-printed a screwdriver bit that worked just well enough to reassemble the game securely. Finally, I printed out some new stickers on a laser printer with label paper and self-laminating sheets.

THANKS FOR WATCHING! Please subscribe if you want to see future repairs and restorations.

00:00 Intro
00:38 Disassembly
01:36 Battery Contacts
03:46 Shell Cleaning
05:30 Board Cleaning
06:04 Capacitor Replacement
06:48 Wire Replacement
07:42 Button Adhesive
09:04 Speaker Wire
10:20 New Screwdriver Bit
11:59 Sticker Replacement
13:03 Test
14:10 Ending