Multipede Mini

Manufactured by Midway Manufacturing Co. (c)1980

I had been collecting for a good eight years and had not come across a single cabaret (mini) cabinet for sale locally,  so it was pretty much a no-brainer on my part to pick this Centipede cabaret when it came up locally.  Kevin,  one of the local pin guys ended up buying a large lot of games … mostly pinball machines,  but included were a few viids.  Being the kickass guy that he is,  he emailed me asking if I wanted to take a look at whe he had.  I,  of course,  was interested in checking out his find so I headed over.  Kevin lives about 20-25 minutes from me and I convinced myself on the way over to stick with what I could fit in the truck… essentially 1 cabinet.

 When I arrived I immediately assessed the situation.  There were a bunch of pins… as well as a Tron,  Mario Bros Widebody,  a Nintendo VS conversion,  A Baby Pac Man,  a Centipede cocktail,  a Millipede Cocktail,  and a few others as well.  He mentioned they were saved from a barn and that they were all project cabinets (which was quite obvious).  My immediate attention went to the Mario Bros Widebody and Centipede mini.  A few minutes later,  another local friend,  Dan,  showed up to pick up the Baby Pac Man.  All prices were very good already but Kevin was dealing as he needed to clear out as much as he could as quick as he could.  I mentioned that I could only fit one cabinet in my truck and that I really didn't want to drive back and forth a bunch of time.  That was when Dan chimed in that there was plenty of room in his trailer.  I ended up picking up the Centipede Mini,  the Mario Bros Widebody and a Tron.  All 3 were in "barn" condition.  Ironically,  I also eventually ended up with the Baby Pac Man a few months later after Dan decided to sell it,  but that's another story.

When I got the cabinets home,  I made sure to open then up and clean them out as best as possible before bringing them inside.  Who knows what "used" to live in these cabinets.  I lucked out that it was Wintertime when I picked them up,  so any critters that may have inhabited them likely were long gone or dead by now.  I did find a number of mud-wasp nests and plenty of mouse crap.  I want to say one of the cabinets had a mouse nest as well,  but I lucked out in that there were no zombie mice or other type of nastiness.  There certainly was potential!  After vacuuming out the crap outside and dusting the cabinets off it was time to get down to some serious cleaning.  It's amazing what a little water,  a rag,  and magic erasor can do to make a basket-case of a cabinet look much better.  The picture to the right was taken after a simply cleaning.  Assessing the issues with the game it appeared to me that everything was there… except the power brick at the bottom of the cabinet.  After a few days of sourcing power bricks I managed to acquire a "partial" brick that was missing the voltage regulator.  I sourced a voltage regulator and put it all together.  I plugged it all in,  fired up the machine and crossed my fingers.  I was greeted with… Centipede!  The game worked!  Why anyone would rip off a power brick from a working video game is anyones guess.  Not only did it work,  the monitor looked fantastic as well.  Unfortunately,  playing the game wasn't that fun with the beat to hell trackball.   Luckily I'd already ordered a new trackball,  new bearings,  and a new control panel overlay.  A few days later I rebuilt the trackball,  replaced the white button,  and installed a minty fresh control panel overlay purchased from Phoenix Arcade (www.phoenixarcade.com). As you can see,  the difference is night and day!  Not only does the control panel look great now,  it plays fantastic as well.  Next up was to order a Braze Multi-Kit so I can run Millipede as well.  But wait,  after looking in to how the Braze Multi-Kit worked,  I realized I needed not only the Kit,  but a Millipede PCB and a Millipede to Centipede converter.  Bummer… I was hoping the kit was simply an add on for the Centipede PCB.  It isn not.  Evidently Millipede uses tech that isn't built in to the Centipede PCB,  but Centipede can be played off the Millipede PCB.  So off I went to source a Millipede PCB and a Braze Multipede kit.  The PCB itself was easy to find… it took me a couple days of asking on KLOV to find one for sale.  The Braze Kit,  on the other hand,  took about two months to receive as Scott was in the process of moving and had closed shop.  Bummer.  During the wait I received my PCB,  I received the converter I ordered and I tested the Millipede in the Centipede cabinet.  It worked great!   Also during this time I decided to change something that,  while stock,  I didn't care for.. the fact that the marquee was unlit.  I have no idea why Atari didn't backlight the Centipede mini marquees,  but I figured the game DEMANDED it.  I picked up a Wally World under counter florescent lamp and mounted it using some plumbing straps.  I wired it directly in to the power brick where the upright's marquee lamp is wired to.  The result speaks for itself.  It looks fantastic.  A few weeks later, about the time that Scott was supposed ot re-open,  he posted that the delay would be a bit longer.  I gave up and decided to hold my nose and order the kit from an alternative source (who will remain unnamed as I am not a fan of this particular vendor).

When all was said and done I ended up with a very nice Multipede that play awesome.  I had some difficulty installing the Multipede kit due to the CPU that was on the Multipede PCB.  Evidently the CPU was a Centipede CPU which didn't seem to matter at all when running stock Millipede,  but when I added the Multipede kit,  Centpede worked great but Millipede would slow down and become choppy until the watchdog kicked in and reset the game.  It was very odd.  Once I replaced the CPU with the exact model CPU used in Millipede it worked great.  What I find very strange about that is that Millipede worked GREAT by itself,  without the kit installed.  I would still be pulling my hair out about this issue if it wasn't for a local collector, Torin,  who allowed me to bring my PCB by his house and allowed me to swap out CPU's between his Millipede any mine.  Thank you broham!  Since the swap the game has been playing awesome!

This still Centipede mini remains to be my only mini cabinet.  I'll likely be keeping it for some time to come as it's a mini that uses a 19" monitor… and is easy to find a place for.  Plus the fact that it's a Multipede running actual hardware is pretty cool versus the many emulation options out there for Centipede/Millipede.  Oh,  by the way,  I do realize the model in my "Gameroom layout" sketchup image is of Tempest… there was no Centipede mini model to use. Thanks for reading!

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