I keep wishing that I had this spare fuse holder set up back in the day when we were pumping out 25 to 30 new games per week. I would have put one in every new cab & any cabs that came in for repairs. I can't even guess at how many hundreds of games passed thru the shop loaded down with creative fuses that usually had smoked the game bad enough for the op to bring the whole thing in. Gum & cigarette foils wrapped around the old blown fuse had to be the leader, then foil wrappings from other vended products, bolts, bent nails, antenna sections, bare wire wrappings & just about any other metal objects that would complete the circuit right down to sacrificing their favorite screwdriver.
 If only they had one of these spare fuse holders mounted in the cab they would have had what they needed on hand ready to pop in. These things could mount to the cab side wall, back door, under the monitor shelf or any number places to insure that the correct fuse would be there when needed. Being labeled makes it possible to know exactly which fuse you need, e.g., if you had one mounted in an Atari cab with the full compliment of spare fuses in the assigned slots & you found F3 to be blown on the power block, it would be a simple matter to pull the F3 spare from the holder & change it out. Of course, making note to replace the one used from the holder at your convenience would make good sense, also. If you had one mounted in a cab that only used 3 or 4 fuses then you could double up on your spares... two sets or even three, so long as you relabeled the extras. Another thing that I heard repeatedly from ops was that they had broken fuses when attempting to pull them out with a screwdriver, or other object, to test them ... many times saying that they were good until they broke the glass. That's when I would introduce them to the tool to extract them or insert them.  Having gained this knowledge through the vast amounts of games coming thru the shop I jumped at the chance to buy in these items thinking that it would be a good thing even for the hobbyist with only a few games. We have fuse sets for a few games & I may even be able to talk Alice into adding a few more common ones to make it easier to stock the spare holder.  Want to make sure the tool is there when you need it without sending out a search party.... maybe clipping right to one of the fuses in the cab might be a suitable answer. This spare fuse holder kit consists of the labeled holder, mounting screws & the insertion/extraction tool for $4.00. Fuse kits to fill it are sold separately... no fuses come with the kit. Happy Gaming... |