So, blogging takes a decent amount of time and I’ve been super busy lately. To help streamline my repair posts and keep them more up to date, I’ve decided to start up a Facebook page that I’ll use as my primary hub for what I’m currently tinkering with!
Please follow me at: https://www.facebook.com/carolinapinball/ to keep up to date on all my current projects!
These little sound boards in WPC era Bally/Williams games can be difficult to track down issues on and there are no inexpensive reproduction replacements, so the boards themselves are quite expensive if they need to be replaced.
A client brought this board to me. It wasn’t getting the usual start-up bong or any sounds on his game. The game would stay in test mode for about 8-10 seconds, boot up, but no sound whatsoever.
After making sure the ribbon cable wasn’t the problem or the already socketed chips on the board, I did a little sleuthing and with fairly high certainty determined the U9 RAM to be the culprit. I socketed and replaced the 28-pin 6264 RAM chip, plugged the board back in my test machine and viola, working A-12738 sound board.
I’ve ran into this failed RAM issue twice now on WPC sound boards. Sometimes similar issues can happen with bad I/O buffer chips, but it seems this 6264 RAM is failing with a little higher rate as these boards get older.
Socketed and Replaced U9 RAM chip
Out of the nearly 60 pinball machines I’ve owned, I’ve never had one burn up a connector enough to actually smell it until this one.
I had my back line of games on and started to smell electrical burn, which is the last thing you want to smell around a pinball machine. After a few minutes of hunting down with my nose, I narrowed it to Star Wars. Cut it off, opened the head and found some very burnt connectors on the GI connector from the power board and the ones going to the inter-connector to the backbox head.
GI connectors burning up over time on these Data East games, as well as most other manufacturers, is actually really common. These are the lines that supply the general illumination lamps and they are on all the time, which can create a good deal of heat through the board and on those connector housings.
To remedy, I replaced all the male pins on the power board and added in new female molex housings on the 9-pin connector from the power board and 6-pin connector to the backbox with trifurcon crimps.
Turning the power save to a lower setting on games that allow you too or replacing your incandescent lamps with LEDs which run at lower amperage and less heat dissipation help reduce the likelihood of this type of burnt connector happening again, or can save this type of repair if your connector/pins are in good shape still at this point in time.
Nasty burnet male pins on the GI line of the power board.
New male pins and female connectors with trifurcon crimps save the day.
Not too long ago I picked up a 1988 Williams Swords of Fury machine that needed a little love, but overall was a pretty nice example of this cheesy, fun System 11 pinball machine.
This one was going into the permanent collection for awhile, so it got the royal treatment. I tore the whole top half of the playfield down, re-rubbered the game, added new star posts throughout, polished and waxed the playfield, and added LEDs throughout the game.
There were some sluggish drop targets on the drop bank and one which wouldn’t reset the entire way. I pulled the target bank apart and made the necessarily adjustments for smooth operation and fixed the not resetting one by adding a small piece of double-sided adhesive underneath that gave enough length to get it to push all the way up for proper reset.
Both the left flippers weren’t working, which required a complete rebuild of the top flipper assembly including the EOS, and a partial rebuild of the bottom left assembly.
All-in-all she came a long way from her humble beginnings and I’m now enjoying this game in my current line-up.
I’ve got a stock pile of repair logs to fill out, bear with me as I try to get a new one up every day or two until I’m through the queue.
Swords of Fury Day 1
Swords of Fury after repairs, shop job and LEDs added.
This Earthshaker was getting an “Adjustment Failure” at boot-up. This warning message immediately signals to me that their isn’t power hitting the U25 RAM, which holds the settings, high scores, etc. for the game when the game is powered off.
First thing to check is to make sure the batteries haven’t just gone bad. The three AA batteries mounted on the CPU send 4.5VDC to the last pin on the U25 RAM to power the RAM when the game is off. The voltage travels through diode D2 from the battery pack to pin 24 of U25.
Most of the time it’s not as easy as bad batteries. The next thing to check is if power is getting to D2. If it is not, then you likely have a failed battery pack (this is becoming increasingly common the older these games get). If power is making way to D2, but not U25, then test D2 and make sure it measures right. With your DMM on diode setting, you should get .4 to .6 volts one way, and when you flip flop your leads, should get a null or zero reading.
If everything tests proper down to U25 and you still aren’t getting voltage at pin 24, then it’s time to suspect the U25 RAM. This chip isn’t socketed and has to be desoldered and re-installed (with a socket!).
In this instance, the problem was the battery holder itself. So, I cut it off the board and soldered in a remote battery pack which rests safely off the board in the bottom of the head now. Not only does this correct our problem, but also is a safety measure to prevent future corrosion damage on the CPU if one of the AA batteries decided to explode.
Earthshaker CPU with remoted battery pack installed.
So, the components arrived for the down Dot Matrix Controller board that originally came out of a Party Zone. It was missing +62VDC which causes the display to come up as completely blank.
Since Party Zone is a location game and down time is money to the owner, I sold him my working Dot Matrix Controller board out of my Fish Tales and just dealt with one down game for a few days. Believe it or not, though I do a lot of repairing, I don’t play my games that much.
With parts in hand, we look at the components that make up the +62 VDC circuit, which are the following:
Fuse F601 (this tested fine, not of concern in this repair)
Bridge Rectifier BR1 (tested fine with DMM on diode/volts test, no need to replace)
Filter Capacitor C4 (220uF, 160V)
Bleeder Resistor R12 (47ohm, 1 watt)
Resistors R3 – (47ohm, 1 watt) R4 (120ohm, 1 watt) and R11 (cement 120ohm, 5 watt)
Transistors Q2 (2N5551), Q3 (MPE15030) and Q10 (5401)
Zener Diode D3 (1N4759A)
Capacitor C6
Since our fuse and BR1 tested fine with a DMM, those were not touched. Resistor R11 tested fine in circuit with the DMM as well, so I also left it alone. The components I replaced in this repair which tend to be the most possible suspects were: Resistors R3, R4 and R12; Transistors Q2 and Q3; Zener Diode D3; and I decided to replace the Capacitor C4 since I had it on hand.
Replaced components on the Dot Matrix Controller board on bench.
One of those components ended up being our faulty issue, as once the board was popped back in game, Fish Tales came alive.
Working DMD in Fish Tales after repair to DMD Controller board.
The three patients for the day.
These three games are located at the soon-to-open Abari bar arcade near downtown Charlotte, NC.
The owner, Zach, is looking to open March 1 and with everything else going on for the big opening, looked to some outside help on some small issues on a few of his machines.
Firstly, let me say that I really loved the space. Nice, just outside of downtown location, and filled with probably 20-30 arcade games from Ms. Pac Man to Turtles in Time to the coveted X-Men 6-player, and pins including these three, as well as Tron, WWF Royal Rumble, Addams Family, Demo Man, and NBA Fastbreak. I think it will be a great addition to Charlotte nightlife.
So, here were the issues that affected the machines: X-men was blowing F10 on startup, Hurricane direct switches weren’t working and Taxi’s ball gate was not holding up open long enough for the ball to get under into Gorbie’s hole.
By the time I arrived, Zach had already unplugged J6 from driver board of X-Men and had confirmed the fuse did not blow with that connector unplugged. This isolates the issue from the board and means, somewhere on the playfield, there was a short spiking back to the board through that connector and causing the fuse to blow.
F10 is the 20v line and connector J6 is the flashers in the game. Looking over all the above playfield flashers and ones directly below, I couldn’t see any direct shorts. However, there are about five flashers behind the back panel that you can only see from looking under when the game is in service mode. The one on the far right corner literally fell apart when I touched it. This had to be our culprit. I didn’t have any 89 sockets with me, so for the time being I removed the broken socket and tied the power line which daisy chains together and insulated both sets of wires. This bypassed the short and allowed all other in game flashers to work. One down!
There are several issues that can cause direct switches in WPC games to not work. However, the most common that I’ve run into is a loss of ground to the switches. On the Hurricane, I removed the button switches from the door and inspected the ground wire that runs between them, no issues there. However, there was some hacks done around the ground door which tied several grounds together with a twist connector. One wire was out and the ground was off the coin mech. I soldered the ground back to the coin mech and added our loose wire into the twist nut. Hurricane was back in test mode and good to go.
Reconnected ground on Hurricane inside coin door.
Taxi, our final patient for the day, took a little more time. Zach had bought another coil mech to replace the under playfield mech, but the original worked from an electronic standpoint, just didn’t seem to stay open long enough. After digging around for awhile, I figured out it was more a maladjustment physically than any issue with the mech itself. Over time the spring that goes to the gate and down had loosened some, causing the clearance on the mech to not be enough to pull it open all the way. Not having a spring to spec on hand, I used some creative problem solving and took two pieces of cardboard, folded them and put them in between the mech plate and playfield so when screwed in, it would give more tension on the spring with the extra space.
Creative use of cardboard to allow proper function of ball gate mech.
This was just enough clearance needed to allow the ball gate to open fully and give the needed time for the ball to hit Gorbie’s hole.
The full line up of pins at Abari in Charlotte.
Quite happy to be typing this post. This one was a tough one that I thought had almost got me, but here we are typing up the repair log.
I was contacted about a repair on a Williams Bram Stoker’s Dracula that was having multiple solenoids firing and was also receiving a ground short to row 2 in the switch matrix. When I got the machine in my shop, it wasn’t still ground shorting row 2, but solenoids were still firing all over at boot up.
Here’s the original video the owner sent of issues that were happening:
One of the most interesting and important features to this game is the Mist Multiball feature, but it also can cause a lot of problems if maladjusted or something is not working correctly with it.
The game uses a long beam opto for switch #82 to detect when docked at the right gate pocket, and where the ball is along the playfield on the under playfield magnet mechanism. If this opto isn’t functioning correctly, it can cause all sorts of mayhem with the Mist Multiball feature.
Without a ball in the right or left gate pockets in single switch test, switch #82 should read CLOSED. When you put your hand in front of the beam it should read OPEN. This game was constantly in an OPEN state.
I trouble shot a lot of the common issues with Mist Multiball including: replacing the receiver and transmitter optos, replacing the L1 inductor on the 24 opto board, and as much adjustment as humanly possible, but still no dice.
I ended up ordering the Homepin 24 opto reproduction board available here: http://www.johns-arcade.com/#!product-page/c1cs/59919533-df8f-8f79-cd42-49f29c39302d.
It’s a great upgrade on the original board (which uses several obsolete components) and even has a beam test LED which is quite handy. After still having issues, I took my questions to Pinside and with the gracious help of several members there started to make some headway.
I bench tested the Homepin board to ensure proper receiver, transmitter and board functionality. This narrows down issues in the circuit; however, when installed in game it still wasn’t working.
Bench Testing the Homepin board, transmitter and receiver IR LEDs.
The long beam opto needs a 940nm transmitter and I’m guessing mine wasn’t to spec though I bought from a fairly well known pinball supplier. I had a Radio Shack purchased transmitter in my kit which was still in original packaging and definitely marked 940nm. I installed it and beam test was back working 100% in game, yet we still had an issue with the switch matrix detecting the switch as constantly open.
Turns out a loss of continuity on the red/white row 2 line was causing the last bit of issue in the puzzle. Once that was addressed, Mist Multiball was back up and running.
The other issues addressed on this game were some damage to the 10 opto board from the ground short which was from exposed wire to metal on one of the optos. It fried a 1N4004 diode and I socketed and replaced all three LM339s on that board. I also had several switches not registering that needed to be adjusted and popped in a new 2803 at U20 since the game had already had that chip socketed and the likelihood of damage from ground row short was high.
Only thing left is a couple of feature lamps not working and a repin of J120 on the power driver board which is burnt up nicely. After those quick, easy fixes I’ll have this game back to the owner. This one has been a long road, but a rewarding repair.
Working Mist:
Stern Batman up and running again!
I recently got this in a trade deal for my Williams Congo. Part of the trade deal was that there was a fuse blowing on the I/O Power Driver board, which was fine with me.
F110 was the fuse in question that was blowing, which is the 16VAC fuse. This voltage is rectified by BR2 to the +20VDC which powers the low power solenoids and flash lamps in the game.
To help in diagnosis, it’s a good idea to isolate whether the issue is a board issue or a potential short from the playfield. To do this, I noticed that the low power and flash lamp connectors were J6 and J7. So, I removed these connectors with the game off and then turned the game on. To help conserve fuses for this test, I used by 5amp circuit breaker fuse (a mini 5 amp fast blow circuit breaker that I soldered a fuse on the end of.)
Sure enough, no fuse blowing. So, this told me that the issue was coming from the playfield. I then plugged in J6, no fuse blow. Then, J7 and viola there goes our fuse. So, something in line with J7 was causing the fuse to pop.
With the game on and my circuit breaker fuse reset, I barely plugged in J7 and got a spark from roughly pin 6 or 7. Checked the schematic to see that these were a series of Joker flash lamps or another issue.
A flash lamp mod to the backbox had been added on this game which used jumpers off of one of the Joker flash lamps. The leads had been bent up and were touching causing the dead short to go back to the board and blow fuse F10. I realigned these jumpers and reset my circuit breaker fuse and turned the game back on — no blown fuse! However, we had all flashers in that line “locked on”, meaning the driver transistor on the board was likely blown, which was not surprising considering the dead short.
I checked schematics and found the driver transistor for those flash lamps was Q22, a TIP122 transistor. I pulled the board, confirmed the blown TIP122, and replaced with a sturdier TIP102. Board plugged back and in and boom, everything working and no blown fuse.
The only other issue I found on the game was a dead right flipper, which easily ended up just being a missing 3amp flipper fuse. Quick shop, new super bands, new balls, some replaced LEDs and adjustments and its back up to speed and playing nicely.
Upon firing my games on, I noticed Whirlwind’s display was missing. Tried reseating some cables and doing easy checks first, no dice.
Checked the fuses for the +100 and -100v circuits in the power supply, they tested good. Next was checking the pinout reading on the board. The -100vdc was practically non-existent, so I pulled the board and checked the 39k ohm resistors first since they are a popular failure point on System 11 games. Sure enough, the 39k ohm resistor in the -100vdc circuit was open.
Luckily, I had some sturdier 2 watt 39k’s on hand. Didn’t even throw this on the bench, just quick and dirty replaced it beside the machine. Popped the board back in and viola, no man down for the get together tomorrow night.
Working display, nice to be back. Look at those nice high scores by MAT 🙂
Replaced 39k ohm 1 watt resistor with a sturdier 2 watt counterpart
Carolina Pinball Repair 