I've been away at school but before I left I had just got my CV, the guy I bought it from shipped it with old batteries. I didn't have any time to deal with it before I left but the guy said he would send me a new board. Now two years later he hasn't sent me anything, and I'm stuck with my alltime favorite machine unplayable.

If after 2 years you are still waiting for that board......would you be interested in beachfront property in Arizona?......You should either repair or purchase new board.....or sell it to someone who will. Or let's just auction it off right here. I'll give you 100.00 .

Look at his Avatar...
Two years or two weeks, man???

Just fix it. It is going to cost you the same amount of money whether you fix it now or later, that board isn't getting any cheaper. Nice lineup on the collection. My question is how a college kid had enough scratch to acquire that list of pins?

I'm not a kid, I think $100 is an insult, and I don't think you guys should stereo type or need to be rude!

oops that made everyone go quiet.

If you have no sense of humor, you are in the wrong place....I'm sorry for picking on you!

And by the way......the 100.00 was my opening bid. When you said school, I thought you meant at college....My Bad!

Sorry about the kid comment, didn't mean to offend.

Like I said I haven't been home in two years so now that I'm back I'm going to have to take care of some stuff. I was in University.

Kid isn't that offensive I should consider it a complement.

Hey Kid,

I'll give you $200.00 and a Big Mac cause I'm sure you have the munchies. 2 years...LMAO

Is the medical or home made? LOL

hemp star, but I don't smoke that stuff any more that kids stuff.

Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of other things one can take this kind of this you're talking about just fly by

How about a photo of what the board looks like? Repairable still?

Rottendog is going to be releasing a WPC-95 CPU board later in the year, no idea on the price of it.

Either way, lets find ya a solution and get you playing again.

-Hans

I have only once dealt with serious battery damage. And it was all my own fault. I bought this game and was so excited about finally owning one that I only played and played without ever checking the batteries.

Then the machine started acting strange. Strange sounds and dot matrix messed up. Game resetting all that stuff. That's when I discovered the acid all over the cpu (isn't it great how the designers at Williams managed to get the batteries right above the cpu?)

Anyway, it took me some desoldering and cleaning with toothbrush and vinegar but the game booted up again and played for years afterwards.

Well, I can tell you that only happened to me once. Which game this was? A near mint Medieval Madness. Please don't laugh.

Thanks for the help guys. I'll pull the board tomorow when I get to the store

OK I got the board out and took pictures of it

Hmmm, I've seen worse get fixed. It all depends on that ASIC chip and socket, which look clean but the chip will still need to be pulled to inspect it.

Not sure who to really recommend for WPC corrosion repair, but I'm sure some of the other guys have a few names to drop. If it weren't for that ASIC, I'd say send it my way, but I hate experimenting on other peoples stuff and I've done very little WPC work so far.

-Hans

thanks for looking Hans. let me know if you think of someone.

Wolf

http://www.ksarcade.com

Thanks Sealclubber I'll check it out

If you think yo can do the repair yourself you can order a battery acid repair kit from Great Plains, I beleive he is a member here so maybe he can chime in and give you some input. http://www.GreatPlainsElectronics.com

If not I have used KsArcade prior and was happy with their servce.

I just had had 2 boards repaired at Ksarcade and was very pleased with their work.

I checked out the Great plains page the battery acid repair kits are for Bally and Gottlieb not Williams. Unless they had one I didn,t see or are they still useable?

I tried a small electric toothbrush with vinager to clean up the board, so I'm heading in to town to the store to put it back in the game. I let it dry overnight is that long enough?

That should be fine for drying it off. If you're lucky, it just needed the cleaning. But my suspicion is that some of the chips and other components may also need to be replaced.

-Hans

yup put it back in and nothing changed

Stories like this make me seriously consider using lithium AAs in my machines. You rarely have to change them, and the risk of them leaking is almost nil.

Thats a great idea, I never thought of that, I'm going to put them in all my machines!

I've got all mine converted over to take 2032 coin cells. You can also do a big value capacitor or non-volatile memory. There are lot of options, and I honestly cannot see ANY logical reason that Stern still uses AA's for ROM power. Alkalines are rods of death for pinball machines.

-Hans

When Tom Callahan rebuilt my Stars MPU he added some kind of EPROM to replace the battery. I guess this is the non-volatile memory you are talking about?

Yep, that's the one. There's a few types out there, details vary, but all the same basic concept in that they require no external battery.

-Hans

Do you guys have any links for the non-volatile memory and/or conversion to coin cells. Sounds like an interesting option and I'd like to know more. Thanks!

Bob Roberts has a great page on the lithium conversion for coin cells.
http://arcadecontrols.com/BBBB/wmsbatt.html

You can also just buy the lithium AA batteries, no board work needed. The reason I like the coin cells is that there is no temptation to just throw cheap alkalines in there next time it needs a battery replacement.

-Hans

I have standard lithium AA's in a couple of my pins. Another option is just to install a remote battery holder. It's really easy and if it leaks it will just leak onto the side of the head or wherever you install it..

The damage looks very minor. I've redone boards where the batteries were above components and leaked so bad the acid ate away traces and even legs of components. I see your eprom window is not covered. If you took a flash picture of the board you may have erased/corrupted a few bits on it now. Just mentioning since nobody else has. Normally it's not that big a deal but a camera flash can reek havoc.

BD - can you elaborate on covering the eprom window for flash photography? Haven't heard anything about this before. Thanks!

You need to cover it with ultraviolet tape (it's like blublocker sunglasses) or at least put some black electrical tape over the window. Eproms are erased with UV light .. but even long exposure to normal lights can cause problems. It's not usually a big deal as it's normally inside your dark backbox.

A camera flash is very intense and includes a wide spectrum of lightwaves.

Good to know. It would be a much bigger problem if it were on a board underneath the playfield -- I take lots of pictures when I'm pulling the playfield apart. However, I have not, to date, taken any pictures of the open backbox!

What about using ferro-ram? Never battery problems again.

The ferro-ram is one of the non-volatiles I was referring to. I don't know WPC boards enough to say if there is a drop-in replacement or not, I know there isn't one for the 5101 in earlier boards, and you need some kind of adapter.

-Hans

No advice here except CV is too great a game not to be played. Hope you get it playing real soon!!

I shipped the board off to get repaired. I'm crossing my fingers.