I recently purchased an Atari Airborne Avengers in very nice shape for $50. It played fine with a few switches needing adjuated but, like many Atari pinballs, the displays were not working. I have traced the problem back to some bad caps on the Aux board. After thinking about trying to fix the Aux board issues I have come to the conclusion that its not worth it to find out that the displays have gone bad and be back to square one.

I have decided my best option is to just reverse engineer both display boards and remake them with all new components. My plan is to have the display boards be direct replacements less the +-90vdc section of the Aux board. I hopefully can have a prototype board made and tested here in the next couple of weeks for the match/credits display since it is the simplest of the two boards.

Here are a few pictures of the condition of the playfield.IMG_20140705_143605_941.jpgIMG_20140705_143620_767.jpgIMG_20140705_162455_641.jpg

The aprons in these are a giant playfield plastic that is screwed to some pieces of wood. Its in extremely nice shape. The plastics are a little warped but they are all there and none are cracked.

Should have a prototype board milled to test the Credit/Match display this weekend. I am using new 7 segment encoder/driver chips but I am not sure what is going to happen because of the slow 500ns refresh rate for the segments. I am thinking that the LED segments are going to flash. After making sure that the Credit/Match Display work, The score display is just a multiple of the same circuit as the C/M.

Well my initial prototype board fell flat on its face. It displayed jack. After a couple months of figuring out how they are processing the scores we have progress in that we are now able to display which anode is being turned on. Hopefully we will see some more progress and be able to output the scores credit and match soon.

1977 meet 2014
Arduino