It's been 6 years since this thread has been active.
I'm here today to tell you all that another Thunder Man has now surfaced down under in Australia, with me!

I reached out to a few of you a couple of weeks ago privately asking a few questions about the machine, Thank you all for your responses.

I decided to go ahead and buy Thunder Man, despite the fact that I know it's going to be a huge undertaking to get this into a working pinball machine again.
So, here's the details so far....

I purchased a fully populated playfield and backglass, I have no other parts at this stage, but I have a reliable contact in Italy who has already told me he can get all the boards made up. I trust him as I have used him before for another rare machine I own (Nuova Bell Games: Cobra). This is only a small portion of the battle, as I'm aware ill need to either find a donor Zaccaria cabinet and back-box, or worst-case scenario build one for myself. The guy that sold me Thunder Man says he may have a cabinet I can purchase shortly (I'm dealing with an importer of Pinball machines).
We then have the wiring! fortunately, I've had some practice in this area, as my Cobra came to me with all the wires cut and I needed to piece it all back together, it's a difficult task but with the schematics and the right photos from other Thunder Man owners it's not impossible.

I'm excited to have another rare title in my collection, I am aware that rare does not equal $$$ and to be honest that's not why I purchased Thunder Man or Cobra for that matter. I do like a challenge and a good project, plus I like the subject matter of the machines.

Ill add some photos that were taken by the seller, i expect to pick up Thunder Man from the delivery depot sometime this week.

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Thanks @alan_l!
I will certainly ask him if he has a source for English speech ROMS as I too would like to get my hands on this if it exists.
Regarding the pictures, anything you can grab a photo of for me would be very useful. I don't think I'll get to Thunder Man until mid-next year as I have my hands full with Cobra so plenty of time for you to take whatever pictures you can and send them across at your leisure.

In the meantime, I wonder if I can ask if anyone has the dimensions of the cabinet for Thunder Man, id imagine it's the same as a Gen 2 Zaccaria cabinet?

Reason why I'm asking is because I'd like to get started on creating the cabinet graphics, haven't quite decided what that would look like yet.
I've seen the Appletime cabinet, I've seen the all black cabinet with the Thunder Man text, I'm not certain on which was original to the game.
I'd also like to get creative and maybe mockup my own design, but I really am torn because keeping it original is always best (I think), but I'm not overly impressed with the cabinet design, especially when you compare it to the playfield art which is awesome! Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

I've been messing around with some designs for the Thunder Man cabinet (When I actually obtain a cabinet)
What do you guys think?

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Haven't decided yet.
Painted would be my preferred choice as it and would look more like what would have been done during the 80's, but it's something I've not ever done before so I'm not sure how good I could do it. At the end of the day, it's a departure from the original cabinet design so its if I go this way it's never going to be authentic, it's just my own vision of what the Thunder Man cabinet should have been if it wasn't just thrown into a branded cabinet.

I guess you could say I would go the sticker route if my attempt at painting it turned out really bad. haha

I know we are quite a limited with Thunder Man owners so I'm assuming the answer will be no..

Does anyone have any schematics for the Thunder Man boards?

If not is anyone able to provide some detailed photos of the boards especially in the eprom area.

I have a contact in Italy that is trying to reproduce these boards. He does some quality work as I've purchased a brand new MPU for my Bell Games Cobra off him earlier in the year.
If I can get as much info across to him as possible we may have a source for replacement boards in the future.

Any help would be appreciated.

I have not considered this as an option just yet, but will keep this in mind.

I want to quote a message I received from my helpful Italian friend. This is why I have not considered this just yet... This conversation was in relation to the sound board which he is currently working on.

"yes, but... we have a problem for your thunder man. I realized that the card used on that pinball machine is very similar to the Zaccaria, however the printed circuit is different. The t.m. mounts 2 eprom 2764 which have 4 more pins than the original 2532. this means that the board is necessarily different. Without the wiring diagrams, it will not be easy to make the changes. On the CPU board instead, there is already the predisposition for the 2764 and it should be simpler."

This is why he has asked me to see if I can provide some detailed photos of the boards especially in the eprom area.

Of course I'm not dismissing any opinions and suggestions here, so thank you for your suggestion @meldenhut, however because I know the history of his work with Bell Games I'm happy to wait until he has all the info he needs to recreate the boards. If he cannot then of course purchasing from Pinballsolutions.eu will be the next option.

I'm in no rush, I'm poor after my last purchase and I still need to finish my Cobra project before I get started on Thunder Man.

Hey Thunder Man owners I'm hoping I can ask a favor, my contact in Italy is bench testing Thunder Man Audio at the moment and he suspects that there is a problem, but he is hoping to confirm this from another Thunder Man owner.

Have a watch of the below video which is a bench test of the audio for Thunder Man, as you can see, after the number 20 he believes the issues start.
There are some distorted voices, but more importantly, some tests are completely skipped. From 24 and 27, there is a jump, and the same thing happens from 34 and 40. He would like to know if other Thunder Man machines also behave in the same way when running this test.

Bench Test

I took the liberty of running the same test on my computer using the Thunder Man ROM using PinMame (See below) and it did appear to be different to the results he was getting on the bench test, but he would like confirmation from a physical machine to be sure.

PinMame Rom Test

If anyone can assist to confirm this information, it would be greatly appreciated.

To my fellow Thunder Man owners, I would like to do my part for the pinball community and provide some high-resolution scans taken from my Thunder Man.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Agv5xpyUp3HmpOwNWDYoUga5BMxFcw?e=fUnTNI

In the link provided you will find:
Plastics
Backglass

I have put a significant amount of time into the backglass, as you may already be aware from a previous post, (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cracked-backglass-repair-options) my backglass was damaged in transit and was cracked in multiple places. I successfully scanned the backglass and have done the best I can to touch up the backglass as I believe it was back in the day. I believe it's a much better-quality scan than some of the other ones I have seen online, and I hope that this is helpful for other Thunder Man owners.

I have provided these scans freely to these two locations: (And may provide to others at a later stage)
http://www.zaccaria-pinball.com/
http://bgresto.com/ (In hope they will replace the discolored version they have for sale)

This is all about keeping these machines alive and in the best possible condition, so please feel free to use what you need, if you do happen to use the backglass all I ask is that if it's not coming from the 2 websites listed above, please credit my work (see credit.txt in my onedrive link)

Enjoy everyone! Merry Christmas and all the best for the new year 2023!

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Don't suppose anyone has a Zaccaria Gen 2 transformer lying around that they aren't using?
Willing to ship to Australia..

I'm hoping to get started on the Thunder Man project soon.

Yeh I've seen that one... wayyy overpriced.
I'm hoping I don't need to go this direction as a last resort.

Hey Alan_L I appreciate you looking around and finding that transformer.
I had a chat to my Italian friend and sent across all the pictures, he seems to think that transformer is a Zaccaria Gen1 Transformer based on the connectors. Does this look the same as the one in your Thunder Man machine?

Thanks for confirming luvthatapex2
The hunt continues! Thanks again Alan_L for checking.

I'm committed to the project now, purchased the boards and displays off my Italian friend.
They are on-route to Australia at the moment. Oh and he has made the modification so that my Thunder Man will be in English! Yes!

I've also got a lead on a potential Zac2 cabinet, I've been informed its actually 2 different Gen2 machine cabinets. One of them is Pinball Champ, Im still waiting on the photos so I'm not really sure what the other is yet. It also has a Transformer and im hoping some more goodies in the cab that i might be able to repurpose.

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Hey Alan

I asked my Italian friend what the best way to explain this was.
So, the easiest way to tackle this is to replace your Thunder Man sound board with the sound board from a Zaccaria Pinball Champ if you have access to one.
The ROM on the sound board from Pinball Champ is identical to Thunder Man except...it's in English!

If you don't have access to a Zaccaria Pinball Champ sound board, I'll be happy to pass on the details for my friend in Italy, he can reproduce these boards.

Well, yes it should be, here's a quick comparison I put together for you.

Of course that's what AppleTime would do, they stole everything else. haha