The flippers died on my Stars on location. I’m getting power to the coils, but not to the cabinet buttons. When a game starts I don’t see/hear the relay power up. Q15 measures the same as other transistors, so I think that’s good. Check solder and reflowed headers anyway. What are the odds the relay actually went bad? Those tend to be pretty robust in my experience.

Simply ground the "tab" of Q15 to ground. It should energize the flipper relay on the SDB. If not, it's possible the relay has an open connection someplace. Like you I find the K1 relay to be extremely robust, but I've also seen some mounted in sockets, the the sockets are flaky. I've had good success actually removing the socket and direct soldering the relay to the board. This is about the only instance of when a socket is NOT preferred.

Do you have 43v at the relay?
You can check by measuring at the tab of Q15 or the testpoint.

For the Strikes and Spares guy - Just something to throw out there if your wires were hacked - trace back the items that are misfiring as it could be a wiring issue. I just rescued one from the bonfire as well that had a mostly cut main harness, and this one definitely had a few wires that were the same color, but there were multiple of them (ex - Brown w/ White was both a switch and a controlled lamp). I'm not sure if any of the coils had the same issue, but it's worth considering if the obvious answer (refurb connectors) doesn't resolve everything. I know I was going through troubleshooting controlled lamps, then all of a sudden jigging a light scored 500 points. I connected the wires backwards and had to reverse my fix.

Got a Xenon to revive from the dead.
What's the best place to get rebuild kits? Bigdaddy? Great Plains? Somewhere else even cooler I don't even know about?

I've had to use some wire wrap wire to perform some repairs on a AS2518-35 board. What is recommended to hold down longer wires against the board? I've seen some repairs that used what looks like candle wax, or is there something better?

Thanks,

Alan

Silicone adhesive.

Hot melt glue personally.

I use the stuff they use to make wire wrap proto boards. The insulation is not affected by the soldering iron heat so the insulation doesn't pull back when you hit it with an iron. But honestly if you're making jumper wires on the solder side (not withstanding upgrading a -17 to -35 to accommodate two 2732's) you probably could do the repair in a different way by identifying exactly where the "open" is, scrape a bit of the green mask off, and use just a single strand of 18ga stranded wire to tack it back down and restore the connection. Much neater, out of the way, and haven't had rework issues. If it's a really acid damaged MPU, I always put the single strand through all the through-holes around the LED and the two through holes to the left of the 5101. Tack it via the method I just described. These are mostly all Address or Data lines and will cause flaky MPU's if they aren't a 100% solid electrical connection.

If you put the jumpers on the top of the board you can snake them through the IC sockets or whatever... assuming you are changing IC sockets at the same time. I think jumpers should go on component side when possible. They are kind of a component. Long jumpers on the solder side risk getting impaled on a sharp lead or more likely snagged.

I would normally say GPE, but he's been out of kits for a while. Try Big Daddy or Marco.

What do you need to rebuild on Xenon? I like weebly.nvram.com for rectifier boards. Diy, cheap and work great.

Plus he's ALWAYS on the forums to help troubleshoot! A huge asset to the community!

Those are pretty nice! Unfortunately Xenon uses -54 with the bridges/fuses on a board in the bottom of the cab.

I'll be needing the usual fuse clips, connectors, caps, bridges, etc.

Looking like I need a new relay for my Stars. Is this an acceptable part?

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/FRL-264

It's the only 48V relay they have.

https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=LB2-48DP

I just completed refurb work on a Xenon, but it has an intermittent flipper issue that I can't figure out.

The left flipper works fine, but will periodically stay "flipped" (won't return to the resting position) even when the flipper button is not depressed. It is an electrical issue, because it releases if the power to the machine is turned off. The EOS switch is clearly open when this happens, as is the flipper button switch. I have done the following:

* Metered the coil. It is good and the flipper works quite well until it gets "stuck" open.
* Replaced both diodes on the coil. They are installed in the correct orientation.
* Resoldered all of the wiring to the EOS switch and the coil.

Thoughts?

You should be able to go to GPE and order all of the individual parts that make up the kit. A link to a parts listing is available and Ed should have the parts in stock. Big Daddy is certainly an option if you want a ready-to-go kit.

Magnetized coil stop is a possibility. I have had similar behaviour that really seemed like what you described. I find the linear style flippers require subtle bending of the base plate sometimes. A poor design flaw where a small bowing of the plate adds friction.

Cabinet button? Can you hit the button a bunch and get it to go back down?

No amount of hitting the button will release it. Only turning off the pin. I will try a different coil stop.

Swapped the coil stop from the ball kicker, which appears to be nearly-new. Same issue. Connectors at the solenoid driver board maybe? The flipper power just passes through the relay, but could bad connectors cause an issue?

Found it. It was a self-inflicted problem. I used an automotive points file to clean up the contacts on both flipper switches. There were enough filings on the left one to provide a very weak trace between the switch contacts, which would occasionally provide a path to ground and cause the left flipper to stay in the hold position. I cleaned out the filings and all is good.

Good tip to remember.

Go Huskers!

I'm getting two blinks on powerup. I saw a little corrosion from the previous battery, so I removed the old socket, cleaned it up, put in a new socket, just in case. Still getting two blinks. OK, change the IC. Still two blinks. Grr, now what?

Do you have any sign of corrosion anywhere else on the board, particularly along the bottom near the reset section?

Not really that I can tell.

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make sure you have connections from the 5101 ram back to the cpu and triggering chips. Also double check pin 11 and 12 of the ram chip have continuity. Those two are connected by a top side trace nearest to the battery and it gets ripped out / opened up seemingly more often than the rest.

the font of the imprint of that phillips ram chip looks kinda funny. it is probably OK but maybe try that chip in another working board

Cool thanks.

I have continuity between 11 and 12.

U9 is listed as “MPU I.C”, that’s the CPU, correct?

Which one is the triggering chip, I’m not seeing anything called out as such in the BOM.

CPU/MPU is at U9 a 6800.

U17 Pin 8 is the chip enable for U8
U18 Pin 6 is the output disable
Both of those can be checked for a pulsing signal.

Reset must be connected to the U8 P17 too. Reset is high always after 250ms or so from boot up.

Does this require a logic probe, or can I do it with my DMM? I need a logic probe, just keep forgetting to order one.

Its best to use a logic probe or o-scope for stuff like this but a DMM can detect some problems.

You can do power off diode test. Red lead on ground and black lead touch those chip pins. You should see around 0.600v or so much like chekcing a diode. Reading of open or really low, below like 0.200 is a clue of a problem. Compare against a working board if you can.

You can also just check continuity with the DMM on beep test (game power off). Make sure the data, address, ground, +5v pins are all have continuity back to the cpu chip. CE1 CE2 and OD pins go back to where i mentioned above. the RW pin goes back to the CPU too.

Power on test you can check voltage at those pins. If you look at the MPU schematic Bally wrote in average VDC readings for certain places... im not sure about the ram chip enables, but about 2.5vdc reading on the chip enable pins would make sense.... again compare to a working board.

I think most likely is there is an open trace down by the ram chip and the CPU can't communicate with it. Could have a bad chip somewhere else tho like U18 or U17 but... less likely failure.

The imprint of the 5101 chip still looks funny to me. Can you double check that chip is OK in another board? All the ones i have ever seen with date codes past the mid/late 1980s have a white stripe on the far left side and the font is different. KFM vs MFM might be a different plant marking tho... can't say for sure.

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What is everyone setting the voltage to for the displays? Manual shows it should be 190v +-5v. I know on some of the older Williams you can drop the voltage a little to extend the life of the displays. Just wanted to see if others are doing that on the Bally/Stern machines too and if so what are you setting the voltage to?

170V is mostly used.

i wouldnt go below 170v. I think 175-180v is fine.

Set too low and it stressed the high voltage regulation circuit. The extra volts is pretty much burned off as heat.

Set too high and you work the displays harder.

I have a test fixture with set of plastma displays that runs 24/7 @170v. One display was molted and had burned spots pretty bad. It lasted 24/7 for pretty much a year before it started having segments not lighting up and I was seeing some arcing across the burned spots. The rest of the displays are still 100% fine no change in look or behavior. I gotta figure in a home environment if you don't leave your game on 24/7 plasma burning out over time is not likely to happen... at least not fast.

The plasma displays with the nipple seem bettter too. The nipple less ones seem more likely to break a seal at an edge and gas out. Exposing the glass to temperature changes probably speeds up the cracking of the seals.

Sorry if this has been asked before but I have a Harlem globetrotters pin project and the displays need to be replaced. I was looking at the pinscore led displays and I was wondering if I was to replace them with 7 digit displays do I need to do anything else so the game knows to count to a million or does it just know to to it? Cheers

As is, Harlem Globe Trotters has no concept of millions scoring. So upgrading to simple 7 digit displays requires mods.
There's a seven digit scoring mod here:

http://www.pinball4you.ch/okaegi/pro_soft.html

It requires a ROM upgrade to support millions scoring plus and a bit of hardware circuitry to be built to enable the millions digit on the displays.

Otherwise XPIn make a simple plug'n'play solution called 7volution:
https://xpinpinball.com/product/xp-7volution/

Thanks very much I’ll look into that product. Sounds very easy. I kind of figured it would need different roms.probably above my head. Maybe just better to keep it a six digit? Cheers

If you're regularly rolling a Harlem Globetrotters, set that baby harder (more incline, 3 balls, no outlane rubber, fatter rubber by the spinners, etc etc...

Question for the group here, how much is a Viking worth? It seems like it's pretty rare (almost the with almost no sales data available on pinside. I picked up a non-working one that is cosmetically pretty good but had no idea on the value. I saw there was a $400 project for a while that was available, but that's like the only thing I have to go on...the rest don't appear to have sold for some reason (or they sold off pinside) which makes it hard to really know. Almost as many people own Star Gazer as Viking on pinside, not many out there. Thanks

Ballpark guess - +/- condition, working internals, etc etc? $1,500

Oh no I’m not rolling the score on globetrotters, I just picked it up as a project and it’s displays are messed up. I was just wondering since I’m going to be replacing them anyway, should I do 6 or 7 digit.

My Xenon is missing the metal plate under the power supply board. Should I just throw some heat sinks on there and call it a day?
Was also thinking of just relocating the bridges to the top of the board...

I really need a few pics of the underside of the playfield of a Bally Night Rider SS, at the lower pop bumper.

Somehow during my re-theming of the playfield, a couple of wires got broken loose...and of course, of the 100 pics I took, I can't fine that one.

If you can help me out I'd appreciate it immensely.

Thanks.

Robert

Hi Guys,

I have a Vector here for repairs.
The backbox was seperate from the cabinet.
The hinges were missing.
There were a pair of them in the spare parts box that came with it, but bolts to mount them.
Can anyone tell me which size bolts I would need for the hinges?

Peter
www.inkochnito.nl

I need to buy a Bally NITRO GROUND SHAKER backbox front panel (with or without the respective wire harness).
If you have this part available for sale, please send me pictures and let me know your asking price.
Eventually I can buy an entire backbox (without the backglass, boards, displays & transformer).

Robert

ngs panel (resized).jpg

ngs panel 2 (resized).jpg

Can you show us what is happening now? The transformer and rectifier sit on the plate together. Are they loose on the floor of the cabinet? That transformer is heavy and needs to be held down.

Yes. And get bigger ones.

IMG_0984 (resized).JPG

IMG_0987 (resized).JPG

Stern Stars is struggling to kick out a ball. The drops were struggling to reset as well. It’s as if the voltage dropped, but the flippers seem to be fine. Suggestions?

Check the bridge rectifiers.
Do the diode test on them.
Most likely one is bad.