Four hours and still rock solid.

Finally shut it down for the day, pushing 11 hours without a hiccup! Lots of games played, no problem.

Loaded a different package of software (V2) and new and different problems are happening after awhile! Did a third set of the V2 and so far no problems with 13 hours of run time. Anyone ever hear of temperature sensitive eproms? It is the only thing I can think of.

Sockets are in good shape, board good, etc.

Ran V2- lock up after an hour or less
Ran V1- No problem
Ran V2- Displays display random totals after an hour or two (but self test mode displays are normal)
Ran V2- No problem

Different pairs of eproms for each of the above four trials, from a new lot of 10 purchased from ebay.

Not really a problem, just curious if someone can explain this: On my Rolling Stones, about 50% of the time, when the ball hits one of the lower slingshots, I hear a faint very high frequency pitch. I can't tell where it comes from...either the speaker, or just some weird electrical HF hum from electrical/mechanical components being energized. Has anyone else ever experienced this, and what the heck is it?

Are you sure it is not the bushing going bad?
I've had a few sling shots that have squeaked from time to time.

Can't understand how a bushing going out would cause a high pitch sound. It's not a squeak I hear...it's a high frequency electronic sounding pitch.

Isn't this the normal 10 point sound for the slingshots?
I remember the sound being odd when I had the game.

No. I think you're thinking of the scoring posts. Those do have a funny sound. But the very high frequency pitch I hear sometimes is very faint and very high pitch. I guess if I really want to figure it out I could start by unplugging the speaker to see if it's coming through the sound card. It's such a high frequency and so faint it's not a problem, but I'm just curious what could cause this. It's not a mechanical problem...definitely electric/electronic in nature.

My Bally solid states (Centaur, Mata Hari) have had their backbox locks drilled. Can someone point me to a replacement that will fit correctly and hook up to the long bar at the top that holds the backglass in place? Thanks!

i have used the 1-1/8" lock from PBR http://www.pbresource.com/locks.html

Looking for some guidance on pop bumper capacitors. I'm in the final stages of restoring a SS Black Jack and decided to see if I can get the pops to score more consistently. For the most part, all three score fine but one of them will occasionally pop but not score on a hard hit. A previous owner looks to have clipped the cap on that bumper. Lead remnants suggest the lug where it was previously attached, but I don't think it's right. None of the other two pops have caps installed and there are no lead remnants to go by.

I've got a bag full of new .047 caps but I'm not sure which lugs to attach to. Can someone point me in the right direction? Searches for pictures resulted in pop switches that have different numbers of lugs on them so they're not apples to apples comparisons. Thanx....

Pop Bumper Switch (resized).jpg

One capacitor lead goes on the lug that has the diode alone (no wires) where the banded diode side is connected.
The other capacitor lead goes on the lug with the two brown-white wires and no diode is connected.

The picture below is from another thread but should help - ignore the wire colors and use the switch on the left as your reference.
Playboy_TargetSwitch1.jpg

Thank you, Quench - that's at least 2, if not 3 times you've pointed me in the right direction on something. Much appreciated. Using the same logic, I put some caps on the stand up targets as well and now they're scoring consistently, too, even on hard hits. So close to having this Black Jack done....

Looking for this exact coil if anyone has one.

IMG_0633 (resized).jpg

Is this it? Having trouble reading the numbers on your pic.

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/A-24-500_34-450

Close it’s a 25-500 but I want an original Bally.
Hoping to find someone with a populated PF they wanna part out.

Oh. Then, this:

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/AQ-25-500_34-45

Not original though.

Yeah I’m going to hold out for an original and I’ll pay double that for a nice one.

Troubleshooting Flash Gordon. When the game boots it will show 7 flashes correctly, but restart over and over. If I put the playfield up, it boots fine. I’ve got 43 volts at TP5 on the fuse rectifier board. Some of the other test points down there showed a little higher than they were supposed to be. I’ve got 21 volts at the test point on the MPU, which is a Weebly aftermarket. Where do I look next?

The coin door position is always the same. The symptoms are very consistent now. The game will reset over and over, and if I simply lift the playfield up, the boot sequence will finish. It's a great clue, if I can figure out what it means. I thought maybe it was putting tension on the wire bundle to the backbox, but I don't see it doing that. Would a short on the playfield cause this kind of behavior? I'll look...

I would try pulling the switch matrix wires off the MPU card and check the behaviour. If that is not try pulling the two lighting connectors off the right side of the lighting board. After that you are only left with the solenoid driver board connectors. Something will turn up.

This might sound like a dumb question, because I'm sure the answer is no, but it couldn't hurt to ask: are early Bally SS playfield wiring harnesses interchangeable from game to game? Specifically, I have a Mata Hari harness that's been hacked that I'd like to replace with a complete Bobby Orr's Power Play harness. I know it's a no, yet I ask anyway.

The harness connectors would be the same so the simple answer is yes. The harness would not route the same on the playfield from game to game so wire lengths could be a problem and of course you would have to connect the correct wires to the correct solenoids and switches.

Okay, have a weird request. I'll explain later (and can't spill the beans right now)

I need to have the controlled lighting manually controlled separate from the game. In other words, I want to be able to add switch to enable me to turn on & off a light as needed. My plan was to disconnect the ground return from the lamp board, and run a new wire from the ground to the switch, then to the lamp. Can anyone confirm that this will or won't work? Anything I need to add into the circuitry?

I'm working on a "special" project, and need to have the lights controlled at will for a certain look.

You can use a experimental board (breadboard?) for this.
Add print headers as input at one side to match either J1, J2 and/or J3.
Add a switch for each lamp you want to interrupt.
Add wires at the other end (exit) of the board and a matching connector for the one you used for input.
Another option is to use print headers too at the exit and have a connector interface cable with a connector at either end.

Thanks for the input.

Will hooking the lamp direct to ground cause any issues (if I wanted a lamp to always be on)? I know I could hook it up to GI, but that a different discussion.

It would not be a problem if you do it at the board I said.
You can use a 3 stages switch (left-middle-right) and use the middle as an off state, left always on, right regular working.
Connect a ground to the left and the right going to the original A5 lampdriver board.

Hello, I am new to pinball machines and bought my first, a Strikes n Spares machine, last summer. So it looks like I'm a member of this club! I don't have much free time to work on it (new dad to twins) and try and solve one problem at a time. I nearly had it all working (playing fine except feature lamps) but then there was a large bang and since then there's a load more things wrong. Starting with power I am currently trying to work out why BR1 on my rectifier board keeps failing.

I'm new to the forum and have read the 1800 posts under this topic - amazingly helpful, thank you all. Is there a good way to search old posts throughout the forum for various restoration problems? At present I have the scoreboards not working, reading 0 and then nothing. The test button not working. 7 lights on start up intermittently. The start button not working (but I can give credits via tripping the lever in the door) the feature lamps not working, but GI is on. Wrong voltages on Rectifier Board (TP2 reading 159 not under load) and the BR1 repeatedly going even when I solder new ones in. Phew. It seems like a lot to do but I am really enjoying the process. The minute I fix it I need to come to terms with how bad I am at playing pinball!

I think I finally found out why my Lost World is not working...
Look at that pretty clock signal my cpu was getting
Replacing both U15 and U16, hope that it will fix it
Pulse (resized).jpeg

I don't need the transformer anymore. Thanks to all that were trying to help me!

I believe I have a transformer, but not the plate it mounts to. I can double check tonight.

Bless you. Happy to take this offline with a PM.

I posted this over in the EBD club but haven't got any feedback yet. Maybe someone here can help me out.

I'm wrapping up my EBD restore. And the game is now playing. The issue I need help with is the 7 bank reset.
What is happening is I cannot get the full bank of drops to reset. The two big coils fire but they aren't powerful enough to lock the targets up.
Although when I unhook the individual target drop coils on the bank. I do have the power to reset the full bank. Has anyone else had this issue of not enough uummff? To reset the targets?

Has there been any work done on the driver board? Maybe someone did an incorrect substitution on the driving transistor.

Any cracked or cold solder joints at the header pins?

Have you verified the correct coil is used? If it was replaced in the past someone could have just installed what they had instead of the right one.

It has a new nvram mpu and a new rotten Dogg solenoid driver board.

All the connectors have been rebuilt minus the sound board and lamp driver boards.

The coils are the correct ones. The diodes are facing the right way.

The two coils on mine are NB-19-2600's, I'm sure the same as yours.

Only two of the three coil lugs are wired: the center lug and the right lug, assuming the you view the coil with the lugs at the bottom and are facing you.

Is his how yours are wired? Solder joints good and tight?

Verify all the coils associated with the solenoid expander are the double diode type.

If one of them was replaced with a single diode coil it will not prevent current from flowing through the coil on the other bank of the relay, which will cause the intended coil to fire weak.

Thanks guys I will look over these things and report back.

Ok problem solved. After isolating individual coils on the 7 drop bank, it turned up no results. I moved down the return line and ended up disconnecting the trough coil. The 7 bank reset, no problem. Tested the coil on the bench and BAM bad diode. Apparently the game didn't care because it was putting a ball into the shooter lane no problem. So the diode was just weak enough to allow that coil to work but pull power off of the bank reset. By way of the 1,9 drop target coil. What a chase.

It did not fix it. The problem might be in my scope settings.
On this photo you can see U15 pin 5, which seems to be pretty correct.
But the machine is still not booting (no flashes), anyone has an idea?

20200227_215315 (resized).jpg

1) make sure all data lines are correct...
2) simplify ics, 6800 + u6+ bottom pia to start.
3) do you get a flicker flash?
4) start from this point then build up ics.

I don't think your scope settings would make your pin not reset

Clock actually doesn't look too bad IMHO. Unless it's not getting high enough to register as a "1". The oscillation would need to be big enough to go below a "1" level and back up again to cause it to double clock. You could try putting a high value capacitor across the power and ground of the chip (you'd need look up the chip to see which pins they are.)

Set up your scope and just manually put a cap across the two pins to see if it cleans up your signal. If it does see if the system will boot.

If you're hitting 4v or higher on the high you should be good.

Looking for some Bally display repair direction. I've resurrected 3 out of 4 displays this weekend by changing out various digit driver transistors, segment driver transistors, and level shifter transistors along with upgrading several resistors to 1/2 watt. The 4th display is acting stubborn, however.

The 4th display had 2 digits completely out when I started. Changing out Q5/Q11 and Q6/Q12 resolved that. Also updated R1/R3/R5/R7/R9/R11 100K resistors with 1/2 watters (and R34 as well for good measure). I also reflowed all of the headers with fresh solder. When the tester card scrolls thru each digit 0-9 on my bench, the digits are nice and strong. However, when the test reaches the pattern that scrolls thru 0-9 with all digits on at the same time, well, it's screwed up (see video).

I'm thinking this has something to do with the lower right portion of the 100,000 digit (see video...there's a strong illuminated "dash" outside of the segments that doesn't happen on my other displays). It's like there's a power "leak" that doesn't seem to affect the digits one at a time but draws or takes power away from the other digits when they're all on at the same time. If that's the case, is the display itself shot or could there be other failed components on the PCB causing this? Thinking maybe something on the HV line, I did replace R34 (which looked a bit toasty) but I don't have the right part number zener diode for VR1 or cap for C2 to try.

Ideas appreciated....thanx.

IMG_7772 (resized).JPG

That glass looks burnt to me. I'd recommend finding another one or going with the Pinitech Uno replacements. They're rock solid and will last for many years to come.

Yep...indeed. I put Pinitech's in two of my keeper SS pins....love them. But I've got a box of old Bally displays that I'd like to use for player conditions pins that I sell if they look good enough. If I can fix one for a few dollars in parts and an hour or two of my time vs. $70 for Pinitech, that keeps the cost down for the pin resale.

A friend found the root cause of the resetting issue. The gap between one pop bumper and its switch was very small. If it made contact, the game would reset. The coil used there was the right spec, but a bigger format. Even after I put in a smaller one, the gap is quite small, though no longer making contact.
The gap on the other 2 pops was bigger, not sure why, but not at risk of making contact. See pictures.

decent pop gap (resized).png

same coil different length (resized).png

very small pop gap (resized).png

Here's my ad in Marketplace for some plastics I need to finish my EBD for PinBrew:

SOLD!

Parts - Wanted

WTB: '81 Eight Ball Deluxe plastics Archived

Wanted! - “Looking for these four plastics for my '81 EBD: Found 1. clear plastic M-1330-184-11 Found 2. clear plastic M-1330-184-12 Found 3. clear plastic M-1330-184-13 4. very large pl...”

2020-03-04

Jarrettsville, MD

Alan_L

Wanted

Archived after: 5 days

Viewed: 72 times

Status: Sold (amount undisclosed)

Did early Bally solid states (Mata Hari & Evel Knievel era) have 5/8" spring washers in their drop target reset solenoids? I just cleaned up and reassembled both drop banks, and both coils have about 1/16" of travel between brackets, even when I've squeezed the brackets as tightly together as possible before screwing them in. I don't see reference to them in the parts books, but then I don't see reference to spring washers for the flipper solenoids either, even though I know they came with them.