The game is Gold Ball.

I snagged this nice picture from pinwiki:

- What is that component across points 2 and 3... is it a diode?

- If I want to prevent LED flicker, do I want to solder a 470 ohm diode across points 1 & 2, or across points 1 & 3 (and why?)?

Thanks folks!

BallyElCheapoLampSocketLabel (resized).jpg

Thanks for the reply but I'm not getting diodes and resistors mixed up. I'll try again:

1. What is that component between lugs 2 and 3 in the picture? Is it a diode..? I know Bally games or this era (early to mid-1980s) do not use a lamp matrix. This 555 socket is very common in games from that era as it is unmodified in the picture.

2. Taking this 555 socket, I know to prevent LED flicker I want to solder a 470 ohm resistor (so add it, its not currently in the picture) do I want to solder it between lugs 1 & 2 or between 1 & 3?

This game has SCRs that drive two lamps at once in many cases. There are two phases. I have a single SCR driving a lamp on phase A and phase B. In my case I have a one lamp flickering one phase A and one on all the time on phase B. I know the SCR on the AS-2518-147 is good.

Some of the lamps have the 470 ohm resistor soldered on them, some do not. In some cases, a single SCR will drive one lamp with the 470 ohm resistor in place while the paired lamp on the other phase does not have one.

I'm trying to figure out if the resistors that have been added are across the correct lugs.

Thanks!

Thanks for the response... I came across this post (#19 by kbliznick) that you shouldn't solder to the buss and therefore the resistor should be across 1 & 2, not 1 & 3:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/any-problems-with-leds-in-bally-6803#post-2644169

"At first I soldered one leg of the resistor to the lamp buss and the other leg to the individual wire at each of the offending lamps. This however caused the paired lamp on the SCR to stay solidly lit. I didn't notice this until I had about 15 of them done. D'oh.

So you can't solder the resistor across the buss to the output. You have to solder it just around the lamp, so that's the lug with the banded side of the diode to lug with the individual output (the single or double inuslated wire(s) and not the braided wire lamp buss)"

It sounds similar to my issue, but I'm still learning so.... keep the responses coming. Thanks again!

The load resistor goes across 1 & 2: the physical lamp, not attached to the buss on 3. That did the trick, all lamps finally working normally. Thanks!