Original BH displays for sale in the market:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-system-80-displays-black-hole-haunted-house

**sale pending**

Sold

Installed the playfield protector. Had to remove the lower flippers, lane guides and middle pop bumpers. Nothing cosmic except the pain in the ass of resoldering the light sockets on the pop bumpers.

I had to trim the black hole entrance as well as add a hole for one of the lane guides. Turned out nicely.

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Looks pretty @mudflaps bet with that playfeid protector games is even meaner.

Black Hole and System 80 parts for sale in the market:

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/70625

Have a guy asking me about his Black Hole pin.... He is having problems.. We don't have any experience repairing Gottlieb's and or Black Hole pins. So looking for some advice and guidance. THX to all.
NT...
--------------------------------------------------------------THX

All of these don't register when hit or rolled over. Left top rollover, middle pop bumper, B,C,H targets and a few other things. I looked it up in the manual and found all of them to be on strobe 0 (or maybe 1) but I could not find it on the board diagram. It seems like it is a simple fix since they are all related.

Yes. All of the switches that you list are on strobe 0.
(SW00) Left top rollover
(SW06) middle pop bumper, However, all pops are on SW06. If stobe 0 is out... there should be no pop 'scoring'.
(SW03) B
(SW04) C
(SW02) H

1) Make sure your harness has continuity. yellow-black-black wire. A1J6-1 to switches.
2) Then make sure when your harness is attached at A1J6 you have continuity at A1J6-1 on CPU to the switches. Confirms the edge connector pin.
3) If connections are all good... Strobe 0 traces to Z12 pins 1&2 on the A1 CPU board. It's a 7404, probably bad. You can check by using a multimeter on diode test. Reference Pinwiki for test procedure.
4) If chip tests bad, remove Z12, add socket to A1, and replace with new 7404. (Z12 is dead center on A1 board)

Hope this helps your friend out.

Thanks a ton...We will check this for sure...This weekend..NT

Also, if you haven't already... check all the 1N270 germanium diodes on the diode strips/banks. Those are the diodes in the switch matrix.
Diode test by using a multimeter. pretty straight forward. Reference pinwiki.

I just joined the club a couple weeks ago. I've always loved this game and have been looking for a nice example off and on for years. What is the best way to light the tube? Ideally, I'd like the edges of it to glow when the gate is open.

Have a question about the A3-J5 connector. I think mine has been re-wired at some point. Can someone look at their connector and tell me if this is correct:

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A3J5.2 (resized).jpg

Looks good to me

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Thats odd.
If you look at the board, it appears that not all of the connections will be made, they will be one connection off.

So I just took a look at the game, and this seems easier said than done. The tube is part of the lower playfield, and the gate insert is part of the upper playfield. If you mount the LEDs directly to the tube, wouldn't you need to run some very long wires all the way back along the harness and then up to the front of the upper playfield?

Also, I happen to have an LED strip on hand, so I wanted to experiment with hooking it up to the gate light. I must have shorted something, because I instantly blew the 10A fuse which took out all the controlled lamps and the backbox motor. Fortunately, I don't think I did any damage to the anything. I popped in a new fuse, and everything is once again working as it should. I'm a bit confused about how the lamp circuits work in this game. Do you have a photo of where you clipped on to? I honestly don't know what I did wrong.

I’ll snap more pics when I get home.

Sorry about the fuse. I haven’t had any issues.

I have a 3 SMD strip attached to the metal mounting bracket. There is enough wire to ensure slack when the playfield is down. The alligator clips are secured to the yellow gate insert.

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I also have my flipper buttons and start button lit using a similar process. All 3 tied into the coin door light.
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Would it be possible to post a pic of the SMD strip on the metal mounting bracket with it unlit as it is difficult to see the correct placement because of the glare. Thanks for taking the time to post the images.

Does anyone have a spare NOS tube lying around? Mine isn't bad, but it's a bit scratched up.

I’m away from the game now, but the strip mounts on the metal bracket on the left side. The wires are on top and zip tied to the factory wires with enough slack to allow the playfield to close.

 
Hi guys,

I just found this page, and I need help! My Black Hole is driving me nuts!

When I power up the machine (cold) the sound board immediately beeps and goes into "test mode". If I power it off, and immediately back on it powers up properly and sound board functions perfectly, and machine is rock solid. If I power off and wait about an hour and then power up again, it once again boots into "test mode".

The sound board actually tests perfect, and all power supply voltages are bang on.

According to the schematics, the "test button" on the sound board drops pin #17 on U15 (R6532 RIOT) from its normal 5 VDC to ground.
The fact that it boots up perfectly after power cycling makes me wonder if something is dropping the voltage at the RIOT initially (such as an unstable 5V power supply voltage on start up) and triggering "test mode", but not affecting further "power cycling" due to fully charged capacitors? (Just a guess)

It's not a huge deal. The game works perfectly. It just bugs me that I have to switch the game on twice to play, and my OCD dictates that it must be fixed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Amnesia

I had a big game last night and ended up with about 1.3 million. It made me realize that I might want to upgrade to 7-digit displays. Is there an easy way to do this, or is there a board that will support scores over a million with the original displays?

Ni Wumpf will scroll the seventh digit. I don't think the mod is that hard either if you can find the displays?

Thanks for the info! I like that idea better than putting in new displays, as I prefer the look of the original gas displays.

There are seven digit gas out there

Will the Ni Wumpf board support those if I decide to add them later?

I don't know, you'd have to contact them

I think I'm definitely going to buy the Ni-Wumpf board. For $200, it seems like a nice upgrade. I'll gain the ability to register bigger scores, plus free play, plus some other nice stuff.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/converting-any-system-80-6-digit-gottlieb-to-80a-7-digit

I tried to track down some 7-digit displays when i got my BH, no luck though. At best i could find an individual one occasionally, but usually at least $50+. I considered getting the Ni-wumpf for the same reason, but i so rarely approach a million points that i can't justify the expense (yet)... It's a good solution though, and the other features they included are cool. I think that's the way to go.

A few notes of caution on the Ni-Wumpfs as I've got one in mine:
- it takes 10+ seconds to boot
- you can't turn off extra balls or set them to award points
- some of the lightshow animations are a bit 'off' from the original
- I think I remember finding some obscure bug dealing with multiple balls in the lower playfield upkicker. It's generally fussy about handling the balls in the troughs
- there's a bug (or maybe the original is like this?) where if you have an extra ball on ball three it'll still kick out the lower pf lock

That was my first game where I scored over a million. I had two multiballs that game. I may have just gotten lucky. I guess time will tell. It's super fun and chaotic when you are trying to juggle balls on both playfields simultaneously.

Interesting. So would you still recommend the board despite these issues?

Thanks for the link! That post makes me sad. Steve was an amazing asset to our community.

I'm actually working on fixing up an original to replace it :/ The ball save and 7 digit scoring are nice but everything else I prefer the original

I am setting up my Black Hole and I am having a brain fart on where the two ground plugs go. Can anyone snap a couple of pictures and help a brother out? Thanks in advance!

Bump for help. I have 2 found clips hanging in the backbox and don’t know where they go

I can get you some photos. What exactly do you need pictures of?

Joined the club. Trying to set to 3 ball. Not sure why it is staying in 5. I switched switch 17 to on. Here is a pic

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Here is a pic of the game. It is in pretty nice condition. Replaced all the rubbers with Titan. Added some leds. Going to mess with back box leds tonight. All the rubbers where ether broken or missing.

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On my game, the plastic above the upper right flipper is bowing upwards. Is it supposed to be like that, or did someone install the wrong size star post and/or post screw?

BH plastic (resized).jpg

Wrong screw.

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Thanks! Is that star post the same as the other ones in your photo, or is it the shorter 1" kind?