Yay! Thanks Ed.

Steve

those new ones sound great.

regarding the old foam ones -- they do get compressed and don't hold the window up high enough after a while. at one point all the usual suspects were "out of stock" so i ended up doubling-up the grommets. that worked fine as a temporary measure.

yes, i'm a packrat. i saved a spare set of old crushed grommets.

My MGOW is nasty !

Volcano can be a dirty Bast#$D too..

if your talking about sys 80's anyway...

There are alot of difficult games out there, but not alot of them are harder in that time period than BH...

Thanks for the heads up Ed. Just ordered my adapter

Need some advice guys. Had my BH for several months now. Did the ground mods when I first got it and all the displays looked beautiful. In the last couple of weeks, the 10's digit in the 3rd player display started to get flakey and then went out. Now, the 1st player 10's display AND the under playfield score 10 are both starting flake out. Seems fishy to me that all the displays are having issues with the same digit. Could there be yet another ground wire I am missing to bring my 10's digits back to life?

I wish I was experienced enough to help! hopefully this bump can bring someone who can!

Kind of an odd issue. This problem is with D2 on all 3 displays and they're all driven by the same IC (Z17) on the CPU board. The odd thing is that the 3rd player display went out first, and then the other two started acting up. If this were connector (A1J3) or IC related, I would think that all 3 would have exhibited the same action at the same time. So instead, I gotta think that the first display to show the issue might be the one taking out the others. I'd try reseating the 3rd player connector or swap the display to a working display to see if it's bad, see if that helps (for starters). If that does help, you may have to re-crimp those punch pin connectors.

Steve

Press the self/test button inside coin door.
Keep pressing until # in credit display reads:
11 (1st replay level)
12 (2nd)
13 (3rd)
14 (HS to date)

Set levels by pressing the credit button.

5-Ball??
Blasphemy!

Not too sure.
I have mine on 3-Ball and I think I have it set to one replay level @ 200,000

Well maybe your back short heavy barrel spring is a bit collapsed from age, all manufactures used same size but new may give you a little more space.
No pin has a washer by the shooter rod in your picture.

I bet if everyone posted a picture of the shooter tip placement they would all be the same. I don't know what your issue is?

I may have them mof, call me later.

Steve

My shooter looks the same as yours (and my other Gottliebs) - never worried about it.

Here is the score card that was on my apron when I got the game.
Not too sure if they were meant to be used in 3-ball or 5-ball settings.
image-394.jpg

Here is the card that came in my NOS Black Hole card set. It tells the recommended cards Gottlieb wanted you to use.

Steve

Gottlieb BH recommended score cards.jpg

nice steve

Now turn score card over inquiring minds want to know.

Yeah back in the mega arcade days it seems like most places gave just one extra ball chance. Usually close to factory recommended. I used to love when you would walk up to a machine like Flash that had 100K 300K 500K.

Recap on my display issue. "In the last couple of weeks, the 10's digit in the 3rd player display started to get flakey and then went out. Now, the 1st player 10's display AND the under playfield score 10 are both starting flake out."

So on blownfuse's advice, I swapped all the displays. 1 for 3 and 2 for 4. Now, all of the displays are working perfectly, including the lower playfield. Guessing it is a connector issue and that it is only temporary, but for today, it looks great!

Glad you got it going and it wasn't a huge problem. Yeah, I see a afternoon of crimping in your future.

Steve

Okay, now what?

Steve

card back.jpg

Oh I guess that is not the score card to turn over. Did not read it careful enough. LOL

Please Explain the Note on bottom of card.

The instruction card tells you that you can set your game from this.

score card front.jpg

To this by flipping it over.

score card back.jpg

Steve

Oh right, got it. thank you

i was testing my displays today. DSC00143.JPG
I know the arcade guys shoot for it.
Does this count in pinball too?

Add another 9 and ya got somethin !

You don't see it Gerry? The one's column on the right is active now and not a dead zero, what you actually are seeing is 999,990 but the score is slid to the right one digit to allow for the start of a 7 digit Black Hole (minus the four 7 digit displays, the next step).

Steve

Awe Steve ya gave it away to fast.

Yeah thanks Steve it is way to cool!! now to find a display or two. Someday.

Here is my new highscore since the change.
DSC00144.JPG

and it only took me this many balls.
DSC00145.JPG

Hey Steve ! just thought of this.

LOL, sorry about that, I was just too excited to see another 7 digit Black Hole out there.

Steve

LOL, yeah, I think that happens a lot with a 7 digit conversion game. nudge nudge

Steve

I think the supply of 7-digit displays on eBay has been totally depleted this past week. Last I looked there were about a half dozen for sale, today there are zero.

[accidental double post]

I predicted this would happen 5 years ago, just took a little longer than I thought.

Steve

I got three multiballs in one 3 ball game. On two occasions though I didn't clear either lower target bank to gain re-entry Grrrrrrrr

I love this game!

That is really good, especially if you have the 5ball setting. But 5 plus 2 for replay scores and maybe you earn one playing now your up to 8 balls or more. Playing at a party with 4 people that game would take over an hour and a half. *figure a 3min ball time and 4 descent players*

I still think you should be giving 3 ball a try. LOL

So ya closed the 80hour shop job. Good thread Btw. now it is "Bally" never had an electronic Bally. Good luck

Steve if I keep my eye out for one or two displays what would i expect to pay for each one? There was an ebay with NOS just glass 20 a piece the guy had 4.

I've seen used 7 digit displays go for as low as $25.00 each but that was a while back when I first started doing the conversion. A long time ago, I bought a pallet of new 7 digit display tubes at $3.00 each so I went looking for display boards that had broken tubes on them. The cheapest I could find them was around $5-10.00 each. Now I'm out of the displays and will need to search for them too if I want to convert anymore games, I'm searching along with everyone else. I'd like to find a good deal on a bunch of those new tubes again since they seemed a lot brighter and more evenly lit when I used them.

Steve

Or just turn off EB awards for replay scores.

Looking for advice on how you guys handled playfield touchups. Looking at 3 different shades of blue intermixing with one another in relatively straight lines and seeing where this could go horribly wrong very quickly. Or at least looking really poor.

I think I'd start with the lightest blue and work to the darkest just like they did originally with the screens.

Steve

So after Mof asked about replay score adjusting, i got to thinking, i had never had a extra ball due to score ever. ??
i decided to look into and try it out. I tried everything nothing seemed to work.
Well guess what. switch 21 was dead all other switches fine. So yes i could win a free game setting 300K or whatever but had never one free ball from score in over 10years. Replaced switch bank and now this machine owes me a freebie once in a while. so my machine was 99.9% working all these years.

I'm not allowed to post here technically since I don't own a Black Hole, but I was at mof's place yesterday and got to check his out and it is sweet! I've only played one other one at the PAPA facility during Pinburgh, but his was even better than that one. Super fast and brutal but a beautiful machine and I could see myself owning one in the future Great game!

It really is a fun, and fast game...

Yeah, I know mine plays mean and nasty real well, it's dialed in too.

Steve

New Black Hole owner and loving it! But can anyone help me with the lower playfield lighting? I did an LED swap on the entire machine and all is good but it immediately burns up the lower playfield lights (the ones that come on from up above to light the playfield). Tried to find info on this but it's sparse...and I don't have a manual.

From a Youtube video I heard that I need 24 volt bulbs for this particular application. Can anyone verify that this is correct? And point me in the right direction as to where I might buy these bulbs?

Thanks in advance.

yes 313 bulbs for the lower lighting they run at 24V. Easy way to change look for it in pinwiki. pretty sure it shows exactly what you need to do to change to the 6V circuit.

That's a mod I used to do but I came up with something I like even better Chris. You install 6VDC cool white LED's in the sockets, then add a 1K ohm 1/2 watt resistor between each of the 24VDC power leads to the sockets, shrink wrap the resistors and be done with that problem (bulb filaments vibrating and breaking prematurely).

Steve