Joining the club! Just picked up a Black Hole and am looking forward to getting her all tidied up. It's by no means a collector's machine, but that's not what I am after anyway, although it will get tidied up a bit. Who knows, may even get restored once I retire

Anyway, a few pics:

Cabinet is pretty good for its age - usual scrapes and gouges. I just call that character!

DSCN1006.JPG
DSCN1007.JPG

The playfield is quite nice, though a bit lackluster. Time for a good cleaning...

DSCN0993.JPG
DSCN0995.JPG
DSCN0997.JPG

The kick out and ball return areas are in great shape. I sure wish Cliffy made protectors for these:

DSCN0994.JPG
DSCN1004.JPG
DSCN0996.JPG

I seem to be missing some sort of post right here - anyone got a photo of this area?

DSCN0998.JPG

Although it may not look it, the playfield actually still has some shine to it here and there:

DSCN1002.JPG

She has a few known issues I'll be starting in on. The speech volume is too low, so hopefully an adjustment on R6 and/or R13 will take care of that. The lower left pop bumper is dead. Have a few lamps that are out or not working. I haven't investigated enough to know yet whether it's a matric issue but I don't think so as there are only a couple out. Some new plastics will be needed as a couple are cracked. Although the disc motor works, it's an odd setup with a new motor. I'll probably look at putting the setup described at PinWiki in it.

Anyhow, glad to be a member finally! My first wish list pin acquired!

Dave

On a related note, if anyone has a parts catalog handy, could you tell me if it happens to have a part number for two items - the head side of the metal bracket that the head slides into on the cabinet when it's being installed, and the small nylon bumper pads on the bottom of the head itself?

Thanks! Having those will save me some grief when I call PBR

If someone has the time, I could really use a photo of what a ball sitting in the Captive hole looks like. I'm having a problem where the hole works, records and locks the ball, but then another shot over there will knock the captured ball loose. It almost looks like it kicks it out but it may just be the second ball jarring it loose - hard to tell yet. I'm wondering if the ball isn't sitting too high perhaps, thus the request for a snapshot. I'll post one myself later too.

I also found out at least part of the reason my lower left pop doesn't work - it doesn't help when the plastic part of the coil with the lugs on it is broken clean off the coil and hanging by the harness wires

New one on the way from PBR - maybe I'll get lucky and that's all it is.

What's turning out to be thornier is the one I thought would be easy - the upper right rollover lamp not lighting. Changed the bulb to no avail, so I tried jumping power from the center socket's tab to the right socket. Bulb lights fine, so either the driver isn't turning it on or it's a harness/connector issue. That's on the list for tonight's work. Fortunately, she came with a schematic!

Thanks CNKay - mine looks just like that sitting in there so I will take a look at adjusting the switch. Being my first Gottlieb machine, it looks really high on those switch edges compared to a Williams. As you suggest, maybe the switch is set loose enough that it vibrates open when the other ball whacks into the locked one. It only happens on the upper playfield too - the lower works well. I have a couple others to do also so it will be a good job for tomorrow.

OK, here's a couple non-technical questions for you

How do you put new rubber on those playfield posts near the right flipper inlane, where the gate rollover is? Since you have to remove the screws to get the rubber on/off, there is nothing to stretch them over. I tried screwing one down and then using the other post to pull with but that seems near impossible. It also calls out a 1" ring there but man, that's a stretch. I may have to put a larger ring there just to get it on. How do you guys install that ring?

Also, how the heck do you troubleshoot playfield connectivity to the boardset? It doesn't seem like you can raise the playfield with the insert open since it's got that interior hinge arrangement.

Dave

It is the one at the bottom right of the playfield with the white lane guide, right under the green insert. On my Williams machines, that guide would be held on by post nuts and the posts would stay screwed down into the playfield. Replacing the rubber is then easy. On my BH, that guide is held on by two wood screws through the plastic posts, so to remove the old rubber you have to essentially remove the post. I can't figure out how to stretch the new rubber on there when the screw is unfastened. It's a very tight rubber using the specified 1" ring.

Thanks for the info on those brackets - I could see no use for those. I was actually going to try and use them with a couple ball joints to try and build a bolt-in brace.

The BH manual seems to have a number of errors. I may try putting a 1.25 or 1.5 on there instead. Although I didn't get to it tonight, I believe you're right on the captive hole issue. I was playing a game tonight with a ball locked in the upper hole. The next ball got REALLY flying around off the slingshots until it smacked hard into the yellow targets and the captive ball then fired itself out. I bet that switch is misadjusted or lost its tension. I've got the day off tomorrow so we'll see then...

Happy to report that switch adjustment did indeed cure the captive hole issue. I've also been able to isolate the dead rollover lamp up top to the driver board. Tacking a jumper across A3J3 pins 2 and 3 turns both lights on and off in attract, so the playfield wiring from edge connector to socket is good. Time to order a couple transistors.

I was hoping my PBR order with the new pop bumper coil would arrive today but no such luck.

I've just updated my BH's Ni-Wumpf MPU to their V1.70 revision of the Black Hole game code. I believe it may have a couple bugs but I wonder if someone running actual Gottlieb ROMs could verify these behaviors:

1. Completing the 4 yellow spot targets, then locking a ball in the upper captive hole, is now lighting the right rollover lamp for 10,000 points but awarding only 500. I believe turning on the lamp when capturing a ball is incorrect, thus the scoring is actually right.

2. The rules indicate that completing the BLACK sequence will light the Gravity Tunnel lamp and completing the HOLE sequence will light the 10,000 point rollover lamp. When I read the word sequence in the rules, I assumed they meant completing them in the proper order but on my game, completing either bank in any order will light the lamps. Can someone let me know what the correct behavior is?

Got my spinning disk all fixed up today and got flashers back in the lightbox in the right spots. The coil for my dead lower pop bumper also arrived today so hopefully that will be working tomorrow.
Thanks!

Yeah, it handles the BLACK and HOLE sequence correctly for the GForce and Special. I'm just not sure if knocking the banks down out of sequence still lights the Gravity Tunnel and 10K rollover lamps. Some Youtube searching implies that it might but I can't be certain.

I am now nearly 100% convinced that #1 is indeed wrong and that lamp should not be getting turned on.

This is the one thing I don't like about the Ni-Wumpf MPU - it's not really running Gottlieb code. I may look into switching to a Swemmer MPU and a set of ROMs from PBR.

OK, cool, thanks CNKay. I actually got a new 1.75 release of the BH code from David at Ni-Wumpf today - apparently the web site was a bit out of date. It fixes the issue with the Captive hole turning on the 10K lamp so it looks like all the scoring behaviors are correct now but I probably need to do some manual testing on the lower playfield to be certain.

I also got the lower left pop bumper working. After replacing the coil, I found it had also blown the fuse. Popped one in and all is well. I took off the cheater rubber that had been placed there so the playfield is now back to standard configuration.

Let's talk about flipper alignment

How do you set the alignment of that upper left flipper? I'm thinking that mine is making the cross field shots to the yellow spots perhaps harder than they should be. Mine is angled just slightly counterclockwise from exiting straight off the ball lane's outside wall. I think if I were to rotate it clockwise a bit more, toward that little 5/16" ring behind it, that it might give a better shot angle but I also don't want to make it too easy. How do you all have yours set? I guess Gottlieb didn't use the roll pins like Williams did.

Thanks!
Dave

Boards are available from a couple sources. Ni-Wumpf makes a replacement Gottlieb Sys-80 MPU and Driver board for sure, as my BH has those. Also, Fred Swemmer makes a full set of replacement Sys-80 boards - MPU, Driver, Sound/Speech and Aux board. Rottendog makes pop bumper boards and may also have MPUs and Drivers.

Spinner motors are available, and while not exact replacements they fit well enough and work great. Displays are available from several sources too. Pinball Resource has lots of Gottlieb and BH-specific parts and also has full plastics sets available. CPR makes replacement playfield windows.

The biggest worries are the 2 backglasses and the spinning disk acrylic piece. I know of no sources for these.

Dave

Oh, this is a matter of serious religious debate! It is as simple as swapping the wires. You'll have to decide which direction you prefer

Congrats on joining the club. It's an awesome game - one of my favorites. A lot of people slap a rubber on it beneath the lower pop bumper to keep it from draining there - if you have one, take it off! I'd also suggest pulling the glass and making sure everything is scoring as it should. You want all the points you're entitled to. I found one of my upper pop bumpers wasn't scoring but it was so fast I hadn't noticed.

I think a replacement BH playfield would be well-received. There seems to be a fair number of these machines around and a lot of them have been really messed up by the non-adhesive mylar bumper platters, mine included. I'd be all over a set of new playfields for mine.

Another test you can make is to attach a jumper wire with 2 alligator clips. Clip one to the tab on that transistor and then briefly touch the other clip to ground. The light should come on. If so, you'll need to replace the transistor. If not, the problem lies elsewhere.

Yep, that's normal behavior.

Pinster, are you running original System80 boards or a Pascal, perhaps? The reason I ask is the Pascal's have a number of circuit protection features coded in and if it saw the ball not proceeding it might elect not to keep firing the coil. Original boards won't have that of course.