Thanks!!

My lower flippers are weak. I did rebild them a few years ago and that did help slightly but I gave up at that point. I know they can be better as I played one at Funspot that worked way better.. Is there possible something else wrong? could I unwind the coils or buy more powerful ones? when I rebuild the flippers I also cleaned the flipper button switches. Thanks

Do you have the right coils? Sometimes people put in 50v ones by mistake. There are no more powerful options available than what's stock

Try repinning all the connectors involved in the chain powering the flippers?

I unplugged all connectors between backbox and head and sprayed them with contact cleaner.

Now I have created a different problem. The lower left drop target works but does not register counting the number of times triggered. The three indicator lights do work in attract mode.

In addition both magna saves appear to work but the magnet does not power on when button is pressed.

For the magnet, usually that's a sign that the red/white ground wire was not attached to the threaded lug in the head box.

With the drop targets, I'd start with going into switch test mode and verify if each individual target is registering properly. May just need an adjustment or cleaning on one of the leaf switches.

-Hans

Hans you were spot on! I fished around and found the red and white wire it must have fallen off. On the drop targets when inspecting the leaf switch I discover a wire was completely missing and that fixed that. Funny I have had the game for at least five years and never noticed it before.

Thanks again!

Glad it was an easy fix! We've all done it at least twice.

-Hans

Indeed!

Best place/price to get a new driver board? Easiest fix for my game. Works with a Gorgar board installed.

I'll sell the original driver board if someone else wants to figure out why it has an easy mode hack.

Black Knight (1980) - Function menu issues / Settings jumping

For instance when I set Function 37 (Multi-ball difficulty) to “0” (Liberal) then exit the menu and start a game the track lighting for ball lock will not be running. This indicates the difficulty is set higher than “0”. So when I go back into the function menu 37 has jumped to “10”. So to offset this I will set it to “90” so upon jumping it will be a t “0” and the track lights work. Unfortunately this isn’t the only setting that jumps and offset settings only save until I go back into the function menu or they randomly decide to jump some more. Also upon starting a game the settings will jump for each player added (10,20,30,40) up to four players. Also concerning other settings that jump besides 37, some jump 1, 10, or several hundreds or thousands. Other than this function jumping issue everything with the game works as it should.

Any help in the right direction is greatly appreciated!

Big70

By any chance does someone have a schematic of the driver board? Save me from pulling board and testing path with meter it would be appreciated.

My jet bumper is not working on upper playfield. Coil fires in test mode. No switch errors. Continuity test switch at bumper and confirmed open/closed.

Pulled back glass disconnected special solenoid connector and can apply ground at pin and pop bumper works.

No blown fuses or warm to touch or melted transistors visible. Game plays fine otherwise.

You mean, 2j13? if coil works in test mode and via grounding 2j13 then either the spoon switch isn't grounded or the connection from the spoon switch to 2j13 is broken somewhere

Correct- pulled 2j13 that runs flippers/jet bumper. Can ground pin and respective coil fires.

Did not check voltages at spoon switch. Just tested if switch was open/closing with multimeter while game was off. When I get home I'll sort through diagram.

Two weird things happened with my BK in the last two weeks for the first time in 30 years of owning it.
#1 - Something actually broke. CPU started locking up in the middle of a game sometimes but would never malfunction in attract or diag tests and always booted fine. Reseating things and replacing the old caps on the power board and the one small electrolytic on the CPU board didn't help. Then one game the solenoid fuse blew even though when it occurred there were no coils erroneously firing off or locking on. Read some repair tips and figured out it was just a diode on an upper flipper that had totally exploded, just the insides left flopping around but the flipper still worked. Read a tip that a bad diode can cause in-play resets. Solved!
#2 - I was playing after it was fixed and the ball lock was empty but lit, and was trying to hit the lit ex. ball switch with the upper right flipper and managed to lock the ball from UNDER the trough. It was so weird that at first I was like 'what the hell just happened?' I bet I couldn't do that again on purpose in a million more years.

Update to my pop bumper issue. Pin drag issue at power supply on connector 3j3 was my issue.

Game is back to 100%

I just listed a nice, clean system 7 mpu here on pinside if anyone is looking:

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/97277

You can tell BK is an early speech game not only because of the limited vocabulary but how they had to 'cheat' a little bit. Like how when he says "THREE ENEMIES" the 'three' is really just 'the' with a soft 'th' and an R sort of stuck in the middle so it sounds more like "THLEE". And 'against' sounds like 'again' with just a little bit of 's' at the end. Would be interesting to know exactly how the software assembles all the syllables and consonants in some of the words like fight and right if the word 'knight' is on one chip but F and R are on another, is it somehow chopping the KN off and putting L or R in front instead?

CPR vs Micro Playfield:

I was wondering who here had experience with the BK playfiled from Micro. Are they good quality? I just saw an add for one here and then went to their website which seems to not have pictures of most of what they are offering. They seem to be duplicating a bunch of what CPR has already done, which doesn't seem like it helps the community much. Just wondering what peoples thoughts are.

I have CPR Silver Knight Edition #35 so I'm partial to CPR.

I've never seen the Mirco version in person so I can't help you there. The thing that is attractive to me regarding the Mirco is they used jeweled inserts like the original. CPR used common modern starburst inserts. I have a CPR as well and it sure is beautiful.

They were really limited by the ROM space they had on the speech board so they had to stitch some "samples" together to increase the vocabulary.

The information on what words are in which ROM is near the end of the instruction booklet (pasted below).

Vocabulary Located in ROM
KNIGHT 5T5001 (IC7)
BLACK 5T5001
DEFEND 5T5001
CHALLENGE 5T5001
THEE (THE) 5T5002 (IC5)
WILL 5T5002
YOU 5T5002
I 5T5002
AGAIN 5T5002 AND 5T5003(IC6)
SLAY 5T5003
CANNOT 5T5003
SELF 5T5003
ENEMY 5T5003 AND 5T5004(IC4)

The IC4 Speech ROM contains Laughter and "F" and "R" sounds. The Laughter, "F" and "R" sound, and the following partial or composite words produced in game play are not produced in diagnostics.
WIN
ME
TO(TWO)
AGAINST
ENEMIES
THYSELF
FIGHT
RIGHT
THREE
AND
MY

Found this key chain while cleaning. I don’t have a BK so passing it on to someone that does.

Free to the first person to PM me!
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I'm not really into toppers but lots of folks are and I saw a ton of these things on Ebay. Vintage AM radios that looks like a knight in armor. The one on a horse even has a feather on top. On the 'head' one you could move the large shield to the bottom half so it would look even more like the BK. Stick a couple of red LEDs in his eyes. And they already have speakers in 'em so could wire that to the game's sound. I wonder if it's possible to extract only the speech track from the sound/speech board, since it is able to control the volume of each one via the volume pot on the board. Run that directly to a separate volume pot and then to the radio's speaker, or snip the IF of the radio and run it to its amplifier section. Hey nobody else wants these old things so might be a good use for them.

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I will be interested in hearing how the Rottendog boards work. There are supposedly problems in Black Knight. I have a set I purchased a long time ago, but have not had to install them.

I have a RottenDog MPU327 and the PS0709. I was having resets which appeared to be a known problem. I ended up tying ground wire between the 2 boards to ensure that they had a common ground. You might want to do that proactively as it solved all of my problems.

Hello to all, I have an original BK BK limited in very good condition, its been sitting for some years and was actually a present to me from my brother who has passed a few years ago, really miss him, he ran the Machine Shop Arcade downtown Baltimore back when Arcades were hot 1979- 1983. Im not as intuitive as my brother was in pins and electronics Im not bad but I guess I just never got into that deep. With that said Im found this site and was amazed. Id like to send my boards out can anyone recommend a good repairer?

Chris Hibler, a member of this site, is a good repair guy. Here's his website: http://chrishiblerpinball.com/

The Coin Op Cauldron has done repairs for several of my boards, great company as well: http://coinopcauldron.com/

Can't go wrong with either of them.

Welcome to pinside, by the way! You found a wealth of good info and people here. A word of warning though: pinball machines can start multiplying before you know it. You may find yourself measuring up space for the next one...and the next one... then one day half your dining room is pinball machines, and you move the table over to fit *one more* and then suddenly back porch starts slowly filling with games...

Be sure to follow up here with any questions you have along the way--this site has some of the most helpful folks I've ever met. Don't be afraid to ask--even if it seems like a really basic question we all had to start somewhere.

We want to see your Black Knight ride again!

Good luck!

Hey, all! I joined the club a month or so ago...such a fun game. I'm having an issue with a LED Display showing a blank 10's digit.

I posted here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/black-knight-led-display-showing-blank-10-s-digit

Any help would be awesome!

Playing with my sons Lego tonight i made myself a potential keychain for Black Knight lol

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My game is set so you have to collect all 3 locks in one ball. I like this challenge but i want to set it back to normal now for my kid.
Does anyone know off hand which setting that is? Thanks

Setting #38 is locked ball lamps:
Memory: 00
No memory: 01

Think that's the one you want to toggle.

Does anyone have a really good scan of the magna save circles? Maybe from a set of decals or from a hardtop? I have a hardtop installed on mine and can take a good picture of it but a scan would be a bonus. My friend also has a BK that has wear in both circles. We thought it might be easier to just print a couple of stickers instead of buying them.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

‘No memory’ is normal (factory settings). To add additional challenge for yourself, change Setting #37 to 01, requiring a turnaround shot to light the locks!

Thanks but im making BK my kid friendly game. My other games are either too complicated or of no interest to a 7yr old boy.
(He keeps asking me to get his favorite game, a DE JP)

Scanned from a playfield. You could convert to line art using Inkscape.

Good luck!

Magna_Save (resized).png

Hi,

The 10's digits on my credit/match display are blank (instead of showing zeros) and then start flashing/blinking.

Any ideas which component might be the culprit?

Thanks!

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i reflowed solder to correct this same issue

With the power off, reseat the ribbon cable on both the display itself and the master display board (back of the backboard). Make sure to keep the pins aligned properly!

Also re-seat J5 on the master display board (the large card edge connector).

Thank you @Schwaggs: that was it. Had not thought of reseating connectors because I completed the restoration project 8 months ago, but yes: rock solid now!

If I can get this nicely cleaned up, I will post it back up to the group!

Thanks!

Has anyone installed one of these? Why is there no talk about them like there are about CPR and even Hard Tops?
https://mircoplayfields.com/en/p/black-knight-mirco-playfield-set

I'm curious to know as I want to get one at some point.

OK, I'll talk about it.

Yikes....what's up with that?

BK Mirco (resized).jpg

I'd have probably bought the mirco if I'd hadn't put a CPR in there way back when, just to have the correct inserts.

The registration error in the white underneath ramps wouldn't bother me at all as long as the visible artwork isn't messed up in some way.

I'd go Mirco just because it has the correct inserts.

Interesting, but that is hidden. Comparing that picture with the blown out playfield leaning against the wall next to me....the holes look to be in the correct locations.

I am, however, interested in how true to the original the artwork is. I saw a post a few pages back in this thread talking about the Hard Tops and how they don't look original, like they were scanned and reprinted. If these playfields look better, then it's a win.

I did notice the 10,000 is missing the comma compared to the original playfield...so I guess my expectations are lowered.
pasted_image (resized).png

Oh no, and the "Fight Again" are angled, but not on the original......Is this even licensed or some cheap knockoff?

pasted_image (resized).png

I got a BK hardtop a couple of months ago for a winter project. I've put in hardtops previously for my Mata Hari and EBD...the colors have always looked vibrant to me (not the scanned/reprinted look). Here's the bottom playfield for BK....the colors might look slightly muted because the protective plastic layer is still on. When you peel it off after it's installed (as I've experience on MH and EBD), the colors really pop.

HT01 (resized).jpg

Here is a picture of the "Glitter" version of the Micro playfield. This looks terrible. Either the "artwork" or the process are very poor. This reminds me of that one company that used to make the artwork for arcade machines with inkjet printers back in the early 2000s, when you had many quality vendors doing it right. I'm not sure why anybody would pay this kind of money for a playfield when it looks like this AND the artwork isn't authentic, or accurate.

Here is an image of my CPR "Silver Knight Edition" for comparison.

BK glitter (resized).png

BK silver (resized).PNG