Quoted from koji:Congratulations!
...give it a thorough clean with Naptha, a polish with Novus 2, and then wax.
...
Anothing thing you might want to get on order are new inlane guides. If you have any ball hop at all from the guide to the flipper, and it is not something you can fix with adjustment, then this is something you'll need to buy.
I'd recommend Cliffy: https://www.passionforpinball.com/FlipFrames.htm
----------
Be sure to set your multiball locks to difficult .
These are all excellent bits of advice!
Many thanks to you both, koji and BobLangelius !
I welcome any and all opinions about playfields and anything else about BK maintenance and repair.
After all, this BK is my first pin owned, so I'm still a noob about the maintenance aspects.
That said, I'm having a grand old time restoring this pin, and playing frequently during the process.
Naphtha and wax/buff have already noticeably improved the overall action.
New inlane guides already on order. I have serious hop on the right side.
What about viable flipper upgrades to address the marginal strength?
Quoted from andylama:These are all excellent bits of advice!
Many thanks to you both, koji and BobLangelius !
I welcome any and all opinions about playfields and anything else about BK maintenance and repair.
After all, this BK is my first pin owned, so I'm still a noob about the maintenance aspects.
That said, I'm having a grand old time restoring this pin, and playing frequently during the process.
Naphtha and wax/buff have already noticeably improved the overall action.
New inlane guides already on order. I have serious hop on the right side.
What about viable flipper upgrades to address the marginal strength?
For flippers, it is a bit subjective.
I'm running original on mine. Have the End of stroke switch adjusted well and ensure that everything on the flipper circuit is clean and giving max voltage.
Off of a trap, I can make it up the ramp pretty easily, so I'm happy with that.. and at the same time, some shots are just not going to make it up.. that's how it goes.
Thanks koji
Finely adjusting that EOS switch made much more of a difference than I would have expected! That flipper's strength is totally acceptable now.
At this point, my BK is 98% 'perfect', but this last problem has me stumped, and it just started happening a couple of days ago:
Out of nowhere, it suddenly has a very hard time kicking a new ball into the shooter lane.
It kicks a ball out (quite powerfully), the ball bounces off the metal plate on the facing wall and falls neatly back into the trough. Kicker tries again. Repeat ad nauseam.
This repeats until I jostle the machine just right, or sometimes it will 'accidentally' fall out of the pattern and into correct position for launch.
I manually actuated the kicker arm and was surprised to find it seized up. It moves, but not well.
I figured that couldn't be right, so I oiled the hinge point. Now it rotates freely, but I was astonished to find that this made no noticeable difference in the problem.
I tried restricting the in-game actuation with my hand, and found that a ball would serve up seemingly normally if I keep a restricting finger on the kicker arm.
Is the kickout suddenly too strong for the job? Is the coil cooked from the seizure and getting ready to croak?
WTH? I played HUNdreds of games over the past several weeks, and this never happened even once, and now it happens almost every time.
Does anyone here have any clue what the heck my problem is?
Quoted from andylama:Does anyone here have any clue what the heck my problem is?
Bend the guide at the top to redirect. Bend the arm that kicks the ball out.
Also, you should clean off all the old lube and relube.
Quoted from slochar:Bend the guide at the top to redirect. Bend the arm that kicks the ball out.
Also, you should clean off all the old lube and relube.
This fixed the issue handily, slochar
Many thanks!
Can someone chime in please- I know I seen pics of an black knight that back glass was different as well as the apron. Wanna say back glass was in spanish? Was an export market game that another company made under liscense if I recall correctly.
Can someone post name or even better pics?
Quoted from Mtkst19:I know I seen pics of an black knight that back glass was different as well as the apron. Wanna say back glass was in spanish?
You mean "Cavaleiro Negro" by Taito do Brasil?
Picture courtesy of IPDB
https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4568
I have a question about Driver board jumpers W9 through W16 ("Switch Columns Drive")
I've read several times that these driver boards were also used in earlier machines, but with resistors in these positions,
and when used in a BK, these resistors should be jumpered out.
Well, my BK has the resistors. And the game seems to perform just fine (other than some rollover leaf switches not triggering consistently when the ball is moving really fast, even though they detect 100% in diagnostics)
Should I jumper these resistors out?
If so, fine, but WHY? What does adding the jumpers actually DO to the circuit?
Or, to ask another way: What is my BK doing sub-optimally because it has these resistors?
And the obvious follow-up question: Are these resistors linked to my horseshoe switch detection flaw? Does anyone have advice about how to improve responsiveness of rollover switches when the ball is really flying around?
Many thanks to all who offer advice.
Quoted from andylama:: Are these resistors linked to my horseshoe switch detection flaw? Does anyone have advice about how to improve responsiveness of rollover switches when the ball is really flying around
The jumpers increase the current available to drive the switches. Higher current means better detection with dirty switch contacts but at the expense of switch bounce causing multiple hits. System seven's OS has good debouncing built in.
For your horseshoe switch, reforming the wireform to be less of a point and more of a mesa ie flatter on top will help.
Quoted from Quench:You mean "Cavaleiro Negro" by Taito do Brasil?
Picture courtesy of IPDB
https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4568
[quoted image]
Crazy sound package on this game. Sound effects like an early Stern solid state, speech like a Gottlieb.
Quoted from jibmums:Crazy sound package on this game. Sound effects like an early Stern solid state, speech like a Gottlieb.
Guess they could not get SR to localize the callouts.
Pretty neat tho.. would be fun to create all sorts of callouts on that voice synth chip. Seemed like the sound effects were the same? Videos seem to have really punchy coils for a steep set up.
Quoted from slochar:The jumpers increase the current available to drive the switches. Higher current means better detection with dirty switch contacts but at the expense of switch bounce causing multiple hits. System seven's OS has good debouncing built in.
For your horseshoe switch, reforming the wireform to be less of a point and more of a mesa ie flatter on top will help.
Probably most helpful on BK with the drop target switches which really take a beating and can get very flakey compared to the rest of the switches. And I believe they can only register once per drop anyway even if the switch did bounce, since the software keeps track of them being up or down.
Quoted from frenchmarky:Probably most helpful on BK with the drop target switches which really take a beating and can get very flakey compared to the rest of the switches. And I believe they can only register once per drop anyway even if the switch did bounce, since the software keeps track of them being up or down.
The stock bk software does not track which targets are down and will happily score them over and over.
Now, is probably no surprise that the software in MY black Knight does operate the way you described.
Quoted from slochar:The stock bk software does not track which targets are down and will happily score them over and over.
Now, is probably no surprise that the software in MY black Knight does operate the way you described.
You are correct, I mistakenly thought they did on mine. Doesn't even remember that you dropped a target if you pull it back up and drop the other two before the timer runs out, even though the timer started with the first drop. No wonder they are so problematic, worse than I thought. I retrofitted my totally crapped-out switches with microswitches and no more problems.
I must've gotten it confused with my Stern Lightning which I've been doing a lot of work on, which does keep the drop status in memory.
Quoted from Quench:You mean "Cavaleiro Negro" by Taito do Brasil?
Picture courtesy of IPDB
https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4568
[quoted image]
The Gottlieb-style pop bumper looks like somebody did a weird mod.
Quoted from koji:anybody have a spare plastic piece they would sell or trade? I'm looking for the 90' piece that is right above the shooter lane..
Thank you.
[quoted image]
Same here: my piece is broken too (stupid classic mistake on my part of raising the field without removing the balls).
I do not know of this piece being sold by itself unfortunately. Maybe it is time to ask one of manufacturers that sell the entire kit: is there anybody else need this piece only?
Quoted from Charles_Kline:Making progress on getting Black Knight put back together.
Although I am not a big fan of making mods to an original game, I did choose to incorporate a couple of mods which to me enhanced the game tastefully, and since I had committed to a hard top anyway, I had already strayed from what a purist would accept. With that, you might want to consider the following:
1. Adding a light on the top field in between the two ramps so that the plastic is evenly lit;
2. Painting the rails semi-gloss black - to me, that had the nicest impact
3. Adding a strip of bright LEDs under the knight on the upper field on the RHS - results there are mixed because the plastic is not very translucent so a regular bulb won't be sufficient, and the right side of the knight is partly covered by a rail, so that part remains dark. Still, I like it better that way.
4. Adding a light on the upper playfield, to the right of the right-most ramp, behind the 90 deg plastic. There is a hole there, so I was able to place a socket easily, but I had to be careful with clearance so that the ball can still travel through the trough.
I am gone on a business trip this week, so I can't post pictures today, but I could next week if you want or care, and others have done these mods too, so there are other pics available on google.
Good luck! Your resto is coming together nicely.
Quoted from Michel_K17:Although I am not a big fan of making mods to an original game, I did choose to incorporate a couple of mods which to me enhanced the game tastefully, and since I had committed to a hard top anyway, I had already strayed from what a purist would accept. With that, you might want to consider the following:
1. Adding a light on the top field in between the two ramps so that the plastic is evenly lit;
2. Painting the rails semi-gloss black - to me, that had the nicest impact
3. Adding a strip of bright LEDs under the knight on the upper field on the RHS - results there are mixed because the plastic is not very translucent so a regular bulb won't be sufficient, and the right side of the knight is partly covered by a rail, so that part remains dark. Still, I like it better that way.
4. Adding a light on the upper playfield, to the right of the right-most ramp, behind the 90 deg plastic. There is a hole there, so I was able to place a socket easily, but I had to be careful with clearance so that the ball can still travel through the trough.
I am gone on a business trip this week, so I can't post pictures today, but I could next week if you want or care, and others have done these mods too, so there are other pics available on google.
Good luck! Your resto is coming together nicely.
For sure. Please post photos when you are back. Thanks for the ideas.
Quoted from Michel_K17:Although I am not a big fan of making mods to an original game, I did choose to incorporate a couple of mods which to me enhanced the game tastefully, and since I had committed to a hard top anyway, I had already strayed from what a purist would accept. With that, you might want to consider the following:
1. Adding a light on the top field in between the two ramps so that the plastic is evenly lit;
2. Painting the rails semi-gloss black - to me, that had the nicest impact
3. Adding a strip of bright LEDs under the knight on the upper field on the RHS - results there are mixed because the plastic is not very translucent so a regular bulb won't be sufficient, and the right side of the knight is partly covered by a rail, so that part remains dark. Still, I like it better that way.
4. Adding a light on the upper playfield, to the right of the right-most ramp, behind the 90 deg plastic. There is a hole there, so I was able to place a socket easily, but I had to be careful with clearance so that the ball can still travel through the trough.
I am gone on a business trip this week, so I can't post pictures today, but I could next week if you want or care, and others have done these mods too, so there are other pics available on google.Good luck! Your resto is coming together nicely.
I'm not into mods much either but I did do all of those lighting add-ons too awhile back, except under the knight plastic I used one socket with an extra-bright warm white LED. A #44 there didn't do much. It is a very dark plastic, but I like how now you can at least see him and his evil, glowing red eye.
Here are some lighting mods I did on my BK during a refurb/resto.
Even tho the LED strips were warm white, I still wound up putting a dimmer on to tone them down a bit more:
IMG_1578a (resized).jpg
IMG_1581 (resized).jpg
I also found an unused hole in the upper playfield (at least it was unused on my original playfield) so I put a socket and LED there:
IMG_1579a (resized).jpg
I went with Reese Rails (in black) instead of the original blonde. This pic was before I put in the brightness control for the Comet LED strips:
IMG_2555 (resized).JPG
Overall really happy with the way it turned out. Ironically, it's not complete yet - I have the coin door parts still out for powder coating. I'm using alligator clips to coin up / start a game in the meantime, lol.
IMG_2553 (resized).jpg
Quoted from Mathazar:I also found an unused hole in the upper playfield (at least it was unused on my original playfield) so I put a socket and LED there]
You sure it was unused? On my original pf, that hole is where the wires come up which go to the three top-mounted GI sockets under the long plastic. There is another hole that is unused a few inches farther down but it's right where the first socket is - where you routed your LED strip wires.
Quoted from frenchmarky:You sure it was unused? On my original pf, that hole is where the wires come up which go to the three top-mounted GI sockets under the long plastic. There is another hole that is unused a few inches farther down but it's right where the first socket is - where you routed your LED strip wires.
I think you're right! Here's a pic from my original tear down - the red arrow is the original empty hole (at least it was empty on my original playfield) that I used for the LED strip wiring, and the green arrow is the hole (under the guide) where the original wire loom came up for those three GI lights.
IMG_1508a (resized).jpgQuoted from Mathazar:Here are some lighting mods I did on my BK during a refurb/resto.
Nice work! You've given me some ideas as you used LED strips where I used the existing sockets which means I still have occasional socket reliability issues. And yes, the strips are very bright which I fixed by cutting off the LED strip rather than a pot - using a pot is a more elegant & tweakable solution.
Quoted from slochar:The jumpers increase the current available to drive the switches. Higher current means better detection with dirty switch contacts but at the expense of switch bounce causing multiple hits. System seven's OS has good debouncing built in.
For your horseshoe switch, reforming the wireform to be less of a point and more of a mesa ie flatter on top will help.
Thank you slochar
I went ahead and replaced the 330-ohm resistors with jumpers. It was the right thing to do.
I also did manipulate the wireform on the horseshoe switch (and a few others as well). Easy-peasy.
Strangely, it had no effect I can see during gameplay. It still registers inconsistently. Perfect and sensitive in diagnostics, random during actual gameplay.
I'm gonna assume it's down to the mis-manufactured leaf switch, as it is otherwise properly gapped and straight-leafed.
But a good many of the leaf switches in this unit are the notorious backward leaf contact-on-rivet mess. I'm feeling like I should just replace them ALL. They're 40 years old, they should probably be retired and replaced anyway.
Thanks again.
Has anyone else seen this confusing game behavior?
It happens randomly, maybe once every 100 games:
Ball in play, as normal. Scored a few thousand points, got a couple of targets down, timers going...
Ball drains for normal legit reasons, but is NOT handled as an End Of Ball Event.
Instead, the ball is served back up to the shooter lane, without acknowledgement or sound effect. Ball-in-play number does NOT change.
Those couple of targets are still down and the timers are still running, as if the ball had never drained at all.
Game never leaves ordinary ball-in-play mode. Timers expire, targets reset, game waits for me to re-launch the ball and resume play, as if everything was otherwise normal.
No specials or bonuses lit at any point.
I lost that ball fair and square, but the Black Knight is handing my dropped sword back to me?! For nothing?
What the heck is happening here? Does this "chivalry bug" behavior sound familiar to anyone?
Perspective: I've had my BK for only about 5 weeks now, and it has happened 5 or 6 times in hundreds of games.
This happens if the ball skips the outhole switch or takes too long to get to the trough. The game will not end a ball without the outhole switch tripping which starts a timer.
Happens on mine once in a blue moon, yeah skips the trough switch. It's when the ball happens to be traveling really fast and at just the right angle into the trough. My game is set to about 5 degrees, it might happen more the higher you have the game cranked up like a lot of folks do.
slochar & frenchmarky
Yes, that must be it. Me and my GF both seem to recall that it always happens when we 'turbo-drain' the ball, particularly from the left part of the PF. (the angle most likely to fly past the drain switch)
Actually, that's all fine with me; I just wanted to make sure I didn't have another failing diode or board problem that could be corrected.
I think at this point, my BK is playing about 99.8% perfect, and I'm very happy with it.
Thanks, folks!
Is there a Master Parts List?
I want to replace all the unreliable leaf switches and some of the Molex playfield connectors (8P1-8P8), but I can't find part numbers.
They are not called out in the manual or schematics, that I could find.
Would any BK owners here have the part numbers for these?
I have spent way too much time in Google Hell and have found almost nothing. Why is this info so hard to find?
Most PB specialists will carry the 12-position power plug and a Generic Williams leaf switch or two that MIGHT fit, or maybe not?
Can anyone enlighten me?
Many thanks!
Quoted from andylama:Is there a Master Parts List?
Planetary pinball has the parts manuals online.
Quoted from slochar:Planetary pinball has the parts manuals online.
This was exactly the Rosetta Stone I needed!
Many thanks, slochar !
Hilarious.
That catalog is weirdly missing the entire section containing connectors (and electronics).
Another website had a downloadable PDF of same, but also missing the electronics/connectors section.
I'm guessing that section was big and complex enough to be broken out in a separate book...which is MIA.
Drat, foiled again!
Does everyone just repin their existing molex connectors?
You're welcome!
I just happened to come across those diagrams the other day while searching for something else in those manuals. I remember thinking I might need that info again sometime, didn't think it would be this soon though lol!
In case it helps, these were the guides I took those pics from:
PXL_20221221_205855547.jpgDoes anyone have one red jeweled insert, I think its 1 1/8" diameter for the #3 insert in the sword.
Hoping maybe someone has a trashed playfield with loose inserts they could pull it out from or maybe some loose..
Thanks!
-Charles
BLUE Drop Targets?
I know somewhere in this 56-page thread, I saw pictures of someone's BK that has blue drop targets on the left side of the PF.
Are those commercially available somewhere, or was that a homebrew 3D-printing project?
I'd love a set of those blue ones for my table.
Quoted from andylama:BLUE Drop Targets?
I know somewhere in this 56-page thread, I saw pictures of someone's BK that has blue drop targets on the left side of the PF.
Are those commercially available somewhere, or was that a homebrew 3D-printing project?
I'd love a set of those blue ones for my table.
Never tried it, but my guess would be you could take any sys4-6 drop target (a blue one from flash?), and replace the horseshoe with the spring back plate from the BK one? Looks like the actual plastic part is the same?
If you need some, I might have some blue ones around.. or I could at least measure the hole offsets for you. I'm in Canada so shipping.. but if you want.. lmk.
Quoted from andylama:BLUE Drop Targets?
I know somewhere in this 56-page thread, I saw pictures of someone's BK that has blue drop targets on the left side of the PF.
Are those commercially available somewhere, or was that a homebrew 3D-printing project?
I'd love a set of those blue ones for my table.
Here's the post: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/black-knight-clubmembers-only/page/25#post-4543759
Out of the club since a few days..
Moving to a new house and unfortunately I can't take them all, so one had to go...
Hope to get back in the club someday
Quoted from RobDutch:Out of the club since a few days..
Moving to a new house and unfortunately I can't take them all, so one had to go...
Hope to get back in the club someday
Are you sure you chose the right one to let go?
This is a fix to the two green 2X/3X hyperactive (AKA "strobing") flashing bonus lights when doing an LED upgrade to the Black Knight pinball. The BK original code assumes a filament light bulb and when the light is "ON", the code will strobe the light bulbs at high voltage/frequency and will rely on the latency of the filament for the bulb to continue to appear turned on. The LED responds instantaneous to the ON/OFF pulses, thus creating the strobing effect.
I reached out to Jess Askey (http://gamearchive.askey.org/General/Collectors/Jess_Askey/) to find out if we could make a code change to the ROM, and that is not easily done. He also provided a great technical explanation:
So, the purpose of strobing the lamps is that with the old style filament lamps, they have residual output even after they turn off because the filament is cooling down from white hot to yellow hot and then dim. In those olden days of the 1980’s and even all the way up to recent years, the CPU and Input/Output of those hardware systems was limited. Given that you have 64 lamps in a game, that would mean that you would need 64 outputs to put a lamp on or off….. using a Matrix along with the properties of incandescent lamps to hold brightness due to the filament cooling, they were able to use the matrix to strobe the lamp and only have 8-outputs crossed with another 8-outputs… so only a total of 16 outputs… that is a factor of 4 less outputs required and in those olden days, it worked lovely. What you have of course is that only 8-lamps may be on at a time using a strobing matrix…. So it does 8 lamps at a time through the matrix and turns them on for that time period… then it moves onto the other 7 groups of 8 lamps…. Again, only 8 lamps may be on at a time and by design, you can only have a lamp on 1/7th of the time. You would think that they would be pretty dim then, however, what they did was up the voltage on those lamps so that when they were on, they turned on extra bright so the residual light was even higher and the strobing effect basically dissapeared.
With LED’s that does not work as you already know. The trick is, how can you keep an LED on while the others groups of 8 lamps are being attended too… well, unfortunately you cant. However, the there is a trick here… how can you give an LED ‘residual’ and ‘lasting’ illumination after it has lost its voltage supply? You need a capacitor, that would allow the voltage to slowly fade away and keep the LED on while the CPU is attending to the other lights. The challenge there is that you would also need a diode in line with the Lamp so that stored voltage from the capacitor did not affect the rest of the matrix, that introduces a new issue of a 0.6V drop across the diode… however, LED’s don’t need the full 6.3V so that is less of an issue.
Armed with that information, I tested various capacitors to find the right value that would turn the LED on steady during the strobing sequence, and would turn off the LED fairly quickly during the OFF portion of the sequence. I did not add an additional diode, and despite that, there was no effect on any of the other lights. I did my capacitor testing on the x3 bulb, and had an old filament bulb on the 2X location so I could compare the two side-by-side to get a faithful reproduction of the original characteristics.
In summary, the strobe inputs are spikes of 0 to 18V, but thanks to the capacitors, the 2x/3x bonus LEDs are now oscillating between 4 to 6v instead which allowed them to stay steadily on instead of strobing.
Before and after oscilloscope screenshots
Note that the capacitor value will likely change depending on which LEDs you use, and what is their minimum voltage where they remain on. I used alligator clips with various capacitors as a temporary solution until I found something that worked well (in my case, 470 uF). The LEDs that I use are the "retro" LEDs from Comet.
And here is how the capacitors are wired, but the fine print applies: i.e. "use this information at your risk".
Quoted from andylama:Is there a Master Parts List?
For solenoids, I use the information located here: https://www.pinballmedic.net/coilchart.html#top
Below is a link to my Excel spreadsheet of mostly the electronic/electrical parts for the Black Knight that you might find useful. It includes part numbers for Great Plain, Mouser and DigiKey and some purchase links, as well as some of my notes. I try to list the original part numbers, and alternate parts when available. Unfortunately, it does not include leaf switches.
https://www.rgbmod.org/Download/Black%20Knight%20Parts%20List.xlsx
Some day, I will convert that spreadsheet to a parts database.
Quoted from Charles_Kline:Does anyone have one red jeweled insert, I think its 1 1/8" diameter for the #3 insert in the sword.
Hoping maybe someone has a trashed playfield with loose inserts they could pull it out from or maybe some loose..
Thanks!
-Charles
Anyone?
Quoted from Charles_Kline:What length coil sleeves does the BK drop targets use? Mine had 2 1/16” on all 4 but the coil kit from Marco only has two 2 1/16” sleeves….
[quoted image]
Did my Black Knight have the wrong coil sleeves in it or is the Marco kit incomplete?
Michel_K17 -- This is great! Packed with practical information! Thank you so much for sharing this!
As for the leaf switches, I finally got myself a copy of the Williams 1980 parts catalog, which does have the leaf switches in it--just gotta find modern sources for some of them. My concern is that some models have become 'unobtainium' over the years.
In any case, thank you very much for this trove of info!
-Andy
Quoted from Michel_K17:For solenoids, I use the information located here: https://www.pinballmedic.net/coilchart.html#top
Below is a link to my Excel spreadsheet of mostly the electronic/electrical parts for the Black Knight that you might find useful. It includes part numbers for Great Plain, Mouser and DigiKey and some purchase links, as well as some of my notes. I try to list the original part numbers, and alternate parts when available. Unfortunately, it does not include leaf switches.
https://www.rgbmod.org/Download/Black%20Knight%20Parts%20List.xlsx
Some day, I will convert that spreadsheet to a parts database.
Quoted from Charles_Kline:Did my Black Knight have the wrong coil sleeves in it or is the Marco kit incomplete?
All 4 use the same sleeve
https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/03-7066-4
https://www.pinballlife.com/2-116-coil-sleeve.html
I just redid all of mine when doing a hardtop resto.
If you're looking to rebuild, here are the decals and some springs too.
https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/30-7603
https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/10-364
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