SO I picked up a Bride of Pinbot last week after seeing it come up here in the afternoon. I called the guy, left an email, and called again. Got a couple pics of it, PF pretty rough and downright chewed up in a couple of spots, some inserts lifted, standard breakage on the Shuttle Ramp plastics near it. Flippers wouldn't work, game wouldn't run through diagnostics. It was short a ball but did boot up, ran slow. Loading the head for metamorphosis would just plain take a long time. Several lights out and when I can get through the light test some don't work and others flash multiple lights they should not flash.

Having just completed several repairs on my Bad Cats, shopping and repairing a Space Invaders to 100% operation from probably 85%, and working out the last kinks of a very hacked Rollergames (though it is Diamond Plate and the PF is in pretty good shape), all in just about 2 months, I think I'm ready to try and document some of this. For the time being my main goal is to get the game playing 100%, as clean as possible and then restore over time, unless a better one comes around I can afford, then I'll just get it clean and 100% functional. My long term goal is to do the P-ROC mod and likely use some of Dutch Pinball's software, but perhaps modify it as I'm not really into their music choices, etc.

Unfortunately I have already missed some photo opportunities to start with, but I'll try to get some as I go along. To begin with, I think I'll start with just the CPU as it obviously had battery damage and was never cleaned, neutralized, etc. It's kind of surprising it workes at all, though it isn't too bad. I happen to have on hand some lm339s, the ULN2803, and most likely all the resistors and possibly caps I need. I won't have a BOP manual for a few days so the CPU schematics are out of reach as they are not in the ipdb pdf. I would love if someone could do a good scan of the CPU schematic so I am sure of some of the values. I'm ordering the PPS repro manual from PBL tomorrow but would love to get this thing put back together tonight and tomorrow.

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Removed several chips and the uln2803 socket, pulled back resistors to clean (will remove soon). Gave it the 50/50 white vinegar/distilled water and toothbrush treatment. Rinsed with distilled water then 91% Isopropyl Alcohol. Traces look okay, but I will still likely do a super fine grain sanding and tin the traces to be sure once I get the holes cleaned out. Wish I had a real desoldering station. I might be mocking up a reducer for my vacuum to create a powerful solder sucker for this job. Hopefully things will work at least as good as before I did this (and better).

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Mocked up a makeshift desoldering vacuum using vinyl tubing and my busted desoldering tool. Hope I didn't static crap anything. Ordering an 808 in the next day or so but really wanted to get on this thing. Looks decent. Used super fine snadpaper to clean up a bit, thus the haze. Will post later when it's all put back together and ready to 'boot'. (fingers crossed).

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Make sure you find a way to filter that vacuum, don't want to fill the house with lead dust....
Looking forward to your progress.

Well, it's actually my shop.

Here's the works. I've got the CPU back in, running, etc. Timing still seemed to be off though. The game seems to have a love hate relationship with the head. All of its switches test out though. And yeah, I was very relieved to have it boot right up. Just glad to have that corrosion off the board. Have to pick up a 3 or 4 AA holder, hopefully Radio Shack has them. I have some on order from Tayda, but that will be a week or so.

Replaced probably 30 or more lamps, reflowed the solder on one really dirty light board (circle board). Here's a few pics, and then some more. Thanks for following all. Now to hopefully fix the messed up display on my Bad Cats, though I think one of the digits gassed out.

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Some strange things. For one, and I didn't take a pic, one of the flipper bases had the coil stop mount bolts welded back on, bent so I had to bend it straight. Another weld on the small wheel tunnel. Finally, all lit up.

Still many issues, timing, PF needs cleaning (and touch up), couple of inserts are really poking out and don't want to sit (any ideas how to reseat without removing them?), backglass lights out (haven't checked all the fuses yet - several hours into recovering the CPU).

I could so do this every day...

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I can safely say I love this machine. I've pretty much got almost everything working. Took lots of hours of soldering, and I've got tons of cleaning to do but it will be hard to stop playing long enough to shop it! Love the sound, theme, it just rocks. I got hooked playing it on TPA on my iPAD and now I seriously can't stop playing (except to eat and type this). More pcb work to come though, I think the chase board for the helmet has issues so I'll look into that.

The Bride needs a husband now!

Wire gates on the Jet bumper lane and the Shuttle Ramp entry were these janky orc-made things. Got the left wire gate (W shape actuator) from Steve @ PBR and also the piano wire to make the other wire from him. Think the jet lane turned out pretty good. First the before shots:

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Now the after:

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I may have to make the right end of the jet lane gate fold back a bit to keep it from traveling 'back' and flipping up out of the way but it works great otherwise.