I'm following your thread... great job so far, it will be soon a whole new machine! good luck with the dremel job. one day maybe it will be my turn to install a hard top on this machine, so I take notes

Quick update... Not much done these past 10 days. I managed to spend only few hours of EBD time during this period... Kids home-schooled and busy job are not helping... at all.

I had a closer look at the transformer board. Filthy!

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But surprisingly... All the voltages are testing good! All the test points are showing the expected values.
I will still replace the bridge rectifiers. Someone relocated them to the side of the board, directly glued to the metal plate. As you can see, the soldering and wiring job is not.... ideal
And definitely, I need to give a big big clean up to this metal plate, board, connectors and transformer...

I also primed my front of cabinet...
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But I should have done a better job at filling the wood to hide the grain... This is not good looking. I will sand and start from scratch.

And I started to take care of the new light board...
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I sanded and primed... but in some places in the top part the wood particles are really visible (some light humidity damage). Same... I will sand, wood-fill and try again.

I just spent 15 minutes cleaning it up (first pass)
- removed the rust with steel wool
- removed the goo with "goo gone"
- cleaned up with mean green, rinsed with water, dried with cloth

now it's clean... and smooth... but not good looking

not sure if I'm going to paint it... and be careful with all the locations requiring electrical contact for ground... the paint will have to be scratched to allow conductivity.
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@Mathazar... You'll find a great example of black transformer plate in the making here, from HEP:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/hep-this-week-9-17-18/page/27#post-4702358

from the thread: "They are then lightly blackened using a black metal etching primer. This gives it both a nice bond and the correct look I am after. Kind of industrial or military like but clean."

Some painting happened this week-end...
Not my favorite activity... Had to restart a couple of time to get the desired results.
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But for now I'm happy with my front cabinet. And the light board looks like new! Except for a little drip, but this is exactly where the light baffle will go, so should not be notiveable.

As you can see, for the front of the cabinet, I took the easy route of using the stencil from EBD 84'

Ok... It's now time to paint the inside... A good way to get rid of stains and bondo marks. I'm going for full black sides and bottom board natural. I won't go crazy on the finish as it is the inside, but it will definitely looks better.

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Paint job sponsored by Trader Joe's

Ok... not much EBD time these past few days... However this long week-end should allow me to progress a bit on the project.

Where was I ? Oh yes my last update was about the inside paint.

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I was hesitating to do it, because, remember, my goal is to make it a player first... and who cares about inside paint when it comes to play ? But honestly, that's a game changer... it looks so clean now! I don't regret the time spent.

And a bit of black gloss on the neck grid will look good as well!

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Now the ground braid...
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And with this step I reach a big milestone.... the cabinet moved from the garage to the house... No need anymore to work on it in the heat of a non-AC equipped Texas garage!

Cleaned up the siderails.... nothing crazy. mean green and scotch brite. Enough to get rid of the light rust.
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Drilled the missing flipper button hole....
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The cream of the backbox frame looked not only used but dirty... So I decided to sand and paint it. I identified "lime gelato" from Sherwin Williams to be quite a good match.
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And it definitely looked a lot better with a fresh layer (without touching the stenciled areas)
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Now what I get really starts to look like a pinball machine!
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I can't wait to start having electrical issues instead of wood working, sanding and painting issues

Remember this super rusty lockbar receiver...
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Well... Vinegar did its work... no more rust, but heavily pitted of course, and not really shiny... but like I said: "solid and clean"
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I built a new wooden "switch support" for the bottom of the cabinet... nothing crazy here, but I like before/after pics
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I took a bit of time to rebuild the tilt panel as well...
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I flipped the wood board, cleaned all the items with scotch brite and soap, rerouted the wires properly, and molex'ed the thing to make it practical. It now looks a lot better!
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I know it's not the type of molex you find in these machines... but I have a lot of these "minifit" on hand, and good tooling to crimp them.

That's where I am now:
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Lovef2k will ask why the heck I have not drilled the hole for the shooter yet

Not sure why I postponed so far... I guess I'm so proud of my pure and even black paint on the front of the cabinet that I'm afraid to drill a hole in it

But I will soon as the game won't be fun if I cannot launch a ball into the playfield!

I guess you're right... not the best strategic decision... I was under the impression I would make sure of the shooter alignment only once the playfield is in... but it may not be that practical... oh well... it will be ok

Time to play a bit with electronics...

Let's take care of the solenoid board... after a basic clean up with soap, I replaced the 3 electrolytic capacitors. The new ones are a lot smaller!
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I also added the 2 or 3 bridges advised by pinwiki...
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Then I tested all the transistors with my DMM... They all tested good. (more convenient to do this now than when it is in the machine)

Time to install the board in the backbox to see if I get good voltages.... and yes! they all tested good, especially the steady 5VDC... It means I can safely install my MPU board.

As I said earlier... I will use a LISY35 from bontango for the MPU. It took me few nights to assemble, but looks like it's working well so far.

Who would have thought that a 1977 power supply board would one day power up a 2020 raspberry based system....
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What's awesome with LISY is that it provides a web interface you can connect to from any phone or computer to perform any type of test, in a very precise manner... Solenoids, switches, display and so on.

So let's test the 40+ year old plasma displays by displaying "8888888" on each of them...
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And... Impressive! I can't believe they survived that long in such a humid environment. Only "player 4" has a little issue, the top left segment is off on all digits... Maybe it can be fixed. I'll investigate.

I had purchased in advance some LED displays as I was not counting on these to work Now I need to choose which one to use... plasma or led...

Thanks! I confirm your memory is right... However Q18 appears to test ok from basic DMM test... Anyway I'll order a transistor and a decoder and change both... but I wait to accumulate issues before placing an order, to save on shipping. I'm sure I'm going to need more things in the coming days!

Lock bar receiver installed today!

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And then I worked on the shooter rod........ and sh*t happened

As you know the original front panel of the machine was rotten and destroyed... So no way to use it as a model to know where the rod was. So I used a template from a Xenon machine... a Bally from the same era. And then... after having drilled and properly installed the whole thing... I figured out that the Xenon and EBD cabinets were different. The Xenon rod is way lower than the EBD one......................... so I drilled the front panel at the wrong location... you know, the nice front panel I spent so much time painting... lol. Oh well, lesson learned. Measure twice and verify physically with your playfied before you drill something! I will drill higher and find a way to mask the other hole. To be continued...

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Mistake "fixed".......................
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I'll have to find the best way to fix this... Structurally speaking there is no issue, knowing the hole is way higher than the other one... But... I guess I'm not done with painting after all!

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing... I guess they were repurposing cabinets depending on the needs.

Ok..... time to fix that thing and move on...

First I created a "wood plug" shaped like the mean bad hole which ruined my Sunday night
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I glued it inside
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Then 2 layers of bondo... nicely sanded with fine grid... quite ugly but with your eyes closed you cannot tell where the hole is
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After that... painting... well I could not use spray paint inside my house... so paintbrush only... and some novus 2 to try to blend the touch up.
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Not perfect... but pretty good. Good enough!
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If I'm courageous enough one of these days... I'll bring the machine outside and spray paint the whole front panel to make this disappear... Maybe it will be the opportunity to actually stencil it.

Ok I brought in the playfield... It was stored and I have not looked at it for a while.

Man, that thing is old and heavily used!!! Never saw a playfield that yellowed. The plastics are really really faded and dark, no way to recover anything from them... nothing is transparent anymore.

This is going to be quite some work on top and below... I see rusty solenoid plungers...

First easy test... installing the playfield and connecting the GI power...
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I see 3 GI lights on........ that's a start

"Backbox light" week-end job...

I know these sockets don't get much love... but once cleaned I got 90% of the ones from the backbox working pretty well.

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Stapling session...

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I'm going full warm white LEDs for the backbox (I'll do LED for the inserts as well, and I think I'll keep the incandescents for the playfield GI)

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And then wiring and soldering... well as much as I could

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Once the cat was gone, I managed to finish wiring up and stapling all the GI lamps of the backbox... Here a quick test with a 5V power supply (this is without the harness, so some bulbs are not connected yet):
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I cleaned up the lamp extension board, and removed the ugly ground fix that was done to it (see post #42). Then I hooked up the harness... That took more time than planned... Some corroded wires were not really cooperative when trying to solder them to the bulb sockets! But the results is quite OK, I like my fresh new door!
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I'm keeping the playfield GI as incandescent... But I put leds under all the inserts... quite a task. The leds are quite hard to fit in these old 555 sockets... but when they're in, the contact is usually pretty good. Here is a nice picture from underneath... And yes, I need to get rid of these fuse holders.
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I have 2 inserts stuck on... and 2 that never turn on... But the led and sockets are good... so maybe a transistor or a faulty connector... I'll troubleshoot this later.

And there is ONE bulb that I have not changed yet... I guess the whole drop target assembly has to be removed to reach it ?? I'll do that later too!
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Backbox door fully installed and functional... with new light baffles and original displays.

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