Has it really been 20 years?

Most of the speech in the game was recorded custom for the game by Tim Curry, Ernie Hudson and Shayna Fox (Amy).

20 Year Congo design team mini reunion. John Trudeau, Ernie Hudson and myself at the Stern 30 year celebration.

IMG_1294 (resized).JPG

That is the correct operation of the diverter. The ramp enter switch was too unreliable to use to trigger the diverter. The coil is noisier than expected due to the duty cycle used to reduce the power to the coil while it is being held down. The duty cycle and coil type were carefully chosen to allow it to remain held down almost indefinitely without overheating.

That is correct. On CONGO, both upper and lower flippers fire at the same time. There is no 'staging'.
That was my choice and the way I wanted them to operate for this game.

These two connectors do not go to any device on the playfield. They are a splice for wires in the harness that needed to be longer than the automated wire cutting machine could handle. The factory would use the regular molex lugs to splice the wires and add the connectors to keep them from shorting on any other parts.

Sorry, but this is not correct.

Hi All, How about a little fun while everyone is stuck at home.....

This year is the 25th anniversary of the CONGO game. December 5, 1995 was the official production start date. CONGO was also the last pinball game assembled at the Williams/Bally California Ave plant. And the very_ last CONGO game built there was signed on the bottom my most of the design team. So, I've always wondered where this 'last' game ended up and if it survived. Anyone want to look under their games?

All manufacturing moved to Waukegan after Congo. And a short time later they also built slot machines there.

That does not even look like a the correct Congo part. It should have a vertical line of lights on the left side:

https://www.ipdb.org/images/3780/image-20.jpg

You should be able to use just about any insert panel from this era games. You can drill extra holes where needed.

The power to the coil is duty cycled (pulse-width modulation) to reduce the chance of it overheating. The buzzing is normal and expected. With the glass on, it's much less noticeable. You still should make sure all of the parts of the up post are correctly assembled to minimize the buzzing.

All of these lamps are on the lamp matrix column 4. The other lamps on the column are: Diamond Left Loop, "We Are", and the "Skill Shot" lamp (which I can't tell if it's included in your non-working list from the picture.

If none of these 8 lamps are working, I would look for a broken Yellow-Black wire somewhere between the backbox and the playfield or a bad column drive on the IO board.

If any of the lamps in this list still work, there is probably a broken Yellow-Black wire (or loose connector) on the playfield somewhere.