Just realised that I have not posted in the Data East thread... there is another DE in the house! Reimport from Switzerland no less!

Had a bad power board, replaced all the drop targets, fuse box a mess, had to polish all the hardware on playfield, repaired and repainted cabinet, repainted all the black hardware aside from coin door, replace missing mirror, repair Joe's place, made an air ball deflector, comet pinball leds, correct fuses, clean a bunch of switches, 2 new micro switches, new lamp for topper, minor repairs all over. Came out rather sweet.
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I have a soft spot for these early Data East pins and their earlier movie-licensed ones as well. I would love to eventually doll my Batman to pristine status.

Turtles to you is what Batman is too me and to agree Star Wars too. I played a ton of these when they were new on route especially Batman, Star Wars and Hook, throw Turtles in their too. Definitely nudging that Gottlieb 80A as my favorite pinball era.

As weird as this sounds Data East Batman is my grail pin. I just have a lot of personal history and nostalgia for that title.

It was quote their "stealth" coat, probably a marketing ploy, but nonetheless absolute garbage. Someone told me at one time, that NOS playfields were next to impossible (more on that later) to obtain since operators were demanding new replacement playfields when the incumbent were wearing out. Not sure if true but makes sense. I've been looking for a decent Batman for years (finally got one in the mid 2ks), but have been looking for NOS playfield just as long. Honestly, I'm still looking for a restorable candidate for mine!

GAP had one on Ebay recently... didn't know till it was too late. I know CPR has been on the hunt for one of these for a very long time. Let's face it - demand is there. Hope the new owner, if he's on here, hopefully reaches out to them.

Added a Checkpoint to the line up.

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i just picked up a batman the other day to go with my simpsons. its been in a private collection for around 15 years and actually hadn't even been touched in the past 3 years. the batteries were a bit corroded but the machine worked when i turned on, everything seemed good except for several burnt out bulbs and the display is giving the plasmaing look. just giving it a good clean up right now and going to replace all the rubbers and hopefully get the screen working again. pumped to add this one to my collection

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Any one know where I can get a replacement backbox? I purchased The Simpsons several months ago and the back box got banged up in shipping. Doesn't matter what pin a backbox comes from, as long as it is a physical fit... I've got a cabinet decal kit on hand.

Thank you.

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To be honest I'd fix that.

Take a few days as you would have to do it in stages letting glue dry but I'd do that before swapping out a back box.

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That's what I was thinking. Looks fixable to me. But some wood working tools are needed.

Data East back box's, the company failed to add angle support brackets...
which is odd, because Williams had angle brackets in their games...

Support brackets are not going to prevent shipping damage from careless monkeys.

This thing sure has a lot of light sockets.

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I'm looking for some good photos of what goes behind the "pinball" lights between the speakers in the back box on a Playboy 35th. I have a connector that goes to nothing hanging out there, and I'm guessing it goes to one of those lamp boards with the twist in sockets. Looking for some confirmation on that, and if anyone has those parts that would be great!

I had posted about my Playboy 35th about a year ago and just left it at that after a little tinkering. I ended up getting really into it last night and got it converted back over to US from the Europe power set up. Installed a new power supply, ppb board, cleaned up the mpu and installed a set of new roms from marco, cleaned up the sound board, checked out voltages and plugged it all together. Sound comes on at power up and I've got the dreaded "no blanking lamp lit". Just installed NVRam as well. No acid Damage at all. Time to look into the jumper settings (found those online) to make sure they are correct for the setup, and look into what might be causing the mpu not to boot.

Lighting almost done...

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That is a good looking play field. Interesting in how many switches are in the same positions as the switches on Robocp.

These are Robocop. I think Playboy will be the same. It is just a strip of metal, bent on the ends, 3 bulb sockets attached, and some wiring.

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I have not even buffed it out yet, still getting it working 100% and swapping over to LED. Mostly done though. Have to do some other reliability upgrades like fuses to the bridges and fresh caps on the power supply. Already the load on the wiring is substantially reduced with the led's

Laser War update in LW club area!

That's kind of what is in there now, with just 3 lamps on it. Maybe this speaker panel was swapped over from a Monday Night Football or Robocop.

Playboy 35th has a plastic in front of that light area that says "pinball" on it. Each letter should light individually as you progress in the game. I did find some photos to confirm that it is supposed to have an actual lamp board behind those letters, and it would connect to the one connector that goes to nothing. In TNT's video on Playboy 35th, theirs was missing and they created a board for that area so it would work correctly.

Got a message into them to see if they are willing to make another, but would like an original if possible. Looks to be the only game with that specific 7 lamp layout.

If anyone comes across one, I'd gladly purchase it.

Thanks!

I'm sorry. I got mixed up with one that is on eBay

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Now I am assuming that this one with the black front is correct.

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I wish you well with TNT. I talked to Todd awhile back and asked if he would do some "name your price" telephone consulting. He was at "No" and would not budge. If he smoked, I would try to ply him with box of fine cigars via a FedEX singing telegram.

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With the diagram I bet I could make the lamp section easy enough. Making a lens would not be to difficult, just letters.

I have the plastic with the lettering. It comes with all of the new plastics sets made as well, if anyone else is looking for that certain plastic for theirs.

Behind that plastic though is supposed to be a lamp board with the common black plastic 555 twist in bases, just like the lamp boards that hold a bunch of twist in lamp sockets under a play field. There is a connector that goes to that lamp board as well. If you can make a lamp board, maybe someone would be willing to let you borrow theirs so you have the correct dimensions and mounting hole placement? There is probably a pinout in the manual/schematics. I can look for the page on that info as well.

Pinball Replacement Parts makes and sells single 555 lamp boards if you want to make your own.
https://pinballreplacementparts.com/products/single-lamp-socket-for-general-playfield-socket-replacement

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I looked at the Playboy manual on IPDB. DE is rather vague about some items on its drawings. I did not see any thing related to your back box parts but reading manuals online can be a struggle.

I'll have a look at the paper hard copy I have on hand.

I see Adams Family and Dr Who both have 7 lamp boards just under the DMD, but the spacing is way to wide to use in a Playboy for the "pinball" lights.

I'm not sure the single lamp board would work either. It may also be too wide, unless you did something with 2 different depth brackets so that you could get the lamps closer together with the edges of every other board set back to the rear bracket of the 2. I don't know if the original setup had some tubes going from the lamp board to the plastic to keep the light just behind each individual letter or not, but I would think there would be something. Otherwise when you get one lit, it would look like 2-3 of them were lit up because they are so close together.

I was thinking that with the single lamp boards one might be able to trim all of the excess and bond the modified piece to a piece of phenolic strip and then drill the approiate holes to make something that might fit. But these single boards are $2.50 each so any project will probably not be dirt cheap.

Actually, they have a 7 lamp board in their Meteor lamp board set....... I happen to have a Meteor as well.... I'm going to measure and see if that board might work too......

One other thing you could do is take a strip of metal and make your light board. Drill some pilot holes where they need to be. The take a standard #44/#47 socket, and bend the flat metal bracket out to the side. Next, drill out the piloted holes to a size that will let you slide the bulb socket into the holes. Solder the metal bracket to the metal strip. And now you just made your own light board and if you used new sockets you should be golden.

Board is now booting into attract mode. Manual says possible bad b5/c5 but in reading other posts also possible bad 6808 processor, that's in a socket and I've got spare here, so swapped it out with a new one and bingo! We are up and running. Several missing coils need to be installed along with the flipper coils and other flipper parts.

That 7 lamp Meteor board from pinball replacement parts might just work based on the measuring. Just have to put together some pieces to mount it in the proper space...... I'll check with them and see if I can get just the one board to give it a try. Would be much easier than building a complete assembly.

His name is Christopher. Nice guy. I don't know if he will work with you, but does not hurt to ask.

Oh really?

Heard back from Chris today and he's willing to give this project a go.

If anyone here is willing to take photos of the board showing how it is mounted, and a good photo of each side of the board that would be AWESOME! Let's get this project rolling for all

It would also be super helpful to have dimensions between any mounting holes/brackets and the exact spacing between the lights.

I don't think this board would have diodes on it, but that is another question that will need to be answered as well.

If you can help out with information please PM me and we can get this thing rolling!

Thanks!

Will anything from my Robocop help? I can get some measurements but wonder if they will work for what you need.

Has there ever been any research into why the stealth coat was so bad (unless by stealth they mean they forgot to put it on wahh ohh). From my extremely limited chemistry expertise and all the pictures I've seen of TMNT and Batman playfields. The hard coat doesn't seem to wear evenly at all but just chip and crack. And when it chips and cracks it takes all the paint underneath with it. It almost seems like maybe a humidity thing combined with the inherent vibration of a pinball machine. Trying to clean and wax the things might have even made it worse. Hard coat cracks, it's then shaken lose by at the vibrations and then you come along and clean it with a rag and end up breaking up the clear coat even more.

That's the only explanation I can see fitting with the completely random and unexplainable wear patterns on so many playfields. Wear spots under the ramps on TMNT. Wear spots in the outlines and above the apron on Batman. They're are so many playfields with bare wood exposed in places where either the ball never even touches, or the ball is moving extremely slow and the player has no real control over it. I'm exaggerating a little of course but thank god they fixed it relatively quickly and only these two games seem to really have a problem(bad batch, improper application, QC issues in general who knows). This is a perfect example of why Williams spent like 4 years testing diamond plate before they finally put it on everything.

Unfortunately Robo cop is completely different. Those are just 3 GI lights behind that plastic between the speakers, just like my Laser War and Monday Night Football.

In Playboy 35th, there is supposed to be an actual lamp circuit board with 7 lights on it and a connector attaches to this board from the cabinet wire harness. Each light is controlled individually and light up a specific letter of the word "pinball" as you progress in the game.

Very nice.

What I started with, came out ok.

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Has anyone come up with a better playfield slide mechanism for Data East machines? This is perhaps the most difficult playfield to put back in place of any of the machines I have. I have some wear on the one pivot pin and now would be a good time to upgrade it if someone makes a retrofit.

What game style? If like Star Wars / Jurassic Park...
I add grease to the metal side slides.

Have you seen this?
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/jurassic-park-club/page/112#post-4916234

Yes, I already have those...and they're a huge help, but I'm talking about the pivots at the top of the playfield...that slide on the rails...

Has anyone pulled the whole playfield on a Rocky and Bullwinkle? Just wondering in advance how many wires need to unplug and how it lifts out. My old Stern, Bally, and Williams games are easy but this one isn’t as obvious.

I have a set of game blades to install and want to pull the playfield for access.

Data East made their games so that the whole playfield could be lifted out
and sit next to the cabinet.
The guy that was the head sales man, for Data East, took a LW3 playfield out to demonstrate
the deference between their game and Williams... "Try and do this with a Williams playfield"
He was also exited that he was one of the image models; for the two guys that gave a high five
in the DMD animation sequence.

But you are still going going to have to disconnect all of the wiring? Correct?

I look at my Robocop wiring a lot to prepare myself for when I have to pull the play field. If you are disconnecting just one board it is easy to get connectors back in the right spots. You just sort of work in a circle and disconnect each connector like you are going around a clock. All of the wires are color coded and all connectors are keyed in a manner that cross plugging a connector is almost impossible.

But for removing the entire play field I am going to be color coding the wires with the rainbow of colored tie wraps I have. The MPU wires will be red. The sound board will be green. The PPB board will be blue.

I'll also be using my label maker and labeling the connectors.

DE uses connector numbers: CN-1, CN-2, CN-3, etc.

My labels will be MPU-CN1, MPU-CN2 etc.

Maybe I am making it too difficult and I hope vet-tor will correct me if I am. But absent that, I am going be labeling and color coding every connector.

I had to pull head off Laser War to get pin out of guys basement, where the wiring went was pretty self-evident and most of the connectors are keyed to prevent screw up. Took lots of pictures to be safe.

I currently have a R&B playfield that I pulled out for shopping to prep for a sale (so watch out anybody who's interested). I labeled all the connectors in the same way cottonm4 did. Comes out really easily once you have everything unplugged and labeled, albeit a tad heavy for one person to do safely. Might be best to ask a partner or friend to help.

But yes, additionally, the playfield can be taken out fairly easily without unplugging everything as well.

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Ahh, I get it. Yeah, my JP is a real pain compared to my Getaway (which isn't great) and my AFMr (ideal setup).

I didn’t think any of the playfield harnesses would be long enough to do that with out disconnecting them. I have help so lifting it out won’t be an issue. Just think it will be so much easier to install the game blades with it out.

http://elkhartpinball.com/RockyAndBullwinkle.htm

Proof is in the pictures!

I haven't installed mine yet, but others report that the EZ Slide brackets from Back Alley make a big difference.

https://backalleycreations.com/collections/ez-slide-brackets/products/ez-slide-slider-bracket