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The underside of the playfield is complete Just the ball eject to sort out once I've got time to sort it into place along with the autolaunch and the manual plunger.

Loaded the playfield back into the cabinet.

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Now it's time to tidy up the bomb site that our main table has been for the last week or two.

I finished work for the holidays yesterday, so I'm hoping to get this back up and running over the next few days. Got the ball trough sorted out and the outhole kicker back on, along with the kickback and some of the ball guides. Tomorrow I'm going to do the topside soldering (coils, flashers) while I can still get to them, then hopefully the rest will go back together quite quickly...

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I might well do the same, I'll see how it feels. I put a red one on because it matches the powdercoat (Actually not true, it was the only one in my box of spares).

Flasher sockets and solenoids all wired up. All the ball guides and rails are also back on now, and I've been testing the GI with an external power supply just to check the wiring. With a bit of luck the playfield might be all done tomorrow.....

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Didn't do anything with the playfield topside today, but I have reconnected the playfield wiring and worked through the backbox wiring. I've removed the wiring for the alphanumeric displays and the sound, that decluttered things a bit - the looms were separate so no cutting involved and I can always put them back one day if need be. Still need to tidy up the wiring a little, but it's up and running.

So with the boards installed, crossed fingers and power on. GI lit up as expected, no bangs or flashes or blown fuses.

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Inside the backbox, only one original board On the left is the P-ROC, next to which is the Sys11 / P-ROC driver board. Top right is a Rottendog power supply (the original was toasty). Bottom right is one of Inkochnito's (Peter Koch) bridge boards. In my F-14 the bridge rectifiers and huge smoothing capacitor for the controlled lamps were the original 1987 vintage ones, and I'd never installed the extra 2 fuses that Williams forgot. Peters board takes care of replacing the rectifiers, capacitor and putting the 2 fuses in. So the only original board is the flipper power supply! I also fitted a new fuse block to replace the somewhat corroded ones that were in there.

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More details on the bridge board are here if you missed Peter's original thread..

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bridge-board-available-for-williams-games

Cut the 12v red LED strip to some suitable lengths, soldered wires to them and put some heat shrink on to insulate them. These will be used in "stealth mode" or something similar - the GI will switch off and some or all of these strips will be lit instead. It should be a bit like the "Condition Green" effect on Space Station.

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Installed all the LED strips and connected them up for a test. The effect isn't as red as this photo makes out, and once the plastics are all fitted it should be a little more subtle. That said when this happens in the game I'll probably switch the radar "ring" to red and all the RGBs too....

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I also found a little time to start putting some more back on the playfield. We have a slingshot! The plastics are a new set that I bought from CPR some long time back and was keeping for a day like today! I'll hang on to the old ones as spares as they're in pretty good condition.

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Anyone know how to get the riveted parts out of the plastics and refitted to the new ones without breaking anything? Hmmm......

I am excited, but I'm English, so I'm supposed to be a little more "reserved", right?

I guess it's just been a long multi-month slog to get this far which is enough to sap the energy a little. I've had enough of screws, wires, drilling, more wires, skinned knuckles, more wires etc This is only my second playfield swap (I did a Funhouse before) and this was *way* harder especially with all the drilling. I also keep losing stuff - I bought a ton of parts over the last couple of years and put them "somewhere safe" where I will easily find them later. We all know how that works, right? Took me an hour to find those new plastics, and I gave up trying to find the new blue star posts and bought some more. Of course I then found the others in the box with my gas soldering iron. How on earth did they end up in there?

I just want it to be back together now and running, so I can play the original game via pinmame and get moving forward with the new Second Sortie code. I've got a bunch of ideas to try out in the code, but don't want to try it out in the virtual machine any more, I want the real one!!

So no worries, I'm really looking forward to getting this working and can't wait to post the first videos of the current SS software running on this beauty!!!!!! Not long now

Now you can see why I left the trough eject and the shooter lane switch until last. F-14 has auto-launch!!

It's kinda cosy getting it all into place, and I had to reverse the little bracket that the shooter lane switch is on, but it's all looking good. I might need to remove a few windings from the coil if it's not strong enough (or connect it to the flipper power instead of regular solenoid voltage) as the ball has to be plunged a long way, but we'll see how that works once the game is up and running. I'm sure this and a few other things will need some fine-tuning.

So that's all the mechanicals done!! Now back to the playfield topside....

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I'm not sure which machine had the first autolaunch, I guess sometime late 1980s. I'm really looking forward to using mine - ball save is one obvious item, and then being able to start a multiball at any time will be the real kicker (so to speak).

I have mine connected to the one spare driver on the F-14. The P-ROC interface board has another 8 drivers of which I'll use some for the LED strips, leaving a few others in case I think of something..

This is likely my last update for the year, got prep for Christmas Day to get done tomorrow, then on Saturday we're off to Germany to visit the in-laws until the New Year. Not much left to do though, at least from the machine point of view. Here's a cracker of a photo, those new plastics look really cool.... (and yes, I know the playfield needs a wipe below the flippers!)

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Yeah. On the F-14 I've got to get the ball launched up the wireform and all the way to the top left of the playfield, so it's going to need a good kick. Chances are I'll end up removing a few turns on the coil, or connecting it to the 50v flipper power (or both). We'll soon see (and thanks to Jim and Scott for the inspiration to fit the autolauncher to mine).

Happy Holidays all

Hmm. I'd need to add a "family" setting, not sure how appropriate that is for my 11 and 13 year old sons. At least at home; I'm sure they here worse at school from time to time

So, while I was away for New Year, I remembered that I'd bought a set of plastic protectors for my F14. Spent around an hour looking for them just now. Found them in the CPR bag containing the other plastics. See - I can put things in a sensible place sometimes. I might not always look in the right place, but at least I'd thought about it originally

So, plan for tomorrow is to finish populating the playfield and see if we can get some flipping going on. Watch this space

Yeah, like next time my parents are here for dinner

Connected up some more of the playfield to check the wiring before I continue. Got me some things to sort out

No matrix switches at all are registering with the P-ROC. I suspect that's wiring related somewhere, will need to check the continuity. Direct switches from the coin door are fine.

Some lamps are coming on together. That'll be due to a missed or reversed diode somewhere I suspect, maybe not too surprising given that all the sockets and diodes are new. I need to fix the switch matrix first though, since at the moment I can't step through the single lamp test to work out what's going on!

Time for a coffee and the break out the meter.....

Most of the F14 coils are 34v, but some also run 50v. My nearest take-off for 50v will be the right flipper.

Ha!

The switch matrix works much better if you don't swap the row and column connectors by mistake

Got a few switches out, that might be because I don't have the ramps and wireforms yet, so some of the switches are not in the matrix yet, so there could be a break that way. More coffee.....

So, we have lamps and switches working.

Found an unattached wire in one of the switch columns, that got them all working. Couple of the rollover switches needed a little adjustment, now working fine.

Lamps - found 3 next to each other where I'd soldered the wires to the wrong end of the diode. Fixed that and that stopped the "double blink" issue. Found 3 lamps that weren't working didn't have a bulb in (Doh). Found 2 others where a wire had come adrift. So they're all working fine now.

Ran through a coil/flasher test and they all seem good, the autolaunch is even kicking on the "unused" driver which is good too.

GI wouldn't switch off in test, found that I had a connector trapped underneath the driver board, so freed that up and connected it, all good.

On the subject of GI, can someone tell me why I forgot to install the pop bumper lamp socket? I've got back ache from leaning in at some stupid angle trying to fish those through and get them soldered up. Done now though.

Something I'm going to need to work on is making some changes to pinmame to drive those RGB lamps via the Arduino. The Arduino code I already wrote should do the job just fine, I just need to persuade pinmame to talk to it and drive the lamps white when needed. But that's software, for later.

Now I'm going to start fitting the rest of the playfield back on.... getting close !!!!

Done for today. Didn't get it finished as sorting out the lamps and switches took longer than I expected, but made good progress. Got some more plastics fitted and the first 2 powdercoated habitrails. One took some persuasion as the holes I drilled seem to be a couple of mm off, but sorted it out in the end.

Picture so far.... I have one of the LED bumper rings from Comet Pinball in the bumper, I think it looks good. I also have one of the foil bumper decals for F14 but haven't decided if I want to fit it yet.

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Will have to wait and see if I get time tomorrow to do some more. Son has a football (soccer) match in the morning, then my wife has a list of "things to attend to"

Moving on

Son's match was postponed, got my "things" attended to so had some more time. The playfield hardware is finished

I still need to do some tweaking here and there.... the upper divertor is binding sometimes and a number of switches need a little adjustment. I've also misplaced the wire gate from the ball trough so need to make a new one, at the moment the ball bounces back into the outhole all the time. The clear plastics on the right I didn't mount yet either.

I've got two of the F14 plastic ramps. One is in reasonable condition but is a bit warped. The other isn't warped but the lamp sockets are corroded and unfortunately they're riveted in. Hopefully someone might make new ramps someday (looking at you Mr Freeplay!).

Next steps (apart from sorting out the divertor and switches) is to mount the Arduino under the apron and connect it to the RGB lamps so we can get those up and running. I'm really looking forward to when this gets to the point that it's 100% software and doesn't involve a pile of tools and parts and screws etc.

Here's a photo of the playfield finished up as it looks at the moment - I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel now - yayyyyy

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Actually, the other ramp I have isn't slanted at the end, so I assumed that the one I've fitted is a little warped. But the other ramp has cruddy lamp sockets so I decided to live with the slant for now rather than lamps that will come and go. Might change my mind later though, we'll see.

Maybe. On the ramp I quite like being able to see the ball, and on the right side now I've got those nice red rails it would be a shame to cover them up.

Thought I'd read that somewhere. I know early days, but are you thinking of selling it with all that hardware on, or letting folks transfer it over? The 6 lamps are riveted on, as are the 3 metal pieces that the wireforms screw on to, plus all the wiring for the lamps and switches.

Why thank you !

Going to try and get the Arduino and those LED segment displays mounted under the apron today. Whilst working getting the playfield mechanics adjusted I blew a couple of fuses and found that I don't have any spare, so I can play with the "pretty" stuff while waiting for some more to come in the post.

Ah, the RGB colour model

Been chewing on some simplification to the hook between the game code and the controlled RGB lamps via the Arduino. While I was in there, I added the missing "simple" colours which come from the simple colour mixing.

May I present to you - Red, Green, Blue, White, Yellow, Cyan and Magenta.

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In this picture the yellow looks a little orange and the white a touch pink, but in person they're correct

Could be Actually, I'm not sure if I'll use all those colours except maybe in attract mode, but they're available if I want to use them.

I also just wired up my first test of everything connected to the Arduino and doing stuff at the same time. That's 16 RGB playfield inserts, one 16 RGB ring running the "radar sweep" effect, plus a couple of the segmented LED displays running counters at different speeds. It's all running just fine, so the single Arduino mounted under the apron will do the trick. Yay