Fathom Owners Club & Restorations Thread Fans Are Also Welcome

Hope all is well. Anyone have a spare cpr pf. Just picked up a fathom
Thanks in advance!

just asking as i have seen Fathoms that have yellow paint on the cabinet is this correct
or is green the correct color ? for the bally and other parts
please see pic of my cab
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Ouch!

Would think most are green. Here's a side by side of the two from earlier in this thread:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fathom-owners-club/page/3#post-2132735

Have a look through this threads image gallery for more pics:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fathom-owners-club/page/13?gallery#g

Thankyou Quench,
I prefer the green so i will probably stick with that color
i thought it may have changed color over time like the playfield

Ran across a hack that I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never had to deal with so I don’t have any reference pictures from past Bally’s I’ve done to compare. The jumpers on the plug from the transformer connection were hacked and I have one stray that isn’t jumpered. I’m not sure if it’s needed or not. Obviously I’ll address the shoddy hacks once I get things sorted out. Can any fathom owners out there shoot my a picture of there jumpers?

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Let me know if you need better shots or a pin out.
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EDIT: Wow my machine is a mess... I just picked it up a few weeks ago.

Thank you. I found the jumper order hidden in the manual (go figure, lol). I’m perplexed what this stray blue wire is/was. Well at any rate, doesn’t solve my problem i was trying to diagnose but at least I know I can remove it.

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How many fathoms have the black trim around the front of the backbox? I assumed mine was just an operator hack, but surprised to see pinoffski ’s has exactly the same? Was it possibly another “factory” variation like the yellow. And on mine the backbox stand is also matching black.

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My trim is blue, the stand is black.

Some before and after pictures of my latest fathom restauration , a bit similar of the one of " skins " now.

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Does anyone have a good scan of a Fathom backglass? I purchased an otherwise nice original backglass from another pinsider.
I want to do some very minor repair to and I am planning on using a couple of water slide decals to make up for the missing sections at the very bottom near the Tilt and one small spot in the green coral.
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Just posted my Fathom for sale In the Ads section, Lots of new parts including PF, backglass, topper, plastics and more.

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Any gameplay experts out there? I have no experience on this game so I’m not sure if this behavior is normal. It doesn’t seem like it but wanted to verify. If I trap a ball 3 times in either inline, the theirs time the drops don’t reset. In the video, the 2nd drop didn’t catch on reset but I promise the behavior I described happens either way. Thanks.

It looks like you're missing a wireform to prevent the second ball getting caught. See the wireform next to the saucer here:

https://images.pinside.com/b/7c/5e/b7c5e39c9d3ea31b44badf9fa264f926b0c71eb1.jpg

Sorry I don't have access to a game to confirm. Hopefully someone else chimes in.
But I do see that happen with the side saucer when re-locking the ball in multiball mode on Visual Pinball. Making the same color targets on the left 6 bank as the inlines releases the ball. I presume the same behavior with the top right saucer.

On your video, I got the sense that you did not drain both of the balls after the second time the ball was captured. I suspect by draining only one ball, your machine interpreted this as losing one of the two multi-balls putting you back into single ball mode and that’s why the in- lines went back up. When you did it the second time and didn’t drain a ball, it assumed you were again in multi-ball.
Within the single ball mode, when the ball is trapped, the in-line targets pop up. Once released, you are in multi-ball mode and things act differently depending on how many balls are in play. After the final ball drains, (triggering advancing to the next ball in play and collecting the bonus) everything resets back to single ball mode.

However, in multi-ball mode, after the in-line drop targets are dropped and one of the balls end up in the saucer again, the in-line drop targets do not pop up. The ball just sits in the saucer with the in-line targets down. That ball is then only ejected from the saucer when you complete the left playfield drop targets of the matching color (green or blue depending on which saucer your ball currently rests). The fact that your video shows the second ball hitting the star rollover and eliciting the “help me!” quote is consistent with what I’m describing above.
If your ball is in in this state, and then you drain all balls in play and advance to the next ball, the targets should reset. Mine do each time. If I release a trapped ball by knocking down the in-line targets in subsequent balls in play, it acts the same as I’ve described each time. There is no instance where on a new ball in play that the ball is not trapped and the in-line targets go up the first time.
Try your test again, but remember that your machine will think it’s in multi-ball until it sees two balls drain and you collect the bonus. If you want to test the reset within multi-ball mode (with out advancing/collecting bonus) make sure you drain that second ball that was stuck by the trapped ball. It should count down your bonus, reset the targets and advance to the next ball in play (unless you have earned an extra ball, but just avoid that for now while testing your game out)

Wow, great write-up and explaination. I appreciate it very much. You are correct, I wasn’t draining the final ball in the video. You confirmed the 3rd time the inclines don’t reset. Thank you very much. Now I’m off to correct the wire form. Thanks guys.

So I filmed a longer video because I see some randomness to the inclines that I can’t repeat by just manually triggering drops. Particularly at the approximate 4:09 minute mark you’ll see the upper kick out while there’s still drops up causing the ball to hit the back side. I also had an instance (not captured on video where 4x & 5X were down but 3x wasn’t and the ball got kicked out of the green in lines. Something just seems off but again, until now, I had zero gameplay experience on a fathom.

I suggest you carefully examine the solder connections to the header pins on the solenoid expander board under the playfield, as well as the terminals in the connecting plug. The "drop" coils for the in-line drop targets are controlled via the expander board, and a common failure mode associated with poor connections at the expander board is the "drop" coils not energizing - resulting in the behavior you mention. Re-flowing the solder on the header pins and replacing the terminals inside the connecting plug is worth doing for long-term reliability.

Thanks for the reply. All boards are new including the expander board. Every plug in the game repinned. Perhaps I need to verify my work. Thanks again.

IMO at 4:09 the upper ball kicks out and hits a rubber just above the left side of the long wire form gate and not the back of the first drop target in that row.

I don’t see a problem.

It released at almost the same time as the lower right lock which was good timing from a good shot of hitting the last drop up top.

Thanks for the reply. I was wrong on the time stamp. It’s actually at the 1:31 mark. Looking at it closer, it looks like a ball actuated that right pop and that triggered the ball realize from the upper lock even though the drops were still up. I need to see if I can recreate that and then if so, figure out why.

At 1:31, the pop bumper caused the upper blue 5X inline to drop which is then what caused the lagoon trap ball to release. I'd consider this a software bug, but at the same time in normal circumstances the 5X inline shouldn't go down before the 2X and 3X inline drop targets.

There's a strange one at 6.00, the right side cave trap ball didn't release when you knocked down the green 5X inline drop target.

BTW she's looking very nice indeed!

Thanks for the confirmation and compliment. I definitely can feel something is just off slightly. Though I don’t have experience with this particular game, doing so many of these restorations, you can start to tell what is normal behavior and what is not. I’ll repin the expander again and check the wiring around that drop and pop. It may be something as simple as the gap on the inline drops is so tight that even when the drop is up and the switch is open, a vibration such as a pop actuating causes the switch to close causing a phantom drop target hit.

Now I’ve done it. I cropped new connectors for the expander board as recommended and now my expander light won’t illuminate. I’ve checked my work and recrimped it two more times and still won’t work. It was working before this now this. And thoughts? I will note, the black wire voltage doesn’t seem correct. It’s like .03v. All the boards in the game are new.

i am running into an issue with my Fathom, once in a while the game phantom tilt... i check all the diodes/wires on the switches in the column/row of the tilt switch but nothing looked out of place. i thought the MPU looked a little suspicious so i put a weebly board in there and it is still the same... am i gonna have to replace all the diodes anyway? what else should i be looking at you think?

No. It could even be a switch capacitor causing it.
Set the Weebly board to say Evel Knievel, and disconnect the J4 connector from the solenoid driver board (to prevent wrong coils activating).

In switch test mode it will then show all closed switches one after another. Make sure all balls are in the trough and all drop targets are down. With reference to the switch ID's in the manual, does it show extra switches as closed that are not?

Interesting, never heard of that, let me try!

What playfield angel id recommended for Fathom? I looked in my manual, but didn’t see a range like in my other machines’ guides.