Just snip the battery out with wire cutters - right now!

I did it. If I am not able to get the board working... who would you suggest to send it to? Or would a new rottendog board be the way to go?

Allteksystems is a good MPU option, in addition to the one you mentioned. Eldoradogames could be a good repair option to consider. They re-worked my S&T and were great to deal with.

I'm running a Tom Callahan MPU, but I don't think those can be had anymore, as Tom has retired afaik.

You have a lot of options, and that's the good news

I wouldn't be surprised if that battery on the board is responsible for all of your issues. Maybe not, but corrosion was a known killer on these older MPU's.

eta

btw, welcome to the Fireball II world. It's a great game.

Honestly, you don't have to send the board out to anybody.

There are a lot of good mailorder "board guys", but really, any local pinball tech can get your board fixed in less than a hour.

Join the local league, and there will be 5 guys that can fix it for a few beers.

Thanks for the response, I'm way past that as all of the pieces are in place on the playfield. I used something similar to that years ago after I received the playfield, but then I got busy with our new house and the game languished in the back recreation room. The field still looks glossy, but I don't want to mess around with clear coat right now, although if I do get adventurous that is nice to know. So thank you very much for the information

I've taken to using air cans to spray clean/blow the particles that are still showing up from the swap, and I have used Wildcat to clean the playfield, and then applied Mothers or Meguiars to wax it up. There is some minor planking, oddly enough only in the areas that are yellow, but nothing that I can see right now that will ruin the playfield as long as I stay on top of it.

I ordered a can of Mothers online, but it arrived hard and cracked in the can. I discovered that if I broke it off in small blocks, it is still quite viable. Or I just go with Meguiars spray and buff that way.

I got the NOS playfield from a gentleman in France back in early 2007. $600. I hemmed and hawed for about a week before taking the plunge, but seeing now how very difficult it is to find things for this particular game, it was the best money I ever spent.

Playfields that are for sale, on the occasion one finds one available, I haven't seen one going for under $900. And forget the older games, like this. Bally produced 2300 units of Fireball II, but according to KLOV, there are only 89 registered throughout the world. Makes me wonder where the other 2211 are. I smell a lot of spare parts out there in hiding

What I have learned from this Fireball II project, is that I now know a lot of things that I would not do the same way, but then again that's the learning process. I am very happy with how this project turned out.

We don't necessarily go in for restoring the cabinet painting and all of that, as we like the vintage used look. Within reason of course. I've got some minor touch-up to do on the cabinet and I made a guide rail mistake on the B lane. Should have never put it there, even though the template playfield I used to move the wiring had it. I went with that instead of leaving it off, and now I have to get that smoothed out and touched up with paint. Character scar, that's my story and I'm sticking to it

I got new glass, since these pictures were taken. It was pretty scratched up. The stories it could tell if it could talk. I plan on taking the old glass, and finding some way to attach it to the old playfield and framing it to hang up on the wall back there. Not sure how I'm going to go about that yet, but the plan is being formulated and it will happen.

Also, the rubber ring coming down from the B lane and under Wotan's Lair, that is not how the manual illustrates it, and I have since changed that up to match the manual specs. I put a small rubber ring on that bottom post along the B lane. It changes the ball trajectory somewhat, when coming off that pop bumper. The reason I put the guide rail there during the swap was to turn the ball a bit into the bumpers, but in hindsight I didn't like that. Much better coming straight down.

The devil face drop targets for the middle assembly have, recently, become available. As also the thumper bumper caps. I've stocked up on spares. Marco has them, but they're pricey, especially the drop targets. I got 10 of em for spares.

The people that cut the new glass for me also did that drop target plastic piece. That piece probably takes the most punishment from game play. I got three Lexan spares made, now I just have to work on getting the artwork applied. The Lexan should hold up much better than the original.

The originalThe new

heh, I wish I were good enough at this to work for beer. I'd definitely be down with that.

Not much of that here, but I do live in farm country. Cows are great at milk, but oscillatin' and solderin'....

meh, not so much

vid1900... thank you very much for the tips and for your encouraging words. I think I made study the game on pinwiki along with what you said and see if I can figure it out.

I am scrambling to figure out what colors of LEDs may look good before midnight tonight. Comet is having a good black Friday sale.

Do people usually just color match the inserts & maybe personalize some other areas for this game? I saw on a TNT amusement YouTube video where they used some (flame) fire looking LEDs that would look neat in this game.

lol, I learned this the "hard" way by installing 555's in there. The playfield swap was an exercise in chaos at various and sundry times, but it went well

I've got 906's in the four corners now, with 555's still on the sides. And it's a beautiful thing to behold, in self-test and multi-ball

Color match the inserts, don't buy bright 2 chip bulbs for them, or you'll be sorry (and your friends will laugh at you).

Buy extras, because you always have a few duds, or the heads break off.

You've got a warm color pallet on this game, so try Warmwhite bulbs for the GI

be careful of LED's, as you may get some weird strobing issues. Earlier in this thread there is information on how to rectify that, should you go all in on LED lamps. I've got two LED's on my backbox, on the lower left corner to avoid further damage to some flaking issues I inherited when I purchased this game. Think heat. No issues whatsoever, but that's only two lights soooo.....

You can mix and match whatever colors make you happy. For instance, I have stuck mostly with stock colors throughout the game, but across the top row of lights behind the backglass I went with purple 555's. It, to my perception anyway, darkened up that area ever so subtly. On the two flame chains, I went with Red 555's, except at the flame balls. I went orange there.

I like the way it turned out.

Experiment. And if you are so inclined, bring beer to drink, whilst you marvel at your work as you look at it and get more wonderful and terrible and awful ideas

If you've never bought LEDs before, remember not to buy Yellow or Orange for inserts - use Warmwhite instead.

Thanks, didn't know that. The more I learn about this stuff, the more I realize I need to learn

It never ends. But I guess that's the fun part

kudos to Great American Pinball for their service. I finally found a replacement back glass. It was pricey, but what it would have cost to repair/replicate my old glass, it saved me some money.

Finding a NOS back glass is not the easiest thing in the world these days

Got the glass yesterday and got it installed. Packaged the old one up for storage, it's in rough shape on the lower 1-1.5 inches of the glass. Still very servicable, but now I got a spare and maybe I'll get it fixed.

Or make it into a framed picture, to hang on the wall next to the old playfield picture project I am working on

For the people who want to put decals on the drop targets and pop bumper caps I made a file with the images.
The file will be on my website http://www.inkochnito.nl at the end of the month.
You can also do it yourself if you want.

Peter
http://www.inkochnito.nl

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^ nice!

Would anyone happen to know what the target assembly part # would be?

I’m trying to make an order from Marco & couldn’t find the actual part # in the manual. All I saw was Odin & Wotan?Thanks

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I found it... ASE-2911-3

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Wondering how you guys would go about making this area flush with the playfield. The clear plastic is recessed a little bit. Would it be the same as redoing recessed inserts? Thanks

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Is it very common to have different serial numbers on the backbox & cabinet?

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Somebody switched it to the wrong head.

They probably thought this head was better condition than the original.

Those sons of bitches !!!

Thanks vid... I was just curious. It’s not a big deal is it? It doesn’t really bother me.

Now that you've brought it to everyone's attention, maybe someone else here has the other half of your mismatch....ya never know

Would someone have a good picture of the solenoid driver board’s J3 connector? We’re trying to figure out why there are 2 cut wires on Pin 13 and 25. The coils are not working at this time. We just installed a new Alltek MPU board. Thanks.

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OH YEAH!!! Finally got one. A little rough but that's fine by me.

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Would anyone have this plastic Advance “Doomsday” Bonus plastic for sale? It’s on the center drop target. Thanks

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SDB J3 pins 13 and 25 are connected to each other. It's a loop back wire that's there to provide 5V power to the logic chip on the SDB which selects solenoids. One of the recommended mods for this board is to solder a wire between those two pins on the back of the board for redundancy.

Someone may have cut the wire as a test because the board might be locking on coils at power up. Anyway, temporarily jumper test point TP1 to TP3 and see what happens.

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No... I have seen where a group of games have come in and the flippers mix and match
in order to get an "A" game and a "B" game.
I had to do the mix,n,switch with three High Speeds...
I was able to get an "A" game a "B" game and the third game was taken to the auction to be dumped.

I use thin "Fish paper" from the electronics stores in order to shim the plastic to the playfield.

I’ve got a very nice original backglass if anyone needs one, PM me if interested.

Thanks! I put a wire from TP1 to TP3 & it worked! So... if I hook up those to cut brown wires... it will work?

Those two cut brown-white wires should be connected to each other. It should work provided the terminals in the connector are ok.
Original wire length is about 5 or 6 inches.

Fyi: I talked Pinball Pimp into doing doing a set of stencils for me for fb2. They are now available to order on his website if anyone is interested.

Gratz. Welcome to the club.

good luck with that piece, any piece for that matter, on this game. But the nice thing is, you can take that piece and get a few pieces cut to that size and thickness in Lexan, which is tougher. Then it's just a matter of working the art to place on it.

eta

that particular piece takes a beating, more than any other on the game imo. The playfield captive ball plastic, mine is warped as well. I have a spare laying around in storage from the spare parts playfield I picked up years ago, but it has the same issue. The one on the game is in the best shape. Probably best to replace it with something new, and then finding (or creating) the art work to apply to the replacement.

You can flatten any plastic by putting it in the oven. Place on cookie paper, heat till it becomes soft then place between two bricks. Let cool down.

would a good t-shirt press accomplish the same thing? Exposure might be an issue, as it is more direct.

How long in the oven, or is that all by "feel"? And what temperature?

Been a long time since I did it but if you search for flattening playfield plastics on the net you will find the info you need. I had two slabs of marble that I would put in the freezer. Then when the plastic comes out of oven I would place between the slabs.

I am replacing the bulbs with LED’s & noticed there are 2 empty sockets in the rear underside of the playfield facing down. I do not see any openings near either of them to have light show through. Any ideas what these are for? Thanks

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Those bulbs are for the auxillary boards which run the flashers on the playfield and around the doodle bug (moving bonus ball). They tell you the boards are working or not

Are the G.I. lights supposed to flicker/flash when the Fireball bonus lights are not blinking? Thanks

bump

Yes, I've seen this before.

Thanks, I also talked to Grumpy & he thought the same thing.

Got my Fireball II back! After I finished restoring it, my friend took care of it for about a year. While he had it, he played it quite a lot. However, the Spraymax clearcoat still looks stunning and undimpled. I'll probably be keeping this beauty in my gameroom for a while.
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Guys, is the Extra Ball lit sequence actually random? I've got the feeling that there's some kind of logic to it, but I haven't quite figured it out.

I haven't figured out the randomness of the extra ball feature either. I think it's X amount of switch hits, but who knows. If you trap the ball and wait, it won't happen.

I met a guy on Facebook's pinball parts & he mentioned that he could make a plastic (Advance "Doomsday" Bonus) ..that I need if I could get him a decent scan of a original. It would need to be at least 300 dpi.

Please PM me if you could send me a scan & I would get you my email. Thank you very much.

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Hey I picked up a fireball 2 game as well.

I noticed that my GI lights were flashing intermittently and then going out during gameplay.

I change these two items out Marco pinball had them seem to clear up the problem. They still flicker on attack mode which they are supposed to do, but then stay on during game play.

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The Aux Driver board with the heatsink (Part number AS-2518-67) is for flashing the four 12 volt "921" lamps in the doodle bug area during bonus collect.

The Aux Driver board without the heatsink (Part number AS-2518-68) is for flashing the GI. It controls the Triac mounted on the rectifier board base plate.