I think the 5 bulbs for GI (2 for #44s and 3 for #555s) is a reference to the number of GI strings and not an individual bulb count. I don't recall how many bulbs are on each string. It's usually somewhere between 5 and 10.

I made a pretty lengthy bulb list complete with colours and bulb type when I did my Getaway. Looking at it now I'm not so sure I still understand my own notes, lol. I was originally of the mindset to colour match inserts and backbox bulbs, but have since changed my mind. I like how it looks with just cool white frosted domes everywhere. I believe I kept a few of the bulbs in the backbox as red, where the flashing lights are behind the artwork.

That being said, the parts list calls for:

Quantity 52 round base #44s Williams part number 24-6549
Quantity 98 wedge base #555s Williams part number 24-8768

Quantity 11 round base #89s Williams part number 24-8704 (flashers, larger base)
Quantity 10 round base #906s Williams part number 24-8802 (flashers, smaller base)

Quantity 1 round base #1156s Williams part number 24-8826 (this is the mini-bulb for the rotating beacon light on top of the backbox. https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/04-1156 Be sure to use this exact bulb or your motor will tend to stick as it can't get over the start-up current of an over-sized bulb AND the rotating part. If you have to give the top of your game a love tap to get it going, it's sticking because it has the wrong bulb in it).

Thanks for the info and that beacon light link! I placed an order through Comet this evening. Going to try color matching the inserts, but all GI and backbox lights as naturals. We'll see how it turns out...

Mine acted this way when I got it. Springs don't "wear out", but adding a second spring on mine fixed the problem. There is a post about that somewhere here from year's ago. I'm surprised that solution worked on mine (and I'm a mechanical engineer). Thank God for these forum posts!

I’ve stuck with incandescents in all my machines because I have trouble following the ball across the playfield on most LED’d games. The strobing/flickering bothers me. But I recently played a few machines that had LED OCD installed and I was surprised that I had no issues with them at all. So I finally switched to LEDs in my Getaway in my inserts and installed LED OCD. I’m really happy with it. There’s some comparison shots and demonstration of strobing in this video.

Nice video, well done

Wow, no kidding. Great job. And no commercials!!

Haha, absolutely! Without the forums I'd have 2 very heavy paperweights... I believe I stumbled upon that same forum post you're referring to with 2 springs. I'll give that a try!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/getaway-club-dispatch-run-a-make-on-license-plate-kingpin/page/234#post-6619988

I just buy non-ghosting Comet LEDs and neither strobing or ghosting is an issue for me (curious how this effect is more perceptible to some people). I do sometimes notice it with Comet LED strips, but they now supply an anti-strobing in-line attachment with their strips that removes this effect.

I will say that DE games tend to have more issues with LEDs. I installed a EnerGI Maestro in my old DE JP and doing so provided significant improvement. I also liked that the board allowed you to dim the backbox lighting during game play (I think the GI OCD can do the same).

I've also read somewhere that this is ultimately a firmware issue, and that there are hacked ROM versions for many games that remove the ghosting effect of LEDs in a game (not sure about the strobing).

In looking at Comet's LED OCD boards, it appears you have two options (I'm a little unclear if you can install both at the same time, can someone confirm?).

Also, there may be issues if you use any kind of effects bulbs (e.g. blinking, fire bulbs, etc.)

Interesting FAQs

LED OCD: http://ledocd.com/faq_led.html

GI OCD: http://ledocd.com/faq_gi.html

Looks like individual lamps are also customizable - very cool!
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Regarding my reset posts (and the many responses):
Chris Hibler sent me a PM - looks like I'll be sending him both my power driver and MPU boards, and he stated an approx. 2-week turnaround. I'll send my orig. PDB (and not the rottendog board currently in my Getaway game). Sounds like his work on the MPU bd might solve the once-every-90 days reset problem the rottendog bd is exhibiting, so I'll address one PDB at a time. Thanks to those members for introducing me to C Hibler.

By-the-way, C Hibler PM'd me first. I wonder if he monitors posts that mention his name, or did someone on this forum suggest to him to send me a PM? Anyway, I'm on my way to getting my Getaway into top-notch condition.
Thanks (for the 3rd time) for all your assistance, w/o which I'd still be feeling like I'm swimming in the middle of the ocean trying to solve the problem.
Gordy

When I first got my Getaway, 2-problems I had were: 1) the shooter plunger sometimes didn't launch the ball all the way around the left loop to the right flipper, and 2) the ball release from the lock to start multi-ball was inconsistent (sometimes all the balls at once or one at a time). The solution was the same in both cases - the coil plunger seemed like it had excessive wobble while beginning its travel thru the coil sleeve and caused premature wear in the sleeve. I made a guide (out of a small scrap piece of thin plastic or maybe it was vinyl or nylon), with a hole drilled in it with a slightly smaller diameter than the hole in the steel bracket had for the plunger to travel thru, and inserted this piece right next to the coil bracket (and glued it in place), to prevent the excessive wobble. I probably also replaced the sleeves at the same time. No problem ever since.

He is just a good person who's great for our hobby, maybe someone sent him a pm on your behalf or maybe he saw your posts and your reluctance to repair your boards, regardless of how contact was initiated, you're in very capable and trust worthy hands. Hopefully you're up and running soon with no issues. You made a good call.

I don't think I'm reluctant to repair the boards, I was just reluctant to decide which course of action to take, but now that decision has been made thanks to you guys on this forum.

Yeah, I think it’s really interesting why it bothers some people and not others. Did taillights on Cadillac SUVs in the mid-2000s bother you? Or LED Christmas lights when they first came out around the same time? Both of those were really annoying to me because they were strobed at a really low frequency. Every time I’d shift my gaze or blink, it’s like they’d “stick” in a particular position for a split second—and maybe that position wouldn’t match up with exactly where it was supposed to be. Feels like it ends up being a distraction in my subconscious thought. My subconscious sees that weird discrepancy and it’s jarring and distracting.

Same thing happens in some LED’d pinball machines when I’m moving my eyes to track the ball across the playfield, and the strobing catches me wrong and makes something look out of place, and my subconscious freaks out and calls my attention to it for a fraction of a second—and that’s just long enough for me to lose my fix on the ball. It’s really annoying. Especially because I can’t control it.

I tried to capture the feel of it in that video by manipulating playback speed of high-speed footage while panning around the playfield, as if tracking a ball across the playfield. The lights end up looking like a random jumble, even though you know they’re supposed to be lit in a sensical way.

I was reading this thinking "wtf is he talking about?!" But then I finally figured out that your saucer is a "dish"!

Oops, wrong terminology - thanks for the reminder. That seems to happen more often as I get older

Too funny, I just couldn't resist bustin your ballz on that one bro! All in good fun buddy.

I don't mind. Accurate language is important.

Actually, I do remember the Cadillac taillights pulsing but it didn't bother me. I also remember the early LED Christmas lights and thought they looked terrible, but they didn't really bother my brain any.

The LEDs are obviously pulsing, but it's kind of like some people's vision/brain processes at 30 fpm and don't perceive the pulsing while others process at 60 fpm and perceive the "off" state during the pulsing.

It's ok, I knew what you meant but just wait it doesn't get any better...

Just installed the L2 ROM on my machine. Had a strange issue on the first play with the "endless multiball" but it seems to be all good now. I made a video on my youtube channel about it too. Check it out if you like. Thanks to Mr_Tantrum for suggesting Matt's Basement Arcade for the ROM.

I've had L-2 for years and I've only ran into the endless multiball bug once. It's worth it to me to keep L-2 just for the Run the Red Light text.

Other L-2 bug to watch out for is the Secret Mania bug. I've got a video of that one occurring on YouTube.

It's happened to me maybe 3 times in 5 years. There are a specific set of circumstances that cause it to arise. Here is the explanation I referenced sometime ago in this thread related to "endless multiball":

"However, the bug is slightly mislabeled, even though that is the generally-seen manifestation. The bug is that every 3rd ball arrival into the lockup starts multiball. So normally what happens is people have 1 or 2 balls locked, then start RLM. RLM runs normally, you get a jackpot. If you had 2 balls locked, then the arrival of the jackpot ball restarts multiball (complete with ball saver (even for multiball 2+), relaunching drained ball(s), and making light jackpot lit (i.e. 20 loops to light jackpot)). If you had 1 ball locked, then you can go for the RLM super (augmented to 100M) after RLM jackpot. If you make the super shot, then at that point that will be the third arrival, and multiball will restart. With 0 balls locked, you can get jackpot-super-super then multiball restarts.
Similarly, you could have one ball locked, get a jackpot during RLM, light lock again, lock 1 ball, multiball starts. Confused yet? It's easy for me because I understand exactly why the bug is there."

I have a set of plastic protectors for Getaway that I never used. I don't recall who I purchased them from, but it was a european company...They're a little thicker than the ones that pinbits used to make, but they work. 40 shipped.. I also have the light bar that Mr_Tantrum has on his machine that I believe was made to tap into a pinsound board. I don't recall all the particulars of the install. Never out of the box... 30.00 ...shoot me a pm in interested.

What are the plastic protectors exactly? Picture?

I added an updated comment in the comment section of the video, but essentially restarting the game fixed any issues I had. No multiball issues since and the shifter error is no longer present.

A shifter error can be as simple as only using one direction for an extended period of time, I always alternate between shifting up and then down...

They protect the plastics from damage from the ball

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Yeah, I think that was just a result of installing the new ROM.

FYI, here is the link to my post about the lightbar: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/getaway-club-dispatch-run-a-make-on-license-plate-kingpin/page/236#post-6685017

A couple of points:
- Wasn't my original idea, EStroh deserves the credit.
- Actually I ended up moving the light bar to the backside of the backbox near the top as the flashing became a little overwhelming pointing forward. I still really like it and the effect is great with the red & blue light bouncing off the back wall and ceiling.

Hi, I have a Getaway wiring/operation question - I have two wires in the back box that are disconnected (see pics). The yellow/blue seems to be a direct wire from the credit switch, so it is open at the back box. The loose red/gray at the backbox has continuity to J1P2 on the coindoor IO board.

From the credit switch:The red/gray from the switch connects to J6P4 on the coin door IO board as shown in the manual, but I do not get continuity to J133P9 on the Power Driver Board as shown on the Coindoor IO board schematic. There is a red/gray in the harness connecting to J133P9 coming from a factory harness somewhere...

There are two issues with this, first, the an in progress game doesn't restart while holding the credit button in (unless restart is set to instant). Secondly, the credit button lamp doesn't work. I'm thinking that the lamp circuit is more than just to illuminate the lamp?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks, Dave

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Those two disconnected wires go to the lamp on your start button. They were once plugged into 9/J135 and 6/J138. J135 and J138 headers have the same circuitry as J133 (red lamp wires) and J137 (yellow lamp wires) directly above them - except J133 and J137 are connected to the playfield lamps, while J135 and J138 are connected to the lamp(s) in the cabinet... just the start button in the case of HS2.

The switch's lamp wires (yellow, red) are completely isolated from it's switching function (white and green wires). In other words, having the red and yellow wires disconnected won't affect the operation of the switch.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the an in progress game doesn't restart while holding the credit button in" Can you clarify?

There has to be an easier set of circumstances because I often have multiple non-pinball people who manage to trigger it and they are definitely not locking balls or getting RLM too much. I most often see them get it on the sympathy multi-ball that the tunnel shot can occasionally give.

Thanks for the info and clarification on the connections to 9/J135 and 6/J138. The credit lamp is now working.

The restart feature I mentioned is set in the menus (A1 33) as shown in the pictures below. When set to "instantly" a game in progress will restart immediately when the credit button is pushed. When set to "slow", a game should restart when the button is held for a few seconds. On my machine, the feature only works when set to "Instantly". When I set it to "slow" holding the button during a game does nothing.

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That's this issue:

I wish Soren would take a crack at fixing Getaway's code. Sucks that there's a bunch of ROMs, but none of them fix all the issues. Just have to pick the issues you can live with.

Personally I've only had the endless multiball happen once, so I choose to stick with L-2. Judging by everybody's accounts, seems that maybe it only happens on multiballs awarded from Burn-out (like what happened in Cobradvs' video). And seems that that award is pretty rare, occurring mostly as a consolation for poor play? So maybe it's not likely to happen in a serious game. I just shut the game off if I see it happen, so I don't mess up the high scores with an undeserved score. Could cradle the ball for 255 seconds to let it run out, but that's a long time to stand there.

I've got a progress report on the resetting problem I first posted about 2-weeks ago. To review: at that time, I measured voltages at J210 and found them to be 4.94 V and 11.87 V on the 5V and 12V circuits (respectfully) going into J210 (on the CPU board). You may recall that I had a rottendog Power Driver Board (PDB) installed that worked pretty good, except that I had the reset problem about once every 3-mos. When I first obtained The Getaway pb game it had the original PDB installed (that was judged to be in excellent condition by a board expert). This orig PDB was installed, and it constantly caused resets. When I told the seller about the resets he gave me (and installed) the rottendog board, which didn't cause resets, except as mentioned above. The seller of The Getaway did the installation of both the orig. and rottendog PDB's and both boards are in my possession.

Before sending the orig PDB to Chris Hibler to work on (because it always caused resets), I wanted to read pinwiki's discussion on Williams' game resets. I read about a poor ground connection that can cause a .3V loss on the 5V circuit which can be caused by not tightening the screws when mounting the PDB. I checked the screws on my Getaway's (rottendog) PDB and found a few loose ones. I tightened them, measured the voltages again, and found a small voltage increase compared to the pre-screw tightening voltages. I also (at that time) thought that there were 6 PDB mounting screws, so I didn't see 3 of them when doing the tightening. I then installed the orig. PDB, tightened all 9 of the screws, connected all the wires, and again measured the voltages going into J210 (on the CPU board). The measured voltages now were 5.28 V and 12.12 V (a healthy increase from previous measured voltages with the rottendog board installed). Remember that this is the orig PDB that previously exhibited resets constantly. I played approx. 10-games and everything worked like it should (and no resets). I think I have now solved the reset problem (it was caused by loose screws - who wudda thunk), and there's no longer any apparent need to involve Chris Hibler. The guy who sold me his Getaway apparently had no idea that the mounting screws not only held the PDB in place, but that they needed to be very tight because the screw locations were at contact points on the backside of the PDB for making a good ground connection.

That Watchdog circuit is on a knifes edge generally speaking so any slight difference in voltage drop can potentially set it off, too many mods attached can do this and also what you have described will have the same effect. Hopefully the good times continue without the need for board repairs

LED install is done! Really changes the entire look of this game... Oh, and ordered a 2nd spring and fixed the ball lock issue. Before and after pics below.

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He has: it's called L-5C. I have it on my HS2.

"Changes
The premature multiball (re)start bug - fixed.
With tournament play unselected: Multiball may be removed from Burn rubber awards (with adjustment A.2 13).
Secret mania is scrapped.

Why it rocks
Correct light locks, lock balls, start multiball, jackpot and super jackpots logic.
Secret mania messes up the traffic lights progress and potentially have more hazardous side effects.

Note
With tournament play selected: Multiball is still the fifth Burn rubber award (when no extra balls selected)."

Since it's based on L-5, there's no 'RUN THE RED LIGHT' display, however I consider what it does add to be worth it. It was made before the PPS-sanctioned updates, so it's a little tricky to find, but I can send it to you.

Remind me why the "run the red light" text got removed/changed?

I don't believe it's ever been officially stated, but the best guess is self-censorship: 1992 was also the year Mortal Kombat came out and drew all sorts of controversy. If I had to guess, I'd say Williams was trying to lower their profile and avoid anything encouraging anti-social behaviour in arcades.
I'm surprised the public didn't make a big deal of the gun-launcher that was on every other game; seems like a much more obvious target.

shifter (ball launch) issues...

In switch edge tests it works fine (up, down) in the game as well but at game start or new ball it doesn't activate the coil to launch the ball...??
I also defined plunger by flipper buttons but that doesn't work neither
In solenoid test activating the coil 'no go' as well.
Coil Cables are well connected, no burn marks....
Fuses all ok
With DMM coil : 4.5ohms

How to test ?

I would measure voltage at the coil, between the coil lug (banded side of the diode) and ground braid. Should have like 50VDC. If no power there, then look upstream from at the wires and connector.

If you see power at the coil, then I would briefly short the other coil lug (non-banded side) to the ground braid and see if it fires. If not, then start looking at the controlling transistor.

Make sure to check the small driver board mounted under the playfield near the flippers, it's part of the circuit for the ball launch coil. It has a big transistor with a heat sink on it. I think there are 2 connectors that plug into it.

OK, Gonna check Kyles idea first (thx Kyle) and i saw that board and it has indeed 2 plugs and all cables coming to it look ok. How can this board be tested if voltage should be ok on the coil?

Decided my Getaway deserved some love... and a cleaning. Went with red for the rubber rings and post sleeves. I also had a new plastics set that I hadn't fully installed, so put those in too. Replaced some of the foam padding behind the stand-up targets too. The middle set of traffic light ones I find are prone to producing airballs when that foam has worn down or isn't there. It was pretty filthy back in the corners. She's playing quick now!!

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Looks nice! Funny, I get air balls from the middle light targets on occasion. Never considered the foam to be the potential issue. I'll look into replacing those.

I'd love to hear whether it helped or not on your own game. I happened upon the idea with my Theatre of Magic actually. A couple of similar stand-up targets on either side of the ramp entrance. And the ball would often go bonkers if you hit them just so. I put a new piece of foam padding back there and it helped a lot. I think if anything it helps to keep the ball in contact with the playfield and not at a slight angle up as it hits a target. Once it hits and rebounds back, that slight angle grows and catches air. That's my theory anyway, lol.

I'd check the high current driver board (the little pcb under the playfield) for cracked solder joints on the back, also test the TIP36C, diode, and resistor on the board. Make sure the plugs are in good shape too.

Here's the test for the transistor from pinwiki:

PNP TO-218 and TO-220 package (TIP-36C, TIP-42/A/B/C, TIP-107, MJE15031)

Place the red lead of your DMM on the metal tab of the transistor
Probe each of the flanking legs with the black lead
.4 to .6 volts is a normal reading. Readings outside of this range indicate a failed transistor
Probe the center leg with the black lead
A "short" should be seen. If not, then the transistor has failed.

Yeah I'll give it a try. What foam did you use?