Don't assume too much on that driver board, just looks dirty and aged. No biggie.

Read Vid's guide to system 3-7 bulletproofing thread. Here:
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-bulletproofing-williams-system-6

Read www.firepowerpinball.com

Learn and enjoy your new pin. Firepower is one of those pins that many people love and there are tons of parts for them.

Biggest thing on Firepowers is the playfield. They got played a LOT and a good lot of them have trashed playfields (and its hard artwork to patch in). As long as the playfield is good, everything else is easily obtainable.

Driver board will likely need some work, but I've seen and successfully repaired far worse looking than that. Will likely need new lamp resistors, a good cleaning, and at least one or two connectors for the special solenoids. I'm totally unconcerned on the driver board.

I am a bit concerned about the CPU board. Looks like somebody put a 2716 EPROM at IC26 via a method I haven't seen before, and there's some darkening around the battery holder and diagnostic button. Again, not something I've really seen before, as it doesn't appear to be corrosion but heat damage instead, and this isn't a spot that usually suffers from heat to that extent.

However, it will definitely need the power supply either repaired or replaced. I am very unhappy with the looks of the capacitor hack that was done on there. Could be an easy re-cap job, could be a bit more involved. Definitely some creative engineering there.

Still, even with all that repair work, would come out about 1/3 to 1/2 the price of going with new boards all around.

Like the other guys said, worry more about playfield, backglass and cabinet. Every board in that machine can either be repaired or replaced at reasonable cost. The cosmetics are where restoration costs start adding up fast.

Yeah that's a project. Hopefully you got it for a good price and mice weren't living in it (they love chewing wires.)

There's no way that machine will work until you repair/replace the power supply. You need new caps and probably new diodes on the 5v line (since the fuse looks blown.) I assume you have good soldering skills and a good iron. You'll be needing them! Good luck!

viperrwk

I just bought a Firepower back in May which had to be brought back to life. One of the reasons I bought mine is the boards had never been touched and there was absolutely no battery corrosion. As some of the other posters had stated, it's a fun game and lots of people like it.

You got the manual and schematics which are a MUST. Check all your fuses to make sure they're the correct amperage. There's a little diagram to the right of the power supply board. Don't forget the two 4 amp slow blo's on the sound boards and the 20 amp in the cabinet for the main. I removed all the boards and cleaned them. I would label the connectors. Especially the driver board. There are 12 not counting the 40 pin, which you'll have to replace, at least, the female side. If the battery holder has any corrosion, remove it and install a backbox mounted remote holder. Clean any corrosion you may find underneath with vinegar or mustard. Wipe off and coat with clear nail polish. Anything burnt, replace. Male or female connector pins. Otherwise clean the male pins. I use 90% alcohol and cheap dollar store qtips. You can also use a fiberglass eraser but nothing harsher. Those lamp resistors gotta go. The cylindrical red things on the driver board. They're toast.

With the boards off, check all the male connector pins. Some probably have cracked solder joints.

That power supply has had some "stuff" done to it. C15 filter cap should be somewhat smaller and mounted to the board under the heat sink and not in the backbox. There should only be one large filter cap in the back box. Not two.

As always, disconnect all outputs from the power supply and check your voltages before connecting the other boards.

Electronic parts. greatplainselectronics.com
Good source of tech info.
http://pinball.flippers.info/system6resources.asp

start with this

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-bulletproofing-williams-system-6

--Jeff

And replace the plug with a 3 prong. You save yourself headaches and zaps.

Read vid's guide.
Recap the power supply.
Clean the boards.
Replace the 40 pin inter-connector.
Clean it up and play it

Unless you want to sink a ton of money into a backglass and playfield restoration I'd get it running and enjoy the crap out of it.

I posted a couple threads but nothing compared to the above one. Use that as your guide.

Also, if you donate $20 bucks to Clay Harrell, you'll have access to his pinballninja.com website which documents over 800 repairs. Many for System 6.

http://www.pinrepair.com/

Scroll down to the Pinball Ninja Webzine for info.

Definitely looks like some battery juice crusties on the battery holder. Clip it off and clean up the surrounding area. Doesn't look like it has spread too much which is good. Lots of times it works its way down to the PIAs on the driver board which are directly underneath. Recapping the power supply is easy if you are decent with the soldering iron. The 40-pin is kind of a pain if you don't have a good desoldering solution. Also be sure to check the sockets on the CPU as outlined in the guides.

I just picked up a project Firepower myself but the CPU and driver are both pretty hosed with corrosion so I have to replace a whole ton of stuff. I predict you will be up and running after doing PSU/40-pin/sockets.

This is a REALLY extensive website for Firepower (I wish every game had such a great resource).

Download the pdfs, don't try to use the strange little reader box (unless you are on a cell phone, LOL).

http://www.firepowerpinball.com/

Forgot about that one. Since the site is probably flash based it doesn't work on ios devices so I saved all the PDF's on my desktop and emailed them to myself to look at on my ipad.

Good idea.

If all else fails..... Williams system 3-11 replacement boards: http://www.pinballpcb.com/

This:

And this:

That playfield and backglass don't look too bad at all.

Fix it, clean it, play it!

Yep, I tend to think the pinballpcb (Kohout) option is the best one on the market right now.
I've also taken a liking to the Xpin power supplies, will try their displays eventually.

-Hans

For mobile devices that can't handle the Flash home page, just point your browser to http://firepowerpinball.com/downloads

This gives you the index of all the jpgs and PDFs you can download and view on your mobile device. Sucks the homepage uses Flash but at least you can get around it.

viperrwk

Looks like you got lucky with those leaky batteries, the corrosion just appears to be around the solder holes. Make sure you sand them to get rid of the damage and neutralise with 50/50 water vinegar mix before rinsing off and drying.
Check the bottom of the back of the board too - I usually scrape a little of the green solder mask up in the areas where corrosion has occurred just to make sure none of the corrosion has slipped underneath.
The staining on the green solder mask around the battery solder holes is probably battery alkali too so make sure that is cleaned off.

You can see the failed internal metal connectors on the 40 pin interconnector on the pin at the far right and fourth from the right.

Replacing the interconnector pins and the burnt lamp resistors is the minimum you should be doing to this board but it is not possible to say whether it will be working 100% afterwards as its history is unknown.

I would strongly suggest following Clay's guides and methodically replacing/upgrading key parts as he recommends. I just get the feeling (and no offense intended) that you are expecting to replace a couple of connectors pop the correct fuses in and be good to go. If that's the case you may be in for some disappointment

Regardless of what needs to be done, Firepower is a great game and well worth the effort.

Good luck!!

Andy

Hans doesn't have any of these cuurrently - http://www.siegecraft.us/pinball/firepoweradapter.htm - but if he did I would pull all the ROMs, cut all those jumper wires off the CPU board and install this. Perhaps he has an ETA on when he'll have more.

Your 40 pin also must be replaced as there are some bad pins there.

And you really should do power first as without good power it won't matter if the rest of the boards are working or not.

viperrwk

Bay Area Amusements / Planetary Pinball should still have some of the adapters in stock.
But I am strongly considering another run in the near future for my own inventroy, even though I haven't quite figured out that rare comparability issue yet with early revision -6 boards

http://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=PP&Screen=PROD&Product_Code=PPS-SYS346A-ADAPT

As for the resistors, read Vid bulletproofing guide, remove those resistors all together along with the 'TIP' transistors and install SCR's and jumpers and never worry again.

As for the wire soldered on the driver board, thats a standard 'oops my connector burnt so I'll do a bypass' hack to keep the board running. Simply replace the IDC connectors/pins and you'll be all set.

Again Vid's guide details all of that.

Oh and for the MPU chip field eco,,,,, I'd leave it alone until you find it IS causing a problem. Otherwise you run a big chance of making a problem where there was nothing more than a cosmetic one. Whoever did that 'fix' at least knew what he was doing.

Just get a remote battery holder installed, fix that driver board up, rebuild/recap the power supply and fire this sucker up. If you keep looking for problems you will find things wrong that may never have caused a problem. Just like using WebMD to figure out if that new mole is cancer,,,,,, you could end up thinking your dying when all you did was sleep on a raisin.

Weirdly Planetary has it but not BAA:

http://bayareaamusements.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=PC-SYS346A-ADAPT

As Pat says if it works after fixing the PS, 40 pin and driver board you can leave the existing ROMs but if it doesn't, I wouldn't bother swapping out all the ROMs/sockets. Hans' solution will cost only slightly more and is much less work and you'll be less likely to create more problems.

viperrwk

Look close at Vid's guide to bulletproofing, he shows a really clean way to totally remove those resistors and transistors thus cutting down on a TON of heat and adding a lot of reliability. I was pretty sure he showed part numbers.

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-bulletproofing-williams-system-6

These look like the correct resistors. The only difference is the factory one's allowed a 10% tolerance while Great Plains are 5%. Just to be safe I'd shoot Ed from Great Plains Electronics an email simply asking about the tolerance level but I think you'd be good with those. A link is on the home page.

Look at my note in your quote concerning the unknown resistor.