Nichicon caps too, right on!

Whysnow and I have a bit of a history. I don't like his price pumping of machines.

He can support whechever company he wants, there are plenty of options.

Not from my experience or that from many at MGC over the past.

Take the time to research whom you are dealing with is all I am saying.

His ethics and business practice are questionable at best. People change, but I am yet to see any indication of that change and making a duplicate account to hide from his past is an odd start.

You may reach out to Robin and verify he personally approved my business account.

I have heard good things about kohout.
Glad to hear they are back in the game and making more new boards

Did he approve you using your old account to thumbs up all your business account posts?

This is a good example of the behavior we have seen in your past and it does not instill confidence in your business if this is a legit thing you are making a go at?

With such sharp tone in your post, maybe you can share with everyone what you are referring? I haven't seen any buyer beware posts on Lordloss before.

Go research the old MGC threads. It is all there in his old account.

I just did a search for MGC and posts by Lordloss... I am not seeing anything that stands out... Any links would be appreciated.

I agree with this 100%. More options for consumers (buyers) is better. It's up to the buyer to figure out what they want or who they want to support. Buyers should do their research on potential merchants.

If I were to do that it would get very expensive for me very quickly.

Here's how I see the pros and cons based on my experience as a person that has repaired old boards, designed, fabricated, populated and tested new reproduction boards.

ORIGINAL (30 year old board):

PRO: guaranteed to work 100% assuming it's unmolested or properly repaired/serviced.
CON: very high odds of being molested and improperly repaired/serviced.
CON: some of these old boards can be difficult to work on due to age.
CON: some of these boards can be difficult to find / obtain.

REPRINT (of 30 year old board):

PRO: brand new fabrication with much better fabrication techniques.
PRO: brand new components.
PRO: guaranteed to work 100% (assuming component installed is 100% original specification).
PRO: can use original schematics and the wealth of existing repair / service knowledge.
PRO: can (presumably) be produced at scale.
CON: inherits all the design and function flaws of the original design. Even though this is a single point it encompasses issues across all the boards.
CON: does not take advantage of potentially better new technology or alternate implementations of the original design.
CON: no added features (safety or diagnostic).

ROTTENDOG (only as an example - not criticizing):

PRO: brand new fabrication.
PRO: brand new components.
PRO: new design (and layout) taking advantage of what that has to offer.
PRO: uses less components so the BOM is cheaper.
PRO: uses alternate modern components (MOSFET versus BJT).
CON: uses alternate modern components (MOSFET versus BJT). Yes. This is a PRO and a CON - a double edged sword.
CON: is a different electrical design. Need the manufacturer schematic to understand the logical circuit.

DUMBASS (only as an example - not a shameless plug):

PRO: brand new fabrication.
PRO: brand new components.
PRO: 95%+ electrically compatible with original Williams circuit. Can use original schematics for most of the electrics and logic.
PRO: ability to integrate 30 years of practical knowledge gained about problems (e.g. blocking diode in the flasher power supply on the WPC-89 Power board).
PRO: ability to change electrical design to remove excessive heat that potentially damages the boards or components (e.g. linear versus switching voltage regulator or use discrete diodes versus bridge rectifiers on the WPC-89 Power board).
PRO: ability to incrementally improve the electrical design (e.g. add diagnostic features).
PRO: some boards have multiple configurations unifying different board revisions (e.g. System 11/A/B/C or WPC89-CPU and WPC-S CPU).
CON: some boards have multiple configurations. Yes. This is a PRO and a CON - a double edged sword.
CON: inherits design flaws not corrected nor improved in the reproduction.
CON: cannot produce at any scale (hand assembled).

I am sure there are other points in the pro or con category of any of the above boards.

Sorry on phone and no time to hunt for it.

It is all out there. Safe to say... anyone that pisses of Dan is a special kind of person. All sort of BS with him.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/mgc-moving-locations/page/17#post-4302320

I think what you are referring to starts with this post. I have read the entire thing in the past and reread it just now. Unless you are referring to something else, I see zero evidence that he took advantage of someone or has bad business practices.

I do see a vendor that seems frustrated with MGC at times, but still makes it known that he supports and enjoys the show as well.

Again, when you make strong statements about someone, especially a business, please provide supporting material (personal feelings don't count as facts) so people can be informed.

I think at some point we could even work together and between the two of us we'd have a great niche store of products. Like right now I don't have any displays and your system 11 work looks amazing.

Thank you. This is great news , a hard to find part back in action.

Came here to read about a suspended web site and got to see Whysnow suspended from Pinside for 90 days.

It’s Pinside. Someone has to be suspended, it’s a rule.

He is correct about the guy thumbing up his own post in this thread, just looked myself to verify.

I clicked through some of his threads and all I saw was you giving him a hard time?

Thumbgate!

Wow the hammer has dropped ... has to be something more going on than this little thread... I thought he'd been pretty chill last few months.

Anyway, glad to see a new source for boards, that's always a good thing.

I agree... I didn't see anything that was 90 day ban-worthy, but at the same time he may just be on a shorter leash based on his history here (This is either his 3rd or 4th- I think- 90 day suspension).

I think the two accounts thing is sort of weird. Maybe Charlie can chime in from one of his accounts and explain the logic behind it. It has his store name under his LordLoss name, not sure the need for a second account, maybe just rename the LordLoss account to the business name? Either way, it is a little strange, but nothing I would red flag and stop me from doing business with him, he is very upfront about it.

It comes down to having an account that only does business advertising, questions, and the main aspect is the built in store function on pinside. Also the name links to the website.

Will one of your wpc power driver boards work in whitewater? I bought a rotten dog one and had nothing but problems. I sent that shit back several times then just got a refund. I knew it was a problem with the board because I swapped in one from another game and I did not have any problems. Then I would swap the rotten dog board back in and the problems would come right back. Mìke

I'm pretty sure every Rottendog board is "untested."

I’ve only helped my brother in law install one in his Gorgar and it worked well. Why do they get a bad wrap? I’m fairly new to pinball ownership so honestly want to know what the issues are.

Whysnow has a long history of Price Pumping games that he owns, he is without a doubt the worst and most annoying offender when if comes to price pumping.

He also has a history of completly making up bullshit about people that call him out for his price pumping BS. He has done the same thing to me in the past when I call him out for it. He is just a loser. I wouldn't look too much into all of the BS he is spewing here about Pinball Basement. Pinside will be a better place for the next 90 days, I'm looking forward to it.

The QC isn't so hot...they also tended to release tons of boards that they hadn't properly tested. WHen that Gorgar all in one shipped originally 10 years ago they were all unusable because the slings / pops would go off randomly all the time and they were basically all defective. Obviously zero testing was done because this was a pretty easy issue to spot. They were just pumping out boards and many weren't ready to come out of the oven yet.

I've used their products as many have, when they are all that's available, but I've always preferred a decent original if possible. Strange stuff often popped up on the rottendog stuff (almost surely due to insuficient/non existent testing) over the years. I also hate trying to fix weird issues on games with rottendog boards because you never really know if the RD board causing the issue or something else.

I bought an early WPC driver board for my creature 15 years ago...the chase lights didn't work with the new board. There just often seemed to be stuff like that.

I've had good luck with their stuff too. ALways seemed to be a little bit of a gamble though.

Thumbing up yourself, LOL

Thanks good to know. So far Gorgar is working fine. I guess we got lucky.

I do like the discussion about new vendors coming on board. I have access to a pick and place machine in my buddy’s garage and a solider flow machine so i guess I could Design and order some PCBs and make some stuff if I had the time.

It will work!

I bought 5 WPC89 transformers and am building 5 test fixtures for my boards. The plan is to run them through a burn in cycle similar to the WPC 95 test fixture. Eventually I'd like to have a test fixture for each and every system before I release a board set for it.

I have a williams system 11 fixture (thanks LTG for helping me grab this), a WPC95 fixture, and the 5 in progress WPC89 fixtures.

A local pin repair shop has a game plan fixture i'd like to buy if he is selling, as eventually i'd like to keep expanding to niche stuff like game plan and give it some love.

.

.

Special offer:

$100 in trade credit if anyone has fully intact power wire harness' for the WPC89 transformers.

Can't stress (no pun intended) this enough. Every board I have built and sent out (and it's not that many) has been run through the test fixture (System 11 or WPC89) that I built. I only have one of each (I don't produce at scale) as they were hand built. Everyone has been happy (although that does not say much because as has been noted a working board is better than no board).

I believe in testing and verifying so strongly that I even built my own opto tester to test my opto boards on the bench before sending them out.

I live by the belief that "how you succeed depends on how you deal with failure". Yes ... you will fail ... you're human. It's not that you failed it's how you recover from it.

Nope, rottendog will be liquidating anything he has.

I had a long talk with X-Pin today. Sounds like he's got some good things in the works. He also diagnosed a problem that I was having with displays flickering from my RottenDog MPU9211. Turns out that Jim bought 6821 chips in bulk that were pulled from other things. They weren't necessarily tested and led to issues with the board, including flickering displays. The fix is swapping them out with a currently in production 65C21, which is a drop in replacement for the 6821. $5 per, when you buy 10 from mouser.

Does that mean O-din can come back now?

Your transformer is going into funhouse, virtuapin is shipping my cabinet to me after 8 months!

I thought for a second it would be used in a cool custom test rig! Still glad it went to a good home.

He also diagnosed a problem that I was having with displays flickering from my RottenDog MPU9211. Turns out that Jim bought 6821 chips in bulk that were pulled from other things. They weren't necessarily tested and led to issues with the board, including flickering displays. The fix is swapping them out with a currently in production 65C21,

I might try this - I've had player 1/2 displays showing mostly 8s and a dead credit display in a space shuttle for a customer. Tried everything I could think of, I clouding buying a new master display board on here just to test with.

My buddy Welby Bergum just placed orders for several thousand dollars worth of Rottendog boards from a few distributors. I believe the largest order was four thousand dollars. Welby is adding more games to his collection and to the Olympia Pinball Museum so we need boards.

the lasttime i talked to Jim at Rottendog he told me Kay's Arcade was buying him out....but that was a while ago. I'm not sure what's up at the moment.

It would really be nice if out of all this the schematics (legible/readable) versions of the schematics would be posted online. It looks like some were at one point but then taken down. Makes repairs a bit more challenging.

I did get a couple small letter size sheets for a WPC driver but it is really had to tell what the chip locations are. I think I have the board fixed now anyway (just waiting on a couple odd parts) but for future repairs it would save a lot of time to have them.

I've had to repair one of their DMD drivers, WPC Sound board, system 6 combo board, and the latest once of their WPC driver boards.

If someone takes on those boards and makes updates would be nice to have slightly larger pads for the parts and also not bend over all the leads on the chips. Makes them harder to remove and replace when needed.

My buddy Welby just bought up some more several thousand dollars worth of Rottendog boards today.

If he wants a sample of a pinball basement board.... Let me know...

If K's gets ahold of RD, I guess the warranty is out the window.

The bent over leads is part of the manufacturing process, a through hole stuffing machine was used to place those. They also most likely used lead free solder, so that makes working on the boards harder.

Do you have the files for the rare printer boards for Williams WPC ?

If you get me a pcb or assembly part number I can look.

I personally don't need them but see others looking occasionally.

part number 63110 from WMS Part Sales.

wpc_printer (resized).jpg

Someone is currently working on reproducing these.

I know that the bending of the leads is part of their particular manufacturing process but not everyone uses that and it happens to suck for those repairing the boards. That and the small pads make these a bit more difficult for people to service and replace parts. Just a suggestion to whomever picks up those boards to consider revising that part.

Just about everything these days use the lead free solder. That isn't so much of an issue as the tiny pads and folded leads.

I use a leaded solder, and with my files I can set the pad size to any size I wish. So enlarging pads past williams spec's is possible.

I'm not aware of any company that has manufactured a DIP insertion machine in decades. Nobody uses them anymore because almost nobody is still designing new boards with DIP components. So the bent over leads likely won't be an issue going forward. Fun machines to work on and watch operate. Used to maintain one at my previous job. We ran it maybe one shift per month. I think they scrapped it by now.

That's one thing, at some point, people will need to realize..... DIP components are almost completely gone from industrial manufacturing, and are becoming increasingly difficult to source. We are not far from the point where it will impossible to make boards with these parts. I know at least one pinball PCB maker that is dependent on used parts for multiple components. Audio processing and amplifiers are the biggest examples right now but even 74XX logic stuff is rapidly disappearing in quantity. Eventually, as a hobby, we're going to have to accept surface mount manufacturing in order to survive.

Same with axial resistors and diodes. On the industrial level, they're becoming increasingly rare. Parts are easy to get but very few places are still running axial sequencers and inserters. Too much of a footprint and they're maintenance hogs. That and, again, nobody is designing stuff with axial resistors anymore for production purposes. They're exponentially more expensive than SMT parts, and take a massive amount more labor. Getting harder to find places that are even willing to give a quote on assemblies with high numbers of axial parts.

Maybe others will chime in too but it is certainly something to consider. They don't have to be huge, just something reasonable.