Centaur
Bally, 1981
Fathom
Bally, 1981
Flash Gordon
Bally, 1981
Nitro Ground Shaker
Bally, 1980
Quicksilver
Stern Electronics, 1980
Seawitch
Stern Electronics, 1980
Silverball Mania
Bally, 1980
Skateball
Bally, 1980Data East MPU repaired! Just have to get the Black Hole sound board fixed and minor work on a Bally SDB and I'll be able to get back to working on the cab. I did swap out the PLA lamp shields for ABS ones on Seawitch. ABS is a more longer lasting plastic than PLA and I take the long view on such matters.
DAC1408A and LM741 on order for Black Hole sound board. A shotgun approach to be sure but an educated guess based on the issue and little money.
$6 in parts.
Quoted from gdonovan:Data East MPU repaired! Just have to get the Black Hole sound board fixed and minor work on a Bally SDB and I'll be able to get back to working on the cab. I did swap out the PLA lamp shields for ABS ones on Seawitch. ABS is a more longer lasting plastic than PLA and I take the long view on such matters.
Just a follow up on this as a few folks might have confused the two repairs.
This MPU refers to one that has been on my workbench a few months, see this thread.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/de-robocop-mpu-fails-at-ram-test
It was up and working in Time Machine and then crapped out a few weeks after.
Pending work before digging back into "The Seawitch Project"
1) Black Hole sound board, hopefully today's delivery will put that one to bed.
2) New 6802 for Weebly board, hopefully new CPU will fix that. At worse Andrew stated he would swap board out if need be.
3) Topper for Laser War. Been sitting on the fender of my car for a year now, time to finish it off.
The last of the connectors came in yesterday so I can drop in Centaur.. So just need to finish off the above items before digging in. Already removed all the sockets and switches off the wiring harness above (from a Kings of Steel) so I'm good on rebound switches with brackets but think I still need a few stand up targets.
Playing with my 3D printer- Made up a print in the morning and was printing them out when I got off work. Not bad at all! Test print with black ABS that was in the machine, need to order white ABS so I can run off a 100 or so.
If you restore Ballys, you know what they are.
a9d3359934cfd881a8e6ce4f8ad5d617897a83d6 (resized).jpgcebd517db8d75eb6179b28f05c58b4d445104f97 (resized).jpgI’ve debated buying a tiny 3D printer mostly because of those dang spacer posts being so expensive from the usual sources.
Quoted from play_pinball:I’ve debated buying a tiny 3D printer mostly because of those dang spacer posts being so expensive from the usual sources.
How many you need? I'll send you a dozen or two for the cost of postage.
20211211_114847 (resized).jpgQuoted from play_pinball:Wow! PM incoming
Give me a week- All I had for white on hand was a 20 foot piece from a sampler pack, just ordered a much larger roll this morning from Amazon unless you want black, blue, red or green =)
Already have the code ready to go for 40 at a shot as soon as the ABS arrives.
40 lot (resized).jpgEasy day today because I injured my left hand last night.
Black Hole. Relocated to the "stall of shame" so it could be worked on.
Fixed sticky left upper flipper and adjust the rest to correct angles.
Replaced all the remaining incandescents with Comet LED.
Adjusted 2 switches.
Soldered a few hokey connections on a coil.
Tossed out the dead 6v LEDs someone popped in the lower playfield lighting circuit. I bet it was bright.. for a millisecond.
General look over. Very playable now. Need new caps for the lower cab and a fresh set of elastics but good enough for the moment.
20211212_110113 (resized).jpg
Oh and stuffs came home last night. The Trek I'm looking to restore and assemble. The Nitro one I might restore but its wall art, the gameplay on that one holds little interest.
Silverball is loaded and was going to strip for mechs and wiring but I might practice repair of the playfield and try it out.
20211212_125552.jpgQuoted from Skidave:Hardtop the Silverball since it is now available.
1) I'm not that interested in the title.
2) I'm not building my restoration skill set up if I'm hardtopping playfields.
Forgot to mention- Ordered an airbrush set and some Golden High Flow paint this weekend so will be working on my painting skills soon enough. Have to get some frisket next...
Several pinsiders have recommended this airbrush set for beginners.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0067BAYNO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00
So just a heads up for something I'm kicking around.
I'm considering building a SECOND universal cabinet. For a number of different reasons!
1) I have all the hardware to make it happen. MPUs, lamp drivers, solenoid drivers, transformer, etc.
2) I have a spare cabinet. Or two.
3) The hard part (R&D) has already been done.
4) Game flexibility in the lineup.
It all hinges (I guess) on if I want Flash Gordon in a dedicated cabinet or not. While I'd love to I'm at capacity and if FG goes in the line up, something else has to come out.. and I'm very content with the lineup on hand. Even now Seawitch is living in the workshop, so if I want Seawitch in the main room then something has to swap out.
Cabinet wise I have two choices; a classic Bally cabinet or a Data East identical to Seawitch's. I have a Secret Service game in storage that needs a repaint and new decals (which I have) but I'm considering just gutting it out and making it cabinet #2.
Not something that is going to happen right away, but something I'm giving thought.
Curious, would you mind sharing a step-by-step on how you modify your lamp boards with those bussed resistors? (Possibly even with parts to buy from GPE or something?).
I've seen you post images a few times but haven't been able to find any how-to posts.
No problem, I'll try to do a walk through in a few days. I do have one more board to do so that works out.
In case you think I have been slacking, yesterday was a VERY busy day. Colson stopped in to drop off Batman and pickup Gorgar and Phantom of the Opera which necessitated moving big chunks of my workshop digging POTO out.
While waiting for Colson and Alan to arrive (nice Time Fantasy!) I finally got the guts for Laser War topper working correctly and for good measure balanced the assembly and have it running at half speed to prolong its life. It ran for 6 hours without failure in the shop yesterday so I'm optimistic at this point. Hopefully I'll be working on the topper housing after church this afternoon.
Once the housing is complete and installed on Laser War, back to Seawitch.
Oh for those interested in the "history" of the Laser War topper, pop in here.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/1987-data-east-lazer-war-topper
b41549b162912799c3367d0d8fa0342b12efca1a.gifcb64bb7dbce096c41b91a8005f4695eb4517e8ae.jpgfdf99b541f360317e38b35f0445a29f2887ceb7c.png
Minor work on the topper housing yesterday, frankly I'm beat from work and all the running around Saturday so my heart not really into woodworking. Ended up pulling the MPU out of Batman, diagnosing various issues and repairing. It had a row with a bad pre-driver that was running up the voltage for the row and blowing out leds, a trace was in bad shape due to the excess current related to that problem, one column had a bad diode causing intermittent operation of a string of lights and one string of flashers were blown out due to a locked on driver.
All issues put to bed and NVRAM installed for good measure. Spent a little time juggling flashers and led lighting (the backglass was way to bright, I think I took half the bulbs out) and just giving a good look over. The ramp at the top right is busted up pretty good, I think I'm going to cut that out and add in a section of ramp from Checkpoint I saved. An area that is obscured by plastics so a bonus there.
It occurred to me Data East just recycled the layout from Phantom of the Opera here. The trap door is moved from the right to the left side, the stand ups are in the same spot, the museum replaces the organ, the Joker ramp replaces the main ramp, the Batcave entrance replaces the magic mirror. The only thing missing is the spinner on the return to the upper lanes.
Not sure I like it, have to wait and see after fixing the ramp. The damaged ramp is causing the switch up there to hang up and a lot of score is hinged off the switch working proper. The music and some sound effects the same or similar to Hook.. which irritates as I did not like Hook for some reason.
20211219_140226 (resized).jpg20211219_161558 (resized).jpg20211219_174348 (resized).jpgQuoted from gdonovan:The 6802 in the Weebly board has been swapped out with a Motorola unit and reinstalled back in Seawitch with the repaired Bally solinoid driver board for testing.
Nine games in and no failures aside from my playing.
Just a follow up on this, the Weebly MPU has been rock solid since swapping out the CPU.
I'm going to call it good.
Well progress wise on the topper yesterday was a bust.
1) Fun started with a phone call that my son's car had broke down while at work. Luckily it turned out to be a connector on the distributor had popped off. Chuckle-head!
2) So then I shoot over to the post office to drop off our property taxes & a small package... and the post office is on fire. You can't make this up. It was minor I think but it was closed with fire crews just arriving on scene.
3) Off to a different post office... which has a line out the door. More time wasted.
4) I finally make it to the hobby store to pick up some birch plywood.. and they have none! All the wood working product at this location discontinued. WTH. And the other hobby store in the area has shut down. You mean I have to ORDER 1/8" PLYWOOD from Amazon?
Some I come home finally in a huff and decide to clean some parts off my work bench. Black Hole has new caps for the sound board power supply and lower cabinet which I might as well throw in now along with a new U10 chip for the sound board. I pull the sound board and power board and find to my disgust that one of the caps I installed 2 weeks ago is leaking.
Hell of a Monday.
Re-Re-Cap of the sound board goes fairly smooth, though the U10 chip fought to the bitter end. I think the chip legs were actually larger than the PCB holes. New caps for the power supply, new caps for the cabinet. It amazes me how much smaller new caps are compared to the originals, like a tenth in size. I fire everything up and tweak the 5 volt line... And everything seems perfect. Still has a power off groan that happens when you shut down, I was hoping the U10 chip would fix it but it doesn't so I'm not going to lose sleep over it as it is fairly normal.
20211221_055641 (resized).jpgGuide to adding resistors to Bally or Stern Lamp Driver board for flicker free LED operation.
You will need some 470 Ohm resistor arrays and perhaps some loose 470 Ohm resistors, I use 1/4 watt. Depending on what you order will determine if you need the loose resistors or not. I always order 10 pin resistor arrays and this will leave you two pins short so just add on the two resistors.
Here is what I order from Mouser; You will need 9 ten pin arrays and 2 loose resistors to do a single board.
Back of Stern board, Bally will be the same but a little taller. This board I refurbished replacing the decoders and a few drivers. I'll assume sometime in the past someone shorted the lamp matrix to a coil lug and blew the decoders out. Always shut the machine down when changing bulbs if practical!
You are going to be adding one leg of the resistor arrays to each controlled lamp pin. 9 pins out of 10 are for the controlled lamp resistor and the last pin with the stripe will be the common you will be supplying power from the controlled lamp feed.
Its best to take the resistor arrays if you have never done this and move them around to you have an arrangement you are satisfied with. Please read through the guide completely before proceeding. On the board you will see the three output headers with a black sharpie mark. This is the location of the locking key for that particular header. No resistor is needed there of course but usually an array lands there and I attached it for additional strength.
I prefer to have the arrays inward at the four corners but there usually is plenty of clearance either way.
Note the stripe for the common- Bend this up for attachment to a feed wire later.
Tack two of the pins in place and start soldering your legs to the back side of the header pins.
I use a plastic scraper or card to make sure the array is lifted slightly off the surface of the PCB.
Just take your time and don't be in a rush, note clearances around the pins and make sure nothing is touching where is shouldn't be.
20211226_132926 (resized).jpg20211226_133449 (resized).jpg20211226_135501 (resized).jpg
Hook up you power feed wire, gauge of your choice. I have used everything from 20 gauge to thin wire stripped from a network cable with equal success.
Just make sure all the commons are connected to each other with a lead to go out to the controlled lamp hot. But before you install and test, see below!
Now the hard part, INSPECTION.
1) Set you meter to tone continuity and check the pins side by side to make sure there is no continuity between adjacent pins. If there is, check for a solder bridge on the header pad.
2) Attach one end to the power connection and check all the pins. This will tell you if you shorted one of the commons to a header pin.
Even having done several of these sometimes whoops happen- Meter check showed continuity between two pins and sure enough there was a solder bridge. I just took a hot iron and ran it between the one once or twice and it cleared up.
Note the green wire connecting the commons with a small piece of leftover leg from a large cap to hook the two sections together.
Usually I clip on the back of the display board, it's a good location. Tilt, shoot again, high score to date, etc. are all controlled lamps.
It will be the common power wire connecting them all.
Install the board in your pin, clip the common wire alligator on the controlled lamp feed and when you power up you should have flicker free led operation.
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Wichita, KS
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