Great Idea. It will save a lot of headaches.

I don't see a easy way to change quantity to 3 on PayPal. I will take 3 full kits. PM sent.

Thanks

Working with some local guys for a bulk order. We're at 14 of these so far.

From someone that bought 6 of them... They are great and easy to assemble. I will buy more in the future!

Bought one today! Bought the NvRam last Saturday. I am sure that what other designs that you come up with, I will be buying!

Can't this be made to work on system 11s too?

barakandl -- What about system 9s? I am repairing a blown Tip102, 2n4401 on Sorcerer as we speak. This shouldn't be!
-mof

Yeah, add me to the Sys9 inquiry as well. If the game were in front of me I'd try to confirm if your adapter could work. If it does I'll take two of them instead of just one!

My daughter loves to solder and these kits would be great for her to contribute toward pin-teching. Great stocking-stuffer price too!

I'm pretty sure there's space in there, at least on Space Shuttle, on the left side of the BB. I had an LEDOCD installed for a while with no issues, IIRC... I *might* have moved it below the MPU. I'll take a look and confirm at home tonight.

Sorry if it's too dark to see, but I think there's enough room to fit your fuse board in there on the left wall near the board connector... wiring might get a little snug but it should work. Or, with some longer harnesses there's plenty of room below the board. Let me know if you need better info. Put me down for two of them and PM me the payment info... thanks Andrew!

Sys9 (resized).jpg

I got my kits yesterday and put together some pics of the build.

The build was pretty simple. It was complicated by my looking at a picture of a driver board and not an actual. In pics it looks like the top pin on 2J12 is pin 1. Looking at an actual driver board shows that the marking is actually pin 9 and 1 is marked on the other end of the header.

The kit came packaged in an anti-static bag and contained all the parts:IMG_5395 (resized).jpg

Here's an exploded view of the parts:IMG_5396 (resized).jpg

Assembly is 12 fuse clips and 2 headers. I inserted the fuse into the clips prior to placing in the through holes. This kept the clips aligned. I did Top F6 and Bottom F3 first to keep the pcb level, then gravity will keep the pcb pressed flat on the other clips as you solder them.

The header pins align with the lock to the right with the board text correctly oriented. I did both at the same time to allow gravity to hold the pcb for me. This matches the position of the holder on 2J12 on the driver board for reference. I soldered all but the key pin # 5 and then pulled the key pin out. The headers are labeled 2J12A and 2J12B.

The harness was where the confusion was for me. The harness is a 1 to 1 pass-through. Pins 1 & 2 are the flipper enables and are not fuse protected. But if the harness is not wired right you will route the flipper enable through the fuses and SS5 & 6 will pass through. This is the least of your worries as all of the specials will be wired to the incorrect transistor and weirdness will happen.

I made a couple of labels for the 9 pin connector housings. This cleared it up for me and I wired the harness 1 to 1, 2 to 2 etc... skipping pin 5IMG_5400 (resized).jpg

Total elapsed time for the first board was about 15 minutes including time for pics and labels. Experienced builders can do the whole thing in less than 10 minutes.IMG_5401 (resized).jpg

Can these be used with rottondog boards, or are they even needed?

Yes, and yes they are needed. The Rottendog special solenoids work the same as the original and will lock on and blow the 2.5A SB fuse.

There's no reason they shouldn't work just fine with System 11 and also Data East machines, as the special solenoid connectors were the same in those generations as well.

Here's mine. Built all 3 and installed 1 on firepower that's not ready yet. Took about 1 1/2 hours but I'm an anal bastard when it comes to that stuff. Uh oh, that one connector is a little more clear. I may have to change that.

IMG_2341 (resized).JPG
IMG_2328 (resized).JPG

Thanks Cheddar. That was this information that I needed when I got to the point of making the harness.

From reading some of your other posts and seeing your level of detail I'm surprised you didn't find wires that matched the colours on the original connector rather than just using the green wire that Andrew supplied!

Had some buddies over last night and several of them bought these boards with me in a bulk buy. They were impressed with the details on the board. Having the transistor number printed under the fuse is a real life saver.

Now that we know this will work on Sys 11 I see another large order coming up

This is probably extra valuable for sys9 games since those MPU boards are $$$$

Reading this thread now for the first time..... i should have grabbed a few of these from Cheddar last night
Put me down for two now or on the next group buy

On the System 11 compatibility / necessity, question was asked over at RGP @ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.pinball/pEQYggXXYYQ/3nZ3PoVnAgAJ & basically only the earlier System 11 machines would benefit.. later games had cpu controlled special solenoids which wouldn't be able to lock on. See below quotes from the RGP thread for more info.

"On Sys11B games and later this isn't necessary since the special solenoids are not controlled by dedicated playfield switches. Earlier games you would have issues with placement and wiring, especially the Sys11 games and where the special solenoid connector is located on those machines. -viperrwk"

"Now that I think about it Williams didn't institute this until Cyclone. You know this because there is no harness connector on the CPU board at 1J18 on Cyclone. So if your machine does not have a harness connector on 1J18 then you don't have switch controlled special solenoids. While Andrew's board is nice to have (heck Gottlieb fused individual solenoids in Sys3 machines) it isn't protecting you from a shorted special solenoid playfield switch on those machines. -viperrwk"

acebathound and viperrwk thanks for this in depth information

What gauge is that wire Andrew? I have a bunch of old PCs sitting around and they have provided me with a ton of multi-coloured wire that I have used when doing repairs. I'm assuming a heavier gauge won't cause any problems.

Thanks!

Looks like they have a 1000ft minimum order for a spool.

Any stranded wire that is 22g or larger and sized to fit your crimp contacts will be fine.

Snip out the wiring harness from any washer/dryer/analog TV/computer power supply/dishwasher/printer, and it will give you a rainbow of usable colors.

You probably have 4 ATX power supplies in your closet right now; ready for that mystery computer repair that never happens.

1.0x0 (resized).jpg

I wanted to mention that when I assembled mine, I just soldered the wires directly to the cable side like this:

saver PCB[directly soldered wires here]----->driver board connector

I could not think of a reason to ever remove that side of the connector and it saved me some assembly time.

You'd be surprised how quick 1,000ft of wire disappears.

I order 100ft spools of various gauges and colors, but I don't seem to go through them too quickly. I don't use a lot of long segments of wire, I guess.

Then again, if you're making boatloads of adapters and harnesses, I could see how that could go quickly.

Two down, two to go.

20161207225146738 (resized).jpg

Can't you get by with just six wires?
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://ChrisHiblerPinball.com/contact/
http://www.PinWiki.com - The new place for pinball repair info

You could but the game wouldn't be fun anymore.

Isn't that connector "split" on all System 11 games?
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://ChrisHiblerPinball.com/contact/
http://www.PinWiki.com - The new place for pinball repair info

For systems 3-7 as intended, just my odd sense of humor. As for system 11-11a this new board will work fine except for the labeling is incorrect. You are correct in saying only six wires are needed as the connector is indeed split, but I think I will use all eight conductors to keep this a universal board for all games that I may purchase.

Are you using cybernaut as a reference?

If you need someone to help test, let me know.

Following, Might be time to drag my basketcase Lost World out of the closet.

It's time to revive this thread with some new info. I bought these early and Andrew shipped promptly... but life got fully in the way until now.

I can confirm they work with System9 and System11, as follows.

In all cases I was working within the slack limits of the factory harnesses... which isn't always ideal. In some cases there are wide-open spaces for the SolSaver board... but the game's original solenoid harness will not reach.

If you are stocked on Molex Male-Male adapters you could probably make your own custom extensions to solve this. However, I am not stocked on Molex parts. In fact, I bought the SolSaver kits to save a few bucks and have fun soldering... not realizing I would need a crimp tool to make the harnesses. If you buy the kits, a crimp tool is an absolute MUST! Fortunately there are a few decent ones on Amazon for about 25 bucks and the one I picked worked fantastically.

Anyway, on to the installations:

SolSaver_System9

^ Space Shuttle (System 9) was my first pin and first MPU repair attempt - as my notes attest, it didn't go perfectly. The Solenoid Saver is a MUST for fragile boards like this one! There's plenty of space below the board, but again - the stock harness at 1J19 won't reach.

So I mounted it as shown. It's tight, but the light board *just clears* with no ill effect.

SolSaver_Sys11early (resized).jpg

^ This System11 is an early version from a PinBotsketcase I revived as holidays '16 approached. Again, the board has some weak spots from previous work and probably won't like being poked any more than absolutely necessary. Thankfully, unlike System9, there's a perfect open spot in the backbox for the SolSaver board - right next to connector 1J19! Easy, as if the factory meant it to be there!

But not all System11's are like this....

SolSaver_Sys11late (resized).jpg
^ This System11 is a Space Station, made near the end of Williams' "Switched Solenoid" era. And by then Williams was cramming the backbox chock full of stuff, so there is almost no room to put even this tiny thing. It could maybe fit in a space above the MPU and a foot to the left... or down low along the right side wall. But in either case, you're back to needing an extension cable... which I did not have the capability to make.

So for now, I rigged a "floating riser" of scrap packaging plastic and mounted the SolSaver to it, just to get an idea of placement and test compatible functionality. Yes, this is kind of hacky... but no, it doesn't move and yes, it proves the concept.

I'd love to get an extension cable, though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IN ALL CASES....

There are three cautions you need to be aware of:

1) MAKE SURE TO ORIENT THE STOCK SOLENOID HARNESS PROPERLY WHEN YOU CONNECT IT!!! The SolSaver looks like a simple pass-through, right? But there are 8 pins and only 6 fuses. Pins 1 and 2 are pass-through, and pins 3-9 (with the obvious exception of keypin 5) are fused.

If you're like me, you try to orient the board such that its printed text is legible right-side up. On System3-6 games, this is not a problem: I installed one in a Firepower first and everything lined up: Text legible, stock harness plugs in, boom.

But when I did the same on Space Shuttle, the natural orientation of the stock Solenoid harness was such that it's "reversed" in relation to the SolSaver board... so even though it connected just fine at first glance... as it happened, two of the game's solenoids were passing through the unprotected pins 1 and 2, while fused pins 8 and 9 were passing through to the flipper relay!

The game still works like this, but you are without a full third of the protection you expect.

So basically, make sure to orient your installation so that the "split" two-pin connector at 1J19, which is the flipper relay, connects to passthrough pins 1-2 on the SolSaver. Depending on the way your factory harness is oriented, you might have to flip the SolSaver "upside down", or unthread and twist the harness to suit your preference.

If I could make a suggestion to Andrew, I'd maybe label future revs of the board to more readily indicate the unfused passthrough pins...

2) SPEAKING OF LABELING.... the printed labels on the PCB are indicative of Sys3-6, and don't correspond to System 9 or System 11.
So here's how the pinouts map to Sys9 and 11. I plan to make labels for my boards and place them under the fuses:

PIN---STATE---S9Q#---S11Q#
1------pass-----RLY------RLY--
2------pass-----RLY------RLY--
3------fused----Q79-----Q73-
4------fused----Q77-----Q71-
5------KEY---------------------
6------fused----Q81-----Q69-
7------fused----Q75-----Q75-
8------fused----Q83-----Q77-
9------fused----Q85-----Q79-

3) THESE DO WORK so be prepared for some new troubleshooting vectors. I did some other work on Pinbot and unbeknownst to be, mangled a sling switch. During attempted gameplay it would flutter and pulse and almost lock on. I shut the game off before any damage was done, and could see where the fuse browned a bit. YES! Working as designed!

But after correcting my switch, I didn't replace the "browned" fuse. And as it happened, other gameplay bugs popped up that I chased around all over, before I simply replaced the fuse... which promptly solved those problems.

So if some problems can indeed sometimes be "just a fuse", remember you've got 6 more of them now ha ha.

Anyway, these things are GREAT. Thanks Andrew for making these. I hope my rambling is useful for other Sys9 and Sys11 owners....

You're welcome. I hope it's helpful.

Maybe you should edit the OP to say "Special Solenoid Saver for Sys3-7, 9 and 11A"... get some more well-deserved business and help others protect more games. I love elegant simple solutions like this one you came up with, and since I don't have much like that to contribute myself, if I can help out on behalf of others that's the least I can do.

Couldn't the back side of the board be labeled for system 11?