Just finished the playfield and lower cabinet...Now for restoring the head..

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Looks awesome - well done!! Did you use decals or stencils for the artwork?

Stencils from Pinball Pimp..

some weeks ago i made a little upgrade
that was the best thing i did.
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I have never seen that MPU/Driver board replacement...who makes that one?

Yeah what is this whichcraft?!!!!! All MPU,driver, and sound in one board!!!

Have a look:

https://www.pinball-dreams.com/flipper-pinball-flipperautomaten-modding-shop/verschiedenes/all-in-one-nw7.html

Never knew this was available! Wish I could understand German

English manual
https://www.pinball-dreams.com/images/NW7-Documentation-EN.pdf

Here's the translation via Chrome -

Description
No more annoyance around the circuit boards of old Williams pinball system 3-7 circuit boards. This is a brand new all-in-one board for all Williams System 3-7 generation pinball machines.

Here are the key features:

Compatible with all Williams System 3-7 pinball machines

Replaces CPU, driver board and sound card

Quick and easy installation

100% compatible with original circuit boards

Compact and robust board with improved electronic components

Digitized sounds in HiFi quality

Fully configurable jukebox mode

Own sounds and background music can easily be integrated

Developed and produced in France

2 year guarantee

That’s a sweet option. I tried to order but got lost in translation.

Dear pinheads good morning from Germany. Just drop me an email if you want to order...think our English is not the worst We still didnt find the time to translate our webside - sorry for the inconvenience. [email protected]

Cheers
Henrik

Very cool. Had I not replaced most of the boards in my Gorgar I would've been all over this! The "jukebox" ability looks pretty neat too. Plus it might be nice to give some different noises to it. As iconic as the Williams noises are - I have a lot of machines making the same sounds these days!

I am putting a Firepower back together and this part is hanging around.

Can't remember where it goes or from one of my other machines..
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It’s on the coin door up top

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Same here! This is the power plant of my Williams system 3-6 multi-pin project. I can hit a couple of dip switches, swap the playfield and I have a new game playing. So far I have Flash and Firepower with drops. I'm working up a Hot Tip on the rotisserie right now.

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Uhhh wow! That's something I never considered possible lol. Too many quirks, but this board smooths over most of that I suppose!

Thanks! It's back where it belongs now.

It takes care of a lot of it. I am working from a flash cabinet. I have had to swap a few pins and add some wiring to make it all work.

Just out of curiosity, what exactly are DIPs for? In a system 7 does the same or similar function as in 6?

The dips I'm referring to change the game. They allow me to switch from Flash to Firepower at the moment.

Can someone tell me what the circuit is for this flasher resistor board? It's not in my manual. I recall a snubber board on my system 11 game, but this looks like an earlier version...(borrowed this from an earlier post in this forum) . I know if for the flashers, just not sure how its hooked up...or if there is a better replacement for it... Thanks gents...

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It serves the same function with incandescent flashers, it prewarms the flasher so that it doesn't burn out prematurely.

Is there updated ROM that changes the rules on Firepower from the original ROM? Is it worth the switch? If so, who sells them?

Slochar nailed the reason for the resistors.

They are shown on the schematics on page 25. Find the 2 flash lamps on that page and you will see BR7 and BR8 nearby.

It's on https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=856 all the sets that are listed as "bootleg" as mods.
This is the author of most of them's page with info on it: http://www.pinball4you.ch/okaegi/pro_soft.html

Thank you

Firepower backglass is now up for sale at CPR...not a translite either, like the original....

Is this the first time it's been available or is it another run?

Alan Meyer ran them back in the 90s and they've been sold for decades (literally) by Mayfair as "NOS 2nd run". Original version didn't have the correct dithering fade in the firepower name, but that was corrected.

First time CPR ran them, sure. So I guess it's first licensed run?

Bought one this morning. Super excited about this! Glad Shay ignored me when I was begging to buy his.

Any idea if this is the "correct" dithering fade? My backglass looked so nice I doubted it could have truly been original. Not that I mind either way. Just was curious

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Ouch $310 shipped.

I think the original fades more to red. Can you post a farther away pic? I have one of the 'bad' dither ones but not in a position to go take a pic of it right now for comparison.... couple days maybe if I get near it.

Post some pics when you get it - super keen to see what the quality is like

Good grief its showing sold out already.

Wow, feel lucky to have got mine early then....

Ah, mine definitely doesn't get very red, mostly orange. Either way, looks great. Maybe I'll put some red lights around the logo

My Firepower stopped working while I was playing - the scores suddenly went bright and were strobing, and lots of points were being racked up. I troubleshot the problem to something in the solenoid 1 - 8 area. Removing pins from the connector to isolate it down to one solenoid, I found that the issue is solenoid 3.

The problem is, per the schematics, Solenoids 2 & 3 are not connected. Since there's a wire connected for them, I can declare the schematic is wrong. So, before I start going hand over fist following these wires, does anyone out there know what solenoids 2 & 3 are? Thanks

left and right drop bank resets on the games that have drop banks

the code was never deprecated that still 'resets' solenoids.

Interesting - I don't have drop targets - so I 'm thinking they ran the wires and just left them hanging, and one of them finally shorted. I'll look in that area and report back on what I find.

How’s the head coming along?

I traced the wires to 8P3 pins 18 & 19 per the schematic. (The 24 pin black connector) The wires end there, and go no further. I am going to leave the solenoid 3 wire out of the connector on the driver board, and put a note on it saying it is not used. Not sure why connecting this dead end wire causes the machine to go bonkers, but at least for now, its working.

Thanks for the directions.

ebay.com link: itm

Not sure why they decided all the inserts should be white... Some of these other signs have properly colored inserts...

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So I have owned my Firepower for 5 years. It has worked great up until about a year ago. The upper left pop bumper started locking on and blowing the fuse. I couldn't find the cause; checked transistors, reseated chips, game has a newer 40 pin connector, runs on a single rom, voltages are all good. Soon multiple special solenoids would lock on at the same time or random times. I replaced all pop bumper switch capacitors and resistors. Still no positive results, in fact after that the MPU board started locking up. I swapped out the processor and what memory had been socketed. Still no positive results. I got Leon's test rom which ran fine , pia's tested fine, memory fine. I put game roms back in and the game actually played but one switch column was out. I assumed the rom sockets (white) were the cause. I replaced two of those and the game booted up but the upper left pop bumper locked on and blew the fuse. Back to square one. Any ideas or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

RM -Run a switch test and find out which ones are showing multiple closures. I suspect you have a switch matrix problem.

I was in the middle of a game today and then suddenly whenever I press either flipped, it scores points. It is also scoring points when the ball pops out into the shooter lane.

Any idea where I should look first? Everything else seems to be working normally.

Thanks!

You possibly have a switch that needs adjusting. Try to see how much it scores when it closes and eliminate the switches the score more or less then that.
BILLC479 post above is a good place to start.

Thanks, I was thinking the same thing. Will give it a try.