I was wondering about that. Thanks.

I unplugged my coin door and everything worked perfect. I need to rewire it.

Beware of the early Williams solid state switch problem found on rollover, trough & eject hole switches.
One blade is installed backwards so that the rivet side of the contact is beating on the gold
plated contact on the other blade, ruining the contact surface. The backwards blade can be flipped over,
but the other blade should be rebuilt with a new contact for reliability. Cleaning these will only help temporarily. The Pinball Resource has all the parts for rebuilding switches. http://www.pbresource.com/pfswitch.htm#common

I just went with new style cherry microswitches and new brackets....just could never get those switches to be reliable...the cherry's are no problems....

Agreed, converting the trough to microswitch is the long-term solution for reliability. They go bad eventually too, but are a lot less trouble. Williams of course figured this out as well for BK LE

Richard

Hello all, new Firepower club member here! Picked up this non-working machine a few days ago and after finding (and temporarily jumpering) 6 broken sockets on the 40-pin connector, I was able to get the game to boot! Everything works except for a few solenoids which need troubleshooting.

There have been some previous repairs made to the board which is hacked up and smoked in a few places. Some previous wiring repairs under the playfield are similarly botched together.

Question: is there a reasonably priced aftermarket driver board available for Sys 6? This is my first machine of this era. I can fix the hacked up jumpering/soldering jobs, and the 40-pin but if there's a decent option for a replacement board I might like to go that route.

Thanks!

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I've gone with Swemmer boards in my Gorgar and like them a lot, but you can't find any available at the moment. I've also used Kohout boards and been impressed with them as well: http://pinballpcb.com/products/williams-system-3-thru-7-driver-board/

The nice thing is you can buy either one and it's plug and play with the original boards, but if you have both boards you can also avoid the 40 pin interconnect and use an IDE cable instead

Or he can just have the original boards rebuilt. Once gone through and the updates done they are usually solid boards. I run originals in all my games and they have been trouble free years. That 40pin has to be replaced on both the MPU and Driver. 0 ohm jumpers installed for the switch matrix. Combo ROM for Firepower (my original ROM was flaky) and redo all the connectors. A quick reflow isn't enough. Also replace all the original DIP sockets. The SCANBE and the crummy white DIP sockets suck. Just did another set for a Blackout and that game is about done.

You can put down the pitchfork, was just answering the question of what good quality boards were available :p

Thanks! I have also used Swemmer boards before on a Gottlieb and was also really impressed. Was just looking for advice on the best quality vs cost for a repro board. I'll repair what I have and keep an eye out for a Swemmer board.

Pitchfork? Not at all. Didn’t mean to come off like that. If he wants to go with replacement boards those are excellent options. If his boards were acid damaged or really messed up I wouldn’t have posted. His original boards don’t look too bad and should be able to be rebuilt for less and be reliable. Just mentioned it since I felt those were good candidates for a solid rebuild since most is standard work. Just a bit extra to clean up the driver transistors.

Gotcha, can never tell here. I've seen some act as if I just cussed out their mother bringing up replacement boards even after all this time. I look at it a few ways.
1. Great to put something in your machine to keep it running reliably while you fix another board.
2. Great to fix some of the decision decisions that didn't age so well.
3. Potentially harder to troubleshoot long term as there's not years of troubleshooting done on them.

Sorry I read into your message more than intended lol!

Working to track down some wiring issues with the newly acquired Firepower. The flasher circuit has seen some obvious mayhem in the past and may have been replaced by the previous owner. Could anyone confirm if the resistor layout on the flasher board is correct? A photo of another board would help out here. I am replacing the 89s with Comet LED flash lamps...so perhaps that also will have an influence on which resistors I need here? Thanks

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With LED flashers you should actual cut the resistors to remove them from the circuit. The resistors are there to keep the lamps warm... Which is not needed on LEDs.

Ahh okay, just like System 11s then? I remember on my System 11 machines I had to cut the big (330 ohm?) warming resistors and leave the smaller one in place. Thanks for the help, I'll disconnect them one at a time and see what I end up with. It looks like the last owner had rigged some automotive lamps in place of the #89 flashlamps.

Yes exacly... they're warming resistors

Only cut out the large warming resistor when going to LEDs. Do not cut out the small 100 ohm resistor. If you want to remove it, you need to bypass it. However, there is no reason to remove the smaller one when going to LEDs.

I've been trying to clean up the Firepower driver board where it had some previously blown transistors & burned resistors. I found that 3 of the pre-driver transistors (2N4401 NPN type) appeared to be installed backwards. These are the 3 in the top left corner (I can't read the transistor numbers on the schematic very well...Q1 is the left one next to the connector). All 3 of them had been obviously changed in the past and had their orientation flipped around from what the schematic shows. Can anyone confirm that I'm not crazy here. All of the other transistors on that side of the board appeared correct except for these 3...right where all of the previous damage had occurred. I am trying to clean everything off in this area and re-populate the board with new components. Thanks for any help

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You’re not crazy. Someone messed up. I’d pull them out and then clean up that whole area as best you can.

Also when working on the driver check to see if it has the eight 0 ohm jumpers on the upper right for the switch matrix. Worth doing and it seemed to help on my firepower

I have an offer to trade my Firepower for an F-14. The F-14 is missing the beacon lights but other than that is in good shape. Wondering what you guys think. F-14 is a deeper game, and is probably worth more for a possible trade later. Firepower sounds are great, F-14's music is good...but I'm really on the fence with this. What do you all think?

My Firepower is a 7/10. Typical peeling backglass paint, cabinet has some dings, playfield has just been cleaned, touched-up, and waxed. Plays great.

I'd swap.

Asking the Firepower club about leaving the firepower club?

Trade even up? That a pretty good decision financially. F-14 is typically worth more than Firepower.

Game play wise - I don’t think I’d consider F-14 any deeper. It has better multi ball rules for sure but deeper, no. It’s pretty much a one objective game like Firepower. F-14 got pretty old pretty fast.

Yep, We'll see how it all goes tomorrow, but we've both agreed to an even trade. The F-14 needs the entire beacon lamp assembly and domes. Hope I can find that motor drive assembly pretty easily.

I've had several examples of both games and even scored an NOS playfield for F14. I let all of the F14 stuff go. Even had a few spare beacon motor assemblies and domes. That stuff isn't very easy to find these days..

Speaking as someone who's had both, I'd keep Firepower. It's had longer lasting appeal to me.

Richard

That's a good deal. I'm getting kind of bored of my Firepower to be honest. I really like the game, but I just don't feel that spark to play it like I did the first few months I owned it(I'm sure all games are like this). It's clean and chromed out. Even still I doubt I'd get much for it since they made so many of them.

All games can lose their appeal if you play them enough. As far as production numbers, yeah, they made a bazillion Firepowers but many of them got played to death. Finding a nice one is tough, in my experience - and a nice one should command a price to match condition.

Richard

I have no idea what to ask for with any of my games, someone was gushing over my firepower Sunday and I said to make an offer and he wouldnt say anything just laughed about it. I feel like no matter what I list it for if its over the Pinside average whether its beat to absolute shit or basically NIB the price police will exile me from planet earth.

Whats this thing worth?
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dumpster-firepower/page/10#post-5836508

lol I'd laugh too. This isn't really a machine that tends to get sold. Love the cabinet art btw, it's so much better than the generic lines that were originally on them. I mean, according to Pinside there's a sale pending on one that was listed firm at $2.5k that is in worse shape, and minus any of the additional bling, so who knows what you could get for that for the right buyer. If that's anything to go off of, you could probably do $3k or more. Or hold onto it for another couple years, maybe it'll be $4k by then

Beats me.. I didn't realize we were talking about the customized example. Speaking strictly as my personal opinion - it's cool what you did with it, making it yours, but if I were looking at it as someone that prefers originality then it is worth less than an original game. If you find someone that digs your mods, then obviously it would not be an issue with them. People that customize classic cars run into the same pitfalls. It's a little tougher to find those that enjoy the same mods that you do.. while an original example appeals to a wider audience.

I'm not 100% stuck on originality, for example, my very nice early-run FP is modified - I did the system 7 MPU swap so I could do the 7 digit displays and run Oliver's home ROMs for the 7 digit scoring and "missions" in the gameplay. Mostly easily reversible other than needing to source all the old parts (I don't think I hung onto any of my 6 digit stuff) and the not-normally-visible extra holes in the backbox insert for the display changes.

Richard

Are you able to post some pics of your machine (inside and out)? Considering going to work on my "players" machine. Thanks

Had a bit of a weird one happen to me tonight. Had a good game and set a high score, the game over screen held my score fine. But when it would toggle to show the highest score, I noticed, the tens digit was off by one, and the one's digit is blank. Rebooted the machine and got the same thing, so it seems that's how it's stored. Any ideas on what this issue could be? The display otherwise doesn't have any issues so I'm a bit baffled.

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I know you’re asking about the issue you’re having but I’m jealous of that back glass man! Is that original or a repo?

lol thanks, it is a repro though if that makes ya feel better
It's one of the old Mayfair ones I believe.

Any battery corrosion? The 5101 RAM may be going bad.

Pics of what areas? I've posted several in this thread, if that helps...if not just let me know.

Richard

Was just meaning the machine as a whole but also one of inside the cabinet - just as a comparison to mrm_4's customised machine

I picked up a Firepower that did not have a transformer. Anyone have one or know where I can get a transformer for Firepower?

Thanks

Could someone post a picture of their backbox transformer without the cage and tell me what the part number is? I picked up a project Firepower that didn't have the transformer and looking for one.

Thanks

Does this help at all?
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dumpster-firepower/page/4#post-5594349

Anyone have a trashed Firepower playfield with harness / mechanicals they'd like to get rid of? I just bought a CPR playfield, and i'd like to preserve my original playfield (not in horrible condition) intact if possible rather than transfer everything over.

Have you changed out the display? I would swith it with 4 player display to see if would work.

Nope, looks great and has a remote holder for the batteries.

Hmm, no haven't done that. Figured it must be a board error of sorts if it could otherwise display it in game.

Sounds like a glitch that reset the RAM. Did you lose any other settings like free play or 3/5 ball setting? It sounds like the high score has random garbage in it. Do a high score reset or get the new high score and see if that fixes it for now

Mike V

It's gonna be awhile before it actually plays but excited to join the club nonetheless.

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Cat bonus points!

Had some friends over tonight and my firepower lit itself on fire! For a couple months this thing has been starting weird. The first time you turn it on there would be no controlled lights or displays. If you shut it off and then back on everything would work.

I smelled smoke and the whole playfield was hard to see. The top left bumper was stuck on and the resistors fell out of the board. One was actually touching one of the transistors when I opened the backglass.

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Anyone else get a back glass from CPR?

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