Just got my TZ a couple of weeks ago. After getting it all set up I now have the dreaded Clock Error.

I tested the clock and seems that Opto 2 is out for Hour (7-11 hr doesn't register) and Opto 2 is out for The Minutes, never registers on 45m rotation.

The board is a newer LED board. Not sure which one but it seems be a single board. Might be Rottendog.

Seeing that both optos are not working is it possible it's a wire issue? Not sure how the optos are positioned on the newer board.

What's a good starting point to isolate this and can the optos be replaced?

Pull the 2 harnesses that are going into the clock and check the pins. They often come loose or don’t make good connections. You may need to re-punch down the .100 connectors.

But after you’ve done this (and messed w the wires), but the harness back on. If you don’t get the same errors OR if you get different errors, the harness is your culprit. When this happened to me I bought a replacement connector and punched down the wires clean and all was well.

It could be that 2 optos are out… but unlikely.

Beta-testers lined up, testing begins. This will be the "catch-all" board that covers all machines, with or without GIOCD options.

TZ-clock-frontboard-new_style (resized).jpg

...

What's thi$ worth ?

Marco and Pinball Life both carry the clock LED board, but production design will be modified to be compatible with the GIOCD add-ons.

LEDs won't light when using the GIOCD system due to polarity reversal, so the new design will take that into account and work properly on those machines that have the add-on.

Otherwise, the standard LED board works with all standard TZ machines.

ramegoom Are those optos plugged in and swappable without soldering? Am I seeing that right?

They are positioned into the board and soldered in place. That way they won't move. Not easily replaced once they're in position.

Unless you physically damage an opto, the chances are it'll never fail.

And the LEDs don't heat up like the original incandescent lamps so heat won't cause the board to fail. The original clock board produced so much heat that the circuit boards became discolored and the optos derated themselves to early failure.

I just joined this club by taking on one of the most massive projects of my life.

It's a machine that was flooded with sea water in a hurricane last year. I got the cabinet for 7k as well as a replacement TZ cabinet that isn't water damaged to put everything in. The game boots up currently. It looks like the water made it up to the 2 pcbs on the bottom layer of the back box. I've been working on it for the past 2 days endlessly. These are currently the issues.

- There is no sound at all
- Many connectors on the power driver board in the backbox are scorched and brittle
- When booting, it gives the error "Check fuses F115 and F116, J112 and opto 12v supply
- The menu buttons do nothing but that could just be that they're not plugged in or something.

I've already gone through every PCB underneath the playfield and derusted, resoldered, retraced etc. and everything seems to be working although I have no way to test the boards that do anything other than illuminate the playfield.

Any suggestions on the problems I've listed to help me on my journey? All in all I'm thinking I can get this thing back to life for around 1k or less and have a twilight zone for 8k.

Well welcome to the club!
You are a courageous man

Good luck on the repairs, Welcome to the club.

Homewood? That’s walking distance, isn’t it?

A0C2FDEA-C861-42DC-89AE-963AA32B540E (resized).jpeg

F4F947ED-BB92-4BF3-AE36-5675C2F756B0 (resized).png

Hey everyone.
I just turned my TZ on this morning and noticed that the pop bumpers were'nt working, I searched for a broken wire but nothing, after a little investigation I found out that every switch that has a green/orange wire connected to it was not working, so that's the 3 left inlane and outlane switches, the 2 slingshot switches and the 3 pop bumpers. When I start a game, if I manuall activate all of the switches one after the other, there will always be 1 coil that will activate (slings and pops) but after, nothing, I have to turn the game off and on again and start another game to be able to activate another coil manually.
I went into test mod and slings and pops work great, it's in single switch test mod that something weird happens..... is'nt there supposed to be only one spot per switch activated? check the video, there is one whole line of switches activated and if I press each of the pop bumper switches, it's a whole line that lights up.
Can anybody give me a hint as to what is wrong here?
Thanks.

I found this on Pinwiki, what do you think?
Since it's one whole row (green/orange) in the Switch matrix that is blown, maybe it's a CPU chip?

The Chips that Control the Switch Matrix.
The switch columns are controlled by a single 18 pin ULN2803 chip on the CPU board at position U20. The switch rows are controlled by two LM339 chips on the CPU board at positions U18 and U19. The direct switch rows are controlled by two LM339 chips on the CPU board at positiion U16 and U17. These chip designations apply to all WPC generations.

On WPC-S and WPC-95 games, the ULN2803 that controls the switch columns on the CPU board is socketed. On all other WPC games up to 1994 this chip is not socketed. When a series of switches goes out, it tends to be the ULN2803 at U20 (all WPC revisions) that fails. Williams recognized this, and started socketing this chip with WPC-S. On WPC-S CPU boards, the ULN2803 chip is underneath the battery sub-board. ULN2803 is equivalent to NTE2018. If U20 dies "hard", it could also blow the 74LS374 at U14 (on WPC-95 it's U23, a 74HC237) on the CPU board.

The LM339 chips that control the switch rows at U18 and U19 (all WPC revisions) tend to fail less often. LM339 is equivalent to NTE834. There are also two more LM339 CPU board chips at U16 and U17 (all WPC revisions). These two chips control the direct switches (coin door, diagnostics, etc). These do not fail often either.

Love this. One of my favorite unrepresented episodes.

My all-time favorite. Great story, pace, acting and arc. Especially sad if you know how tragically actor Gig Young’s life ended, and how the actor who plays his father so memorably in the episode, Frank Overton, died of a heart attack at age 49. I read this was Rod Serling’s most personal story.

I also love “What You Need,” “Nick of Time,” “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” and “a Game of Pool.”

Consider disconnecting the Custom Opto SW10 board (A-16807). Disconnect J5 and try your switch edge test again.

Shotgun replacement of parts without proper diagnosis is generally not recommended. Isolate the cause to a location (CPU board, Opto board or playfield wiring) and then dig in further.

Where did you get that cool Mystic Seer from?

Thanks for the help.
Tried the custom opto board SW10 board test you suggested and I still have the same results/problem, so now I know the problem comes from the CPU..... Right?

Disconnect the connectors at J206/J207/J208/J209. Repeat your test. If you get the same results then you know with fairly high certainty that your problem is on the CPU board. If you disconnect J212, run the test again and get the same result then that will give you 100% confidence. Disconnecting J212 may result in a "check fuse" message that you can safely ignore.

Thanks. after testing CPU is faulty for sure. I'm pretty sure it's the U20 chip.

Just for giggles, do a master reset. You will lose all the top scores and setups, but it's actually a big possibility that the issues you are experiencing will go away.

It worked for my machine that had similar issues.

Just a thought.

But now I need to find out if it's really the U20 chip that I need to replace.
I don't have the schematics manual for WPC, can anyone please let me know if the green/orange wire switch row is linked to the U20 chip or not? If not, which chip is it linked to on the CPU?
Thanks.

Rows are U20 columns are LM339's.

LTG : )

Thanks, I found it online about a year ago when I was looking for a bigger one for a topper. I paid alot, like $75 I believe, and this little red one arrived. But it’s a nice size for a playfield mod. I did find the larger one from 2009 later. It’s black/white and comes with some fortune cards. But it’s $199 + shipping on EBay. I tried to find the small red one again and I can’t find it. It’s not in my eBay history, so I found it elsewhere.
923D8FBD-8BBF-435E-831F-A6D839E68B07 (resized).pngC4DB1FA5-23F4-4633-B925-7A4D71C2AC9B (resized).png

Thanks! Btw beautiful machines! Those chrome doors look fantastic!

.

Hey thanks, so I need to replace U20.

I read Pinwiki very closely and I found this at the end of the Switch matrix section: Quote:
"If multiple switch closures are reported when you touch one pin of the connector, or if the CPU reports a row or column short, then there is a fault with the switch matrix circuitry on the CPU board itself. Be aware that an additional fault may still be present on the playfield. Switch matrix chips do not simply blow for no reason!"

So I went and searched for a short between a coil wire with a switch wire of some sort......I had bought a flasher mod for the slings (they are connected to the coils) that had flahing lights when the bumpers were hit, well the 3 LED's under the sling plastics are inter connected with a wire form that is not isolated, when one of th balls came and hit sling hard enough the switch leaf went and touched the wire form and blew the U20 chip. so not only did I find the cause but I also know what part of the CPU is wrong because that CAN cause to blow a chip according to this quote:

"One fairly common reason that a ULN2803 or other switch matrix circuitry may blow is a short to coil power. In the picture at left, the coil that actuates the "Bridge Diverter" on the game Twilight Zone, is touching the coil bracket on one side. Since coil power is present at both coil lugs (which is normal), a coil lug touching metal will conduct coil power to that metal. In this case, the coil bracket touches the bridge diverter piano wire and then the coil diverter and then the entire wireform. If a switch matrix solder tab or switch blade metal shorts to the wireform, poof! Get ready to replace the ULN2803."

Thanks! Chris Royalty at PinballPlating.com did the doors, rails, legs. The chrome doors really are dazzling!

Alright so I went through every pcb in the machine and derusted, tested, soldered, ran new traces for ones that are damaged.

I just finished going through every mechanism under the playfield, disassembling everything, derusting it, reassembling, repairing what needed to be repaired, then reattached it all. Installed all LEDs.

Game is "running". All the stuff above the playfield still needs to be shopped. There's still no sound but I think the speakers may be toast. I put a 9volt on the terminals and one does absolutely nothing the other makes this quiet popping noise that it also makes when the game is on. I ordered replacements because they need to be replaced regardless.

You can start a game and it will run, various coils and such work. There's a handful of lights that aren't working under the playfield, probably just needs some soldering or jumper wires ran.

There are no lights coming on in the backbox. I need to trace those wires and figure out where they plug into. When I first got the game about half would turn on.

Currently the plan is to go through the top of the playfield tomorrow and the next day. At that point it should be mostly playable. I ordered radcals and will be installing them on the spare cabinet I have and once that is done it will be time to move everything over to the new cabinet. Once that is done I assume I will have an extremely nice twilight zone example since I have literally gone through every single nut/bolt/screw/switch/mechanism and repaired or replaced or adjusted everything.

Upon inspection I think maybe the reason the backbox lights aren't working is that the safety door sensor on the coin door has malfunctioned. Maybe it's that simple idk.

It’s probably just the connectors at the bottom left of power driver board, check those first.

Yeah there's a 9 pin and an 11 pin connector that are totally toasted. I've got replacement connects coming in tomorrow but they are connected and seem to be giving power since the game won't boot without them so I figured it was "ok" for now but we'll see when I replace them. Honestly given what I read it might be prudent to just replace every connector on that board.

I replaced the coin door switch with one from a judge dredd and yeah it doesn't do squat lol.

This is going to be even longer than I thought. The game boots yeah but there's about 10 lights that are out even after replacing the bulbs and connectors. Hopefully this will all be remedied when I replace those burnt out connectors. There's also an issue where when certain lights are lit other lights nearby are flickering with power. Is this a wiring issue or just a common issue with these games and leds?

The speaker in the cab was missing. I plugged one in there and it fixed the issue. Apparently the entire circuit needs to be hooked up!

Yes, the bottom speaker is wired in series with the two top speakers..

there definitely seems like there's some wiring issues. The start button likes to randomly trigger and add players to the game or start the game when it's in attract mode along with the lighting problems I described earlier

Upon inspection the lamp matrix columns work perfectly. It's the rows that are causing random bulbs to flicker.

I ordered radcals for my cabinet as the art is faded. Does anyone have experience with these? I'm a bit confused and getting misinformation because the product says that you just slap it on but then I'm also reading you should paint the cab black first, albeit these posts are years old. Can I get a definitive answer from someone?

For the best results strip, prep and paint your cabinet. I prefer oil-based paint because the Radcals adhesive really sticks to it. Radcals are slightly translucent. You can see the old artwork underneath through the white and yellow areas. I wouldn't pay restored prices on any game that had Radcals installed over the old decals. These things are expensive. It is best to make sure they are done correctly. Doing it correctly will only increase your game's value.

I’ve installed RadCals on 5-6 pins. It’s a different process than decals, and slightly more forgiving, but definitely not slap it on. You’ll want a smooth, flat cabinet to attach them to, so fill and sand any deep cuts or dents. I always sand any rough edges under the legs. Paint the cab black to prevent art from showing thru. I install the front RadCal first, then the sides so they form a nice corner where they meet. You’ll want a dremel for cutting holes for the start button, flipper buttons, and bolts. The head is the easiest part, so maybe start there. Don’t forget you’ll need to remove the hinge bolts on the sides of the cabinet before installing the side panels. I have a trick for this that saves having to remove the playfield or other more elaborate trick. I put the playfield back all the way in the service position. With the pf vertical, I lift the pf an inch or so, until it’s off the hinges. I use a 4 inch (or so) wood block to slide under the bottom and suspend the pf off the hinges just enough to remove the hinge bolts. Then you can remove them, leave the wood block under the pf, and you can easily remove the block and allow the pf to lock into the hinges again when you are ready and the bolts are back in.

If you have any questions about the process, pm me or others here who have done them.

I already have an empty tz cab so I'm good to go there

clock motor is clicking but not moving anything. Im soaking it in deruster currently and praying that loosens it up otherwise Im stuck buying a new motor

Use elevator bolts when installing radcals...you will thank yourself for it...not just the side panel,back box and front coin door area too (for the smaller bolts like for the light board supports I ground down the carriage bolt heads and recessed the holes with a router).

Now that's a great idea.

Twilight Zone door lamp board with 4 flashers - wedge socket version is available. The board is compatible with:
Feature lights: all wedge base incandescent bulb and LED's (type 555)
Flashers: all wedge base incandescent/LED flashers (type 906)

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/twilight-zone-door-lamp-board-flashers-add-on/page/6#post-7461378

pinside.a1ac71e3faad602eb91d94a979d7bad957cda538 (resized).jpg

pinside.fcae4be8959a873cbc3bf43c8acc061ccba44908 (resized).jpg

Excellent idea. These could help avoid the dimple the bolts create. I also recess the holes with a dremel and minimize that, but these bolts could work great.

What exactly is an "elevator bolt"?

Round flat head bolt.

LTG : )