I just use a hand pump solder sucker. Usually I can suck the solder from each pin, and then just wiggle the header a bit and pull it away in one piece

There are no trifurcon headers (male), so he must be talking about something else. But (card) edge connectors also don't use trifurcon contacts, so I've got no idea what the OP is talking about. Maybe clear it up with a picture?

Any of the 0.156 can be Trifurcon

hakko fr-300 or whatever current model is. around $300 usually but if you do a lot of board work/desoldering totally worth it.

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Just picked up one several weeks ago, best thing since sliced bread. The amount of time saved is staggering compared to copper wick.

Agreed. Got mine a few weeks ago as well, and it's been a huge time saver.

Only female contacts, not the male headers.

And they work as a pair.

Sure sounds like some nitpicking about trade names. Most of us here are using it "loosely" perhaps to describe a square pin connector vs. the original round pin headers.

Richard

Very loosely!

I never heard anyone till now calling the square pins 'trifurcons' - assuming that's what you were referring to?

Makes sense though, since the trifurcon female part needs to 'hug' the square pin instead of the round pin - I don't think they're tight enough to hug the round pin anyway. I only use trifurcon's sparingly anyway, anywhere there's a high vibration connector. I made the mistake once of repinning the display harnesses on a bally game with all trifurcon's, and they are now *extremely* difficult to pull off the display board.

Heh, I stopped ordering anything *but* trifurcons. Had to repin an edge connector once and realized I didn't have any flat pins at all!

Buy a heat gun

Had a good belly laugh this morning, not only was the wire falling out the plug but wired for the wrong polarity to boot.

Always check the other guys work, failed in following my own mantras.

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I'm garbage with a soldering iron, so I had a friend re-cap my power and sound boards for my Contact. Got them back the other day and finally got around to re-installing them.

Powered up and the game plays, but I wasn't getting any game sound (Could hear the hum, bit of crackle when adjusting volume) and no displays. Went looking, and turns out one cap on the power board has been installed backwards.

IMG_5879 (resized).JPG

Game was powered on for a couple minutes - 2 or 3 I would guess. Didn't notice, see or hear any catastrophic issues. The cap still looks to be fine.

Questions:

- Since it looks fine - should I assume that the cap is still OK? Of course I don't have any spares if it needs to be replaced.

- Any thing else I should worry about for having had the game powered on for a few minutes with the cap reversed? Fuses to check, etc? I did add the rectifier fix to the machine if that makes a difference.

That's a cap for the displays, I don't think it'd affect the sound.

Last time I wired a cap like that backwards it exploded...

If, once you replace the cap, you get your HV levels correctly, I'd assume you're fine.

Got the board back today. One of the fuses on the power board was blown, but after replacing it - displays came back just fine.

Still not getting any audio though. I get a hum from the speaker, and it crackles a bit as you turn the volume up and down, but I get no game sounds. When the game is on but in game over state, pressing the little audio test button doesn't get any test audio. The hum seems louder, but no sine wave or whatever sound it's supposed to generate.

There's a second (red) toggle switch - marked "sw2" on the schematic. I hate to say this, but I honestly have no idea what it does. It's in the same position as it had been when the game was working pre re-capping though.

I pulled and tested both fuses for the board and they're fine. I've made sure all three connectors are tight and snug multiple times. My friend's soldering work looks all fine to me. Any ideas on what to look for or check?

EDIT: Got it working. Not even 100% sure what it was, but I pulled the board back out. Jiggled each wire on each of the three connectors slightly - pushed them in as far as I could. And the likely culprit - I pressed all the chips on the board in a little bit. It seemed like one of the chips was out a tiny little bit. Side note - I didn't re-pin all the connectors, nor swap out the chip sockets when bringing the machine back to life. Anyway - back to normal.

PS - of course when I first tested it, the volume happened to be all the way up. Cat status : HIDING SOMEWHER AND APPARENTLY NOT AMUSED.

Hello all, just getting into rebuilding a stellar wars and love this thread. Bought SW for $100 and it was missing the transformer and power supply board. There was a burn mark on the back behind where the transformer was so I am assuming possibly a rectifier went bad and because of the lack of fuse inline that it burnt up the wires on the transformer??? Would that be a safe assumption.
Couple questions, is there a way to test those rectifiers or just replace and also I am missing the wiring that goes to the 4x3 plug on the power supply board. When I got the replacement transformer the wires were cut off. Anyone have one of those moles connector laying in a spare part pile. Thanks Tom

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You could test the rectifiers but they are cheap..... just replace them with 35A versions from great plains electronics, and add fuses to the inputs (one fuse holder per bridge, doesn't matter which AC input lead you interrupt).

Get spade lug versions not wire lug.

Awesome. Sounds good. Did you see the burn mark on the back wall in the pics. Do you think that may have been the cause. I talked to a bunch of people and they all said in all the years they have never seen a transformer go bad.

Transformers can go bad but it's very, very, rare.

Although with that burn mark there..... you might have a bad one. Someone really hosed you over by cutting those wires really tight to the unit.... you have a bit of a repair challenge here. Try and identify the input winding wires first so you can test it at least. I always thought WMS transformers had lugs like Bally ones do but I guess not - that shows how much transformers go bad, as I've never looked at one in my WMS games enough to notice this.

While you are ordering the rectifiers:
https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=GBPC3504L
You can get the housing for the 4x3 molex
https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=03-09-1126
Make sure to get some 0.093 pins and sockets for the wires too.
https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=02-09-1119
https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=02-09-2118

Awesome thanks for the help.

As for the transformer, I was lucky to find one I think. I saw some online for $100-150 and I got that for $50. I wish they didn’t cut them so close for sure but there is enough room to identify the wire color and to solder new ones on. The other side does have lugs and I wanna day that there is 2 wires that come off and goes to a small plug that I don’t know where it goes. The other cut wires, don’t they attach inside the windings?

This game looks like it was on a location back in the 80s and then pulled and has been sitting for 20-30 years. The rubbers were original, the pf has no wear at all. It was too good to pass up for $100 since I have never owned a widebody. Someone correct me if I am wrong but I think my stellar wars Has a system 6 mpu??? There doesn’t appear to be any work done on the board and no corrosion from the batteries. I don’t think this battery pack was stock?

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Stellar Wars is one of the first to get the System-6 board at the end of the production run according to the ipdb.
https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2372

I would say you are correct about the transformer being burned from a shorted rectifier.
That is one of the very few things that can do this.
The 9.3V section is another option.

You can also add one of my Bridge Boards insted of the rectifiers.
More information is on my website http://www.inkochnito.nl (click on the Bridge Board image).

Add fuses for the 9.3VAC (5V input) as the System-4 did not have those too.
And I do not see them in your backbox either.

Cutting all the transformer wires like that is just plain evil!

thanks Inkochnito, where is the 9.3VAC at?. I have not read read about that mod.

Btw, huge fan of yours, I have used your reference material a couple times in the VPX world when maKing my tables. Most recently all of your reference pics on Escape from the lost world. Thanks for your contributions

Once you get all the power related items restored you will need to test MPU and driver boards. These test ROMs will help you do that, and you can use them to test the entire machine as well:

https://pincoder.ca

Ummm that looks pretty advanced. How much do the chip programmers cost? I was kinda hoping to do the bulletproofing and the cross my fingers to see if it works

Looks like a stock battery holder to me. Look carefully at the chip just above the battery holder. Hard to tell for sure in the pictures but there looks to be some battery damage there.

Check the numbers on the paper stickers on the driver board, CPU board and the sound board. If they match, there is a good chance they are original to the game. One thing for sure, that driver board doesn't have that many hours on it, the resistors would be burned like so many other games of this era. Also, the metal can on the CPU crystal isn't all banged up so it hasn't been out of the game very much.

I did see the corrosion above the battery but that doesn’t look nearly as bad as my hardbody or totem was. I am going to replace that stuff. This game has stickers from a company in Montgomery Al and they all had phone numbers without area codes so that was back in the day. The rubbers were rock hard, this thing has sat for a bit. Probably the dirtiest playfield I have ever seen with a glass top on. I also noticed the driver board looked unused based on the info from this thread. I am gonna get all the power sections rebuilt and then go from there but definitely gonna do the mods suggested here.

All I know is that I barely touched my board and it fried the 5101 ram chip, so I recommend replacing it. I used the pinitech NVRAM product and it worked great!

It is not as much as a mod.
It's just an addition for safety.
On the image you can see the four red rectangles where fuses are nessesary.
(image taken from the Stellar Wars schematics).
The two at the rectifiers are also present at my Bridge Boards.
The two at the 9.3Vac lines are not on my boards, you need to add those yourself.

On the second image you can see the fuses in the 9.3Vac lines.
(Image taken from the Time Warp schematics)
Usually those fuses are on the card along with the 20A G.I. fuse.
Both schematics are missing the fuses for the solenoids and controled lamps.
That is were my Bridge Boards come in....

Peter

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What danger is there in only fusing one side of the rectifier?

None.
Either side is good.

The 9.3Vac section however is different.
It has a center tap.
So a short from either conductor to the center tap would be bad.
That is why you need to have two fuses.

It certainly doesnt hurt to do the bullet proofing. They're all good recommendations even on a working game.

The expense of a chip programmer, and having to track down chips are the biggest drawback to using any ROMs to troubleshoot, but I've had lots of good feedback about them so I'm working on a board that will eliminate the need for both of those items. The bad news is, it's taking me a while to get it into production. I was hoping that I'd be able to get right at it when we were all told to stay home, but since school is also closed I am limited in what I can accomplish at home.

Good luck with the bullet proofing, and check back on the pincoder.ca in the future if you still need help with the ROMs.

Thanks for the advice. Got some success done today on stellar wars. I have been working on my Bally hardbody and almost finished, just waiting on a part so I got the transformer out and started tracking down wires. I have 120 volts going to the transformer and proper voltages coming off so that’s a start. I am about to place my order for all the parts I need. I did notice that I am missing the cable and plug that goes to the sound board, 3 gray wires. I need to find that now.

I know the 2 fuses that must be added are the 8 amp slo blo but what size fuses for 9.3 v ac gray wires?

Oh wait I see them on time warp schematic, 4 amp slo blo correct?

On the 9.3 volt section. What is a center tap.

Also, on the schematic you suggested a fuse on each 2 9.3V lines and then each one split. There are actually 4 grey lines coming out of the transformer so does that mean to fuse all 4 lines with 4 amp sb fuses?

The center tap should be gray-white.
The four gray wires may be two pairs, one pair for the power supply 5V and the other pair for the sound board.
If you use your multimeter you should read 18.7 Vac between two gray wires.
Then you know you've got the right gray wires.
If they are at the same junction you read 0V between the wires.

Each gray wire to the gray-white wire should read 9.3 Vac

Only the gray pair going to the power supply needs to be fused with 4A SB.
The sound board has its own fuses.

Ooh I am glad you mentioned that because I did not check grey to grey, I thought it was grey to grey/white. So test grey to grey for 18.7 and send those to the ps board and the other two should also read 18.7 and go to the sound board

In your last post what is the mentioned 5v?

That's the logic supply.
It turns the 18.7Vac (2 phase 9.3Vac) into 5Vdc.

Is that on the power supply board?

So I got everything wired up, had to switch two gray wires, thanks inkochnito, checked voltages and everything is proper. Waiting on new bridge rectifiers and new plug, can’t wait

Oh and got Gi lights working, never been so happy to see only gi lights working in a pinball game!!!

So good news on my stellar wars. Got the parts today and finished up the transformer wiring and replaced the bridge rectifiers. I tested all the pins on the power supply board and everything is spot on.

After I tested the power supply I plugged all the wires back in and powered the game up. I heard a coil lock on so I unplugged it immediately. I plugged it back on and no coils and nothing else worked. I didn’t have battery’s on the mpu so I put some in and realized the holder was junk. I planned on doing all the updates to the mpu and driver board but I wanted to make sure the power section is done. I tested all the voltages on the mpu test points and maybe a couple .5v But mostly 0v. I am starting to follow PinWiki but any suggestions.
Btw displays have nothing on them.

Did I mess something up when the coil fired

Check the solenoid fuse.. it's probably blown. Either way it's best to remove it so you can power it on without firing any coils. Get familiar with the schematics for your game. Test for correct voltages and signals on the test points.

Once you know you have good power going to the MPU board, You can dive into verifiying the functionality of the MPU board and driver board by using these free test ROMs:

https://pincoder.ca

The documentation in the zip file for each test ROM will to help you troubleshoot from the ground up by limiting each test to certain basic components first, and gradually use more circuitry on the boards and the game itself.

Of course, You should also do all of the recommended upgrades in this thread. For starters, replacing the 40 pin connector is always a good idea. Take the driver board off and hold it up to the light. Take a close look at the 40 pin connector and check for broken, corroded, or relaxed pins. The relaxed ones leave a gap.

Dont worry about the blank displays just yet.. just focus on certifying that the board is actually running first.

So I spoke too soon, I checked the 5v at the psu and sometimes it reads 3.5 and sometimes 4.1 now. Not sure why the fluctuation. I checked the cap per PinWiki and it said it was fine. Regardless when I check the pins and say they are 4v, I checked the same wires at the mpu and they are almost nothing. I checked the same 4v with the molex connector attached by touching the metal through the opening and it’s like .5v. Could that voltage drop when the connector is plugged in or is my future full of new connectors and pins...

Have you re-flowed the solder or better yet, replaced the header pins on all your boards?

For the 5V - loosen and tighten back down, the mounting screws on the 5V regulator on the large heat sink. The screws are part of the circuit and get oxidized and make a bad connection.

I had a loose ground plug, I am now getting 5v. I really need to reflow the solder and replace female pins because the ground pins are green.

I'm working on a System 6 machine and I added the fuses to the Bridge Rectifiers. I have the solenoid bridge rectifier 8A fuse blowing after I play for a bit. What should I be checking?