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Quoted from rad:a fully functional hack (an operator went to great lengths to create this!).
HV section 1.jpg 127 KB
HV section 2.jpg 134 KB
This is a fully functioning high voltage section? Why not put these components back on the board? This operator clearly had the skills to do it right
Quoted from balzofsteel:Somebody somewhere started a rumor to the effect that applying oily substances to old lamp sockets would magically restore the shrunken insulators and make the lamps shine brightly.
How did it work out?
the bulbs still didn't work!
Quoted from sohchx:They could have at least pushed the wires all the way through the holes to make it cleaner and snipped off the excess. Less chance of bridging them too.
WHat? and have to remove the board to do the repair? F That!
Picked up a Viking on Sunday. Aside from fade and a few hacks it looks and plays nice.
Now the Hacks:
So this
Attached to right flipper
leads to thisbottom of cabinet on left side
and ultimately connects to this2017-02-21 15.41.33 (resized).jpg
So when the middle saucer doesn't fire just hold down the right flipper and press the button to fire the solenoid.
At least it's better that the hellmageddon in the backbox2017-02-19 19.03.18 (resized).jpg2017-02-19 19.03.25 (resized).jpg
I spliced in a display harness from a playboy so that's all cleaned up, still have to tackle the playfield wiring in the back box.
Quoted from flynnibus:Very common... and actually factory in some generations.
Fortunately I have a second nine ball next to.it to verify it in this case. What seems so hacky about this is this repair took way more effort than a correct repair.
Quoted from statictrance:the complete and total lack of a power board. Literally every single connection was hand wired/connected/soldered either floating or directly to the metal bracket. If you look close at the bracket - the guy took the time to mark the fuse amps and even TEST POINTS!
Given I was new to the hobby and putting in a new MPU - I didn't have the testicular fortitude to power this on to see if this hack worked (or real trust in my abilities to test it all through). With the old MPU in, I can say it had GI and seemed to have display voltage glow (Seller 'turned it on' when I arrived). I included a picture of the 'after' with a new power board and all the wires reworked. Shockingly, it works like a charm with the new boards.
There was another hack attached to the SDB that had two small wires running to a little breadboard - but I don't think I grabbed pictures of it. I'm not sure what it was used for - but I cut it out and the machine still works. I'm guessing it was either related to the pictured hack.
The amount of work done to avoid work!
Quoted from pinballtech:After over 40 years as a tech I thought I had seen it all, but this takes the cake. Add-ons include relays, wires, beacon, speaker, bells, buzzers, door chime, and the piece de resistance, an old cannister vacuum cleaner under the machine that was also wired in. We spent an hour or two trying to figure it out, but there is so much that has been added to the original wiring it was difficult to "see the light". The guy that did this has passed away so I am on my own here. We are trying to get it going for his daughter, but where do you start? I looked through the notes he had left but there was no clear direction there. Immediate problem is in the scoring, but obviously all these extras were added to that circuitry so the original schematic was no help. Still shaking my head.
Wow it would be easier to buy a second one and swap the guts into it
I use an IWISS crimper. It does insulation and wire crimp at the same time, ratchets closed to hold the crimp and does a perfect job every time. Price is right too. GPE is thinking of carrying these. I bought one when he mentioned them. I hope he does start carrying them soon as I'd rather give him the sale.
Quoted from pinlink:What do you guys think about this one?
https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=1026-CT
Doesn't ratchet and needs to be used twice for each crimp. The IWISS is cheaper
Quoted from statictrance:Mine is very similar to this... Has a blue handle, but that may just be a design change over the years...
Mine came with a blue handle too
Quoted from hazmat7719:And may I add that it is fun to bring them back. It is part of the hobby. I hope that you and your friend have a great time working on this!
I had a viking with a manual hole kickout button. Fixing that hack was almost as fun as playing the game
Quoted from Markharris2000:A 100X improvement of that board would be a $4 RaspberryPico board, with a $1 one chip amplifier if designed today. Too bad there is no market for sound upgrade boards for EMs any longer....
I guess with some jumpers and an extra switch on the start button to reset it, you could make the sounds (WAV TRIGGER) change based upon the score and the current coil being triggered. This could be a little more dynamic that bleeps.
Quoted from mbwalker:I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but as an electrical engineer....that sort of makes sense.
It looks horrible but since it's grounds what is the worry? That it will accidentally short to...ground? And the issue it fixes is that some of those lines have bad connections and are floating. Now they all share the same connection.
I like to use a buss bar instead of doing this but it's functionally the same.
Quoted from sparky672:When you think about it, almost every hack in this 75 page thread shows something that is functionally the same as the original.
Yes, a buss bar would be a far better solution than the solder-blob if the slim possibility of floating grounds on your Gottlieb keep you up at night. Alternately, one could test the resistance and continuity of each ground circuit and make the appropriate repair such as re-pinning the connectors.
My Gottlieb Volcano was an absolute mess when I got it. Intermittent power connections at the power supply, wrong fuses, burned solenoids, alkaline damage on the MPU, fried & flaky chips, bad transistors, dim displays, and loose edge connections - not to mention the various playfield hacks, screws, nails, and sheet metal. The original orange filter cap was already changed years prior, and I tied the grounds together on all the boards in the head, which did not hurt anything but also solved none of these problems.
I eventually found and fixed the root cause of every single problem and none was traced back to a missing ground or a bad filter cap.
I bet you did essentially the same thing by tying the grounds together on the back of the driver board. This is the correct way but to avoid problems in the future both ends need to addressed unless it has the soldered ground bar in early system 80s
Quoted from mbwalker:RF engineer here, high power transmitter design, up to ~10GHz (but mostly below about 1.5GHz). I wouldn't be happy unless I used metal backed PCB boards bolted to a hunk of metal for ground!
If it was my pin, I'd restore to original but neatly add additional mods to help ensure ground issues down the road don't return. Wasn't running ground wires to each board (not thru a connector, but to the board itself) a common practice on the Sys 80 boards?
I don't know how well Gottlieb implemented their grounding scheme, maybe it wasn't the best from the 'get-go', and just gets worse as time goes on.
Part of the issue is they ran a wire back to ground for each group of 3 coils. But the grounds for these groups weren't connected on the board.
And then they switched from soldiered ground wires to using a female connector and a small PCB of the male pins screwed to a grounded metal box. The screw didn't provide the ground though, it just held the soldered side of the PCB against the metal.
Quoted from mbwalker:So where did the coil grounds end up going? So another ground path is used to eventually tie the coils to the board ground?
Sorry for a slight thread derail - don't mean to turn this into a ground repair thread.
Down the ground wire to the ground plane
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Lodi, CA
