Monthly Archives: May 2013

World Cup Soccer Pinball Machine, Williams, 1994

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Location: Littleton, CO
Symptoms: GI lights not working, battery holder corrosion, tune-up

Only a few upper playfield general illumination (GI) lamps were working.  There was no voltage at the lamp sockets, so I looked in the backbox for the problem.

GI lighting connector burnt.

GI lighting connector burnt.

The GI lighting connector was burnt. This is a common problem with many pinball machines.  The root cause can be a number of things such as contact oxidation, a shorted lamp circuit, or even poor design forcing too much current through the connector pin.  Once the scenario starts, it is self destructive.  Any of these root causes will cause the connector to heat up, which in turn causes more oxidation on the metal surfaces, as well as reducing the spring tension on the female contact.  All of which cause it to get hotter until it fails.

Male header was also damaged.

Male header was also damaged.

pb-0125

Even the solder had melted on the end pin.

I replaced both the male and female connector with Molex Trifurcon which have a better current carrying capability than the originals.  The female pins contact the male pin on three sides instead of just one or two, giving it some redundancy.

This machine had been in storage for a number of years. The AA batteries that supply power to the RAM to hold the high scores, had leaked and damaged the battery contacts on the holder.  Fortunately, this era of WPC boards have the battery holder piggy-backed over the CPU board, so if the battery holders get damaged, the main CPU board doesn’t.

I removed the battery pack completely and also removed the RAM chip.  I replaced it with an anyPIN NVRAM module. The batteries are no longer needed.  Ever.

After tuning up and replacing a bunch of bulbs, the pinball machine was working great!

 

Star Wars Pinball Machine (Data East, 1992)

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Location: Highlands Ranch, CO
Symptoms: Wrong wiring on switch and lamps, broken drop target

This is the first machine I’ve ever encountered that had an alarm system attached to the coin door.  I’m pretty sure the owner wasn’t even aware of it.

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Coin Door Alarm System

The switch on the shift lever (used in place of the ball shooter) was disconnected.  The normally closed terminal of the switch had broken off.  Normally this terminal is used to hold the diode.  I re-wired the switch and diode and covered the diode and connections with shrink tubing.

There were a number of playfield lamps not working correctly.  Some were staying on, some weren’t working at all. I found that someone had disconnected the “Jabba’s Bounty” overhead light on the playfield and twisted the wires together.  This shorts out the lamp circuit.  Once I un-shorted the wires and reattached them to the lamp socket, many of the other lamps started working.  The remaining lamps were burned out.

The broken drop target was preventing the other drop targets from resetting.  The stem was jammed in the reset mechanism.

I ordered a new drop target, which comes blank.  There are Star Wars decal sets for sale on e-Bay, but they are missing the right target.  The sellers suggests just taking the left decal and turning it upside down.  I think it looks stupid.

Decal set with left decal turned up-side-down to make the right decal.

e-Bay decal set with left decal turned up-side-down to make the right decal.

Here is a link to the IPDB showing the drop targets.

Since I have the old broken drop target, I decided to scan and print a new decal.

Scanned and retouched decal image

Scanned and retouched right decal image

New drop target on left, original on right

New drop target on left with my decal, original on right

The colors don’t match exactly, but I think it’s better than an up-side-down decal.

If you would like the high resolution files for making your own right drop target decal, they can be downloaded here.  There are two .tif files contained in the .zip, one is the original scan without any touch-up, and the other is the touched-up version.

anyPin NVRAM module

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When I was at the Pinball Showdown a few weeks ago, I picked up a couple of anyPin NVRAM modules from Rob at Pinball Classics (he had a booth there).

All pinball machines made prior to about 2000 use some type of battery system for maintaining the settings and high scores.  The batteries often leak and cause damage.

The “NV” in NVRAM stands for Non-Volatile, which means it will remember its contents with no power.  It uses a ferroelectric technology where the RAM contents are stored in tiny magnetic charges.

anyPin NVRAM module by Pinball Classics

anyPin NVRAM module by Pinball Classics

Since the Showdown, I’ve installed the modules in two of my customer’s machines.

The first machine was a Bally Bobby Orr Power Play in Windsor, Colorado. The CPU board in this machine had the original Ni-Cad rechargeable battery installed. It was leaking white alkaline from the ends. I de-soldered the battery from the board and installed the NVRAM module.  It worked right at startup; no other configuration was needed.

The second machine was The Games by Gottlieb located in Brighton, Colorado.  This uses the Gottlieb Systems 80A system.  Like the Bally, it has a rechargeable battery. The battery itself didn’t look too bad after 30 years of use.  But it would have started leaking soon.   The other problem is the customer doesn’t leave the machine on long enough to charge it up.  Powering up the pinball machine a couple of hours a week is not long enough to keep those batteries charged.

The old Gottlieb RAM chip was soldered on the CPU board, so I had to remove it, then installed the socket strips that come with the module.  (That machine also had a bad display driver chip that needed replacing.)  Everything worked flawlessly at power-up.

Williams and Stern pinball machines use AA batteries to remember their settings.  They leak if you forget about them.  I’ve got a customer with a Williams World Cup Soccer where the batteries leaked because the machine was in storage for a number of years.  The alkaline from the batteries ate through the tin plating on the battery holder and now there is a very unreliable connection to the batteries.

I can’t recommend these anyPin NVRAM modules enough!  Most of the machines I work on have some type of battery issue and this module is the long term solution.