Tag Archives: connectors

Old Chicago Pinball Machine (Bally, 1976)

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Symptom: None of the lights working.
Location: Superior, Colorado.

One of the most common repairs I do is related to burnt connectors for the lights on a pinball machine.  Most of them are on solid state machines built by Williams and Data East. But even an EM machine can have this problem.

Burnt lighting connector from Bally EM pinball machine.

Unlike the newer machines where new connectors can be installed, the old ones require a work-around. In this case, the connector was between the control board plywood with all of the relays mounted on it and the fuse block on the right side of the cabinet near the tilt mechanism.  This is a little used connector which would only be used if one were removing the control board from the pinball machine, which is pretty rare. Most EM pinball machines don’t even have this connector, so I had no problem just splicing the bad wire together and bypassing the connector.

Had it been a connector for removing the backbox or playfield, I probably would have installed a single pin Molex connector or something similar for the bad wire.

Since the lights on this machine hadn’t worked in years, there were a few tune-up related items that needed to be done, such has replacing burned out bulbs and cleaning some relay and stepper contacts to get all of the lights working again.

 

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.

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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!