my inexperience shows

It is important to remember that things I thought were a problem weren't actually that problem.

Spring for Break Shot not holding the up-post?  Actually a bent bar.
Slingshot misalignment for Break Shot?  Actually broken clip on the slingshot.
Cold soldering on R+B power board?  Actually just a single loose wire in a connector.
Dead switch on R+B?  Just a bad connector.
Dead switch on Break shot?  misaligned lane switch.
Dirty rails on the SF2 cab?  a huge issue was the bent metal at the back of the playfield!





My old Breakshot is now back how with its loving new/old owner, and he was kind enough to email me an update about it.  He filed the switch inside the cabinet and now the upper flipper plays brilliantly, able to return a Super Cue shot from the left back to the right!  It never did that for me, and I assumed dirty coil.  But nope, he fixed parts I hadn't considered, and it's better than ever now.

So to remember:  Stop and take a pause when I THINK I know what the issue is.  Or worse, consider an alternative if I think something is NOT an issue...

Kind of sad I got rid of Break Shot, but Flintstones is certainly worth it.  Mind you, the question is should I have gotten rid of Rocky + Bullwinkle instead?  But, the guy was lined up, ready to pick up, so it was certainly the most manageable thing to do, to sell Break Shot.

A quick digression, where I wanted to talk about how amazing the guy who bought my Break Shot is.
HE MADE A TRIPLE-HEADED PINBALL MACHINE!  Check game play here. 
And here is a vid on how it works:

(he also shows off his amazing Rat Race!)


I took some time tonight to take out the coils for R+B and give it all a good cleaning.  Put it back and WOW, yep, a noticeable difference.  I was thinking I had the slope too high on the game, but now that the flippers were cleaned and filed, the game plays that much better and that right ramp isn't prohibitive.  I did file the metal rods in the flipper coil a touch.  They weren't super mushroomed or anything at the end, but every little bit helps I imagine.

I think my goal for the time being will try and "dial in" Rocky + Bullwinkle as much as possible to see if I can get it notched above Street Fighter 2 in my fave column.
Heck, Rocky + Bullwinkle would be better than SF2 if I could run a trace on the ROM and find the variable countdown timer for ball-save and put it to something sane like every other game.


I would like to end by pointing out the fabulous progress on the Skit-B Pinball Predator game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-Pop41otk
So excited for all of those of you that are getting one!

Rocky & Bullwinkle: adding a Boris button!

My R&B had been routed and had a few non-original parts installed as fixes, and I've done a pretty good job of getting it closer to it's original state.
I will never bother hunting for a Nell mechanism, but that is a pretty useless toy as far as I'm concerned.  But from a presentation standpoint, I had always wanted to get the original Boris target button on the start button.

the old green button with the NOS Boris button that just arrived!

The old switch had been hacked in to place.  The backs of these normally have 5 plugs, but mine only had 2, and then 3 wires soldered.
Well OK one was a wire that had a diode that attached at the left, the other had a wire that went to one plug, and then had a diode running to another plug.  Then 2 normal plugs.

I didn't have any plugs or anything, and so I too would have to hack along if I wanted to get this installed!
 First up was getting the white bit away from the black bit.  On the NOS button, it was an effortless click.  On this old one is was a battle of will and strength I had to walk away from twice until I could finally dislodge it.
The white piece slides out with a bulb on the end for easy replacement.

I noted the wires + connector locations, desoldered the wires from the connectors, and prepped to get my new switch wired up.  I would have loved to just use this old switch, but it just didn't quite fit in to the new button chasis correctly.

Soldering is hard enough, but bending over in to the machine to do it certainly doesn't help!
I attached this clip to give added weight to the dangling mechanism while I worked on it.

rawwrrr, stay put!

And shockingly, I managed to reconnect it faster than taking it apart!

sure it's a hack, but it's MY hack.

They totally ripped that off of Public Enemy.

In the end the light isn't that bright, but when my LEDs come I will try putting an LED 555 in there.
It might have something to do with the hackzilla of wires in there?  But ahh well, it's working fine at least.


Oh what's that?  LEDs?  Yes, I placed an order for some treats!
I am going to put LEDs at strategic places in SF2 and R+B.  I also ordered Cliffy Protectors for SF2, as well a Gottlieb flipper rebuild kit.  I maybe should have looked in to one that included the upper flipper as well, but at least having the bottom flippers rebuilt will be nice.  Maybe with the know-how acquired form that endeavor I will be able to clean + tweak that upper SF2 slipper.
OK, I should stop talking about SF2, this is R+B's time to shine!  Oh right, I also ordered the SAVED decals for R+B since one is missing on mine.

I am not sure if I will ever bother replacing the cracks in the R+B ramps since replacing them is costly and they don't damper game play.  I might look in to restoring them, though.

Flintstones quick update

I popped open the playfield today to look at the drop targets and it was an easy fix.  The plastic bottom of the 'K' drop had slipped below the bar, thus never letting it get back to reset position.
The plastic is a bit malleable, so I was able to flex it a bit and get the bar back under it.


Then there is the mystery 800,000 points scored every time I was hitting a flipper.
Mind you, not EVERY time.  Some times it didn't award it, so a mystery was afoot!

Googling for Flintstones and 800,00 I found this post about a Flintstones repair and they had something similar occur.


 From their repair notes:

10/21/2012 15:38:06  All 3 flippers rebuilt, repaired fliptronic board - replaced 2x TIP36C transistors, repaired left 3 bank target pcb - bottom target opto was scoring on any drop in voltage due to coils firing or other loads on the 110v ac line. My heat gun made it score 800,000 points when turned on! This was interesting, never seen that before. Replaced swelled upper right flipper coil - swelled up - over heated. Broken micro-switch on the "Machine" toy. Repaired play-field slide mechanism - missing collar nut made whole play-field tilted to the left and darn hard to pull out for service. Painted inside left cabinet wall - where the play-field was digging in during lift. Fixed a lot of light sockets, bad solder and many minor issues under the play-field. Fixed the trans-light bubble on back-glass. New inst cards. Almost done.... the gold legs are ugly, oh joy, we get to clean the legs.

for me, it was the middle target, the 'E' drop.  When it was down it can't score any more, and so the coils firing weren't scoring the extra 800,000 points.
The shooter coil and flippers were causing this voltage drop, but the pops weren't.

So I can take a look at the PCB, or worst case scenario, you can get new ones for $33.

DONE
fix always-down 'K' drop target
TODO
Get metal plate for underneath pop bumper bakelight
File down mushrooming on upper flipper (bottom two were done)
extra GI mods:  lights in the city plastics, dinosaur plastic
Fix broken 3-bank drop target PCB, scores 800,000 points when flipper/shooter solenoids drop the voltage.

the OTHER game room

...AKA my office/studio space.

I got an X-Arcade Tankstick last year and have finally set things up to be perfect for it, prompted by the release of The Pinball Arcade for PC (via Steam).
I moved my 24" wide screen to a vertical position to best hold Pinball Arcade.  I had a 19" monitor as my secondary, and just today bought a 22" widescreen for $50.

Pinball Arcade:  THE THEATRE

The dual setup is great for MAME as well.  I have my horizontal games configed for the left monitor, and the vertical games configed for the right.

Contra!

Toki!

I had a bunch of issue with the mouse aspects of the Tankstick, but the tech people were super helpful and the issue was the plastic sleeves of the spare cables inside the stick had slipped, closing connections.
I retaped the ends on and it worked perfectly.
Pinball Arcade still needs to implement mouse options properly so I can assign the left and right mouse buttons to nudges.  THEN, the setup will be pretty much perfect.

this is what the tankstick looks like on the inside

It is cool to see how plug-and-play the setup is.  Inspiring!

These are the spare cables.  Some of the sleeves had slipped, so I just taped the loose end.s

SF2: my second soldering success!

While to most people in this hobby, soldering is old hat.  But for me, getting back in to it means I can celebrate every tiny soldering victory (I almost typed 'victim'), no matter how banal.

Case and point, I got my backbox fully lit again.  Thank you soldering iron!

From the back, the upper left and lower right lights weren't working.
I got a new DMM recently with little hooked leads to allow for easy clipping on to wires.  I set the DMM to continuity test, and with my ground hook on one of the wires I should be able to touch the other part anywhere and get a beep, meaning they are connected.
Touching the lower screws on those two light assemblies resulted in no beep, meaning the solder connecting the wire to the metal plate had either gotten cold and separated, or was never properly attached.

While much of that scorching was already there in the lower right, I do fully expect the Soldering Gods to turn away in shame as I do my thing.

Instead of reposting the TODO list, I will just go update last post's list with this achievement.

introducing... The Flintstones!

OH HEY, IT'S THE FLINTSTONES!

The opportunity came up to get a beautiful copy of The Flintstones and I had to go for it.
Breakshot is still here, off camera, and sold already.  (So don't ask, sorry)

I came to the idea I really wanted to push towards kids-friendly pins to make things as fun as possible for my daughter and friends for the next few years.  Eventually she will have niche tastes, and HEY if she loves dinosaurs, I can get a Jurassic Park or something like that.
My next focus?  MOUSIN' AROUND.
Others on the wish-list?  No Good Gophers and World Cup Soccer.



BUT BACK TO THE FLINTSTONES!

My first Bally!  After a Gottlieb EM, a Data East, a Capcom, and a Gottlieb DMD, I finally see the light:  it feels damn nice to own a Bally.

Of course I had to do the usual thing:  photograph the boards,  label all connectors, unplug them all, remove the head, take all pieces down the stairs separately, and the reassemble.
The guy I bought it from was scheduled to help me get it down, but was in a rush and so had to cancel that part.  While I was disconnecting things in the garage, I had the garage door open and some construction (sewer replacement) was taking place on my street.  The foreman came over to take a look at what I was doing.
After talking for a while, he offered to help get it down!  After they were done their work, and I was done mine, he grabbed a worker and those two guys brought the body down my difficult stairs!!!
What a blessing those men were.

I got it all reconnected, flipped the switch and...  POP.  After my SF2 incident, I powered it up with the backbox open, and so saw the F112 fuse go out like a camera flash.  Turned the power off right away.
I soon discovered I had mis-attached a connector.  Don't ever do this.

awwww damn.  Always spend the extra time to get up on a chair and inspect from all angles.  Slacker.

 Here's a clip from the manual of that area:

F112 is common to the bridge rectifier, feeding to more than just F104.
I went through and checked fuses at this point and found F104 was WAAAAY overfused.  15A in there when it should be 3A.  holy crap.
I decided to check all of them.  The Flippertronics II board should be 4 x 3A.  It was 10, 10, 10 and 7.  W. T. F.
A disaster waiting to happen.

After properly setting the connector, getting proper fuses and replacing the blown one, I turned it on again:  F112 popped again, right away.

I read that F112 shouldn't really be popping here unless BR3 is bad (most common scenario,) so I got Geoff my repair tech in since he's a whiz at board work.

He checked BR3 and it wasn't shorted!  Before turning anything on he did a major inspection under the playfield and found that one of the flippers did not have a diode across the coil.
It makes sense that at initial power-on my misplaced connector could have put the flipper "hold" (EOS) power to ground and caused F112 to pop, especially since F104 was over-fused to 15A.
But it is a headscratcher that with a proper 3A in F104, with the connector in proper position, and with BR3 NOT shorting, that F112 would be the one to pop and not another fuse.

I had a hard time accepting that THIS was the cause of my woes, but well....  I am playing the game now.

But, that seems to be the case.  After attaching the diode, the game works fine.
He also noticed the knocker was totally fried and stuck, so we disconnected that.  The traces for the knocker on the board are even fried, but oddly enough, the transistor that controlled it was totaly fine.  What is up with that?
Quick and dirty, unplugged the knocker.  They aren't even relevant in home games anyway.


He did notice a pop bumper solenoid missing a metal plate against the bakelite:

QUICK NOTE:  WILLIAMS MANUALS SUCK COMPARED TO GOTTLIEB!  They do not have the full board schematics like a Gottlieb or Data East manual.
The WPC schematics come in OTHER special books, because, I am told, the field instructions for board issues was to swap in a new board.


TODO
special + bowling lights out
Get metal plate for underneath pop bumper bakelight
File down upper flipper (bottom two were done)
extra GI mods:  lights in the city plastics, dinosaur plastic
something scores for 800,000 points when the right flippers flip


Flintstones is super fun.  Enough of this blogging, back to playing it.

SF2: pretty darn close to playing 100%!

A small flurry of progress with SF2:

I had my local tech in to attach a new 12N10L transistor in the Q3 spot on the driver board.   You might remember that the right slingshot coil had no diode across it, so was frying the Q3 transistor, resulting in the coil staying on.  Luckily I caught it before it burnt.  Popped out the F17 fuse and was still enjoying my game enough.
Now with diode on coil and the transistors arriving from marcospec, he swapped in the board component and voila, that's done.

Geoff, my lovely repair tech, has a great web site up at http://www.pinhead.ca/
I highly recommend him.
Oh hey and he brought old door parts and was able to secure the coin door!  Hurray for it not popping outward from the pressure of the interlock swithc and threatening to totally fall off without the lockdown bar in place.


I also have totally fixed the left VUK.  Previously I had a proper coil put in there so at least it could limp the balls out of the hole.  I also needed to re-affix the mount under the playfield as it was missing many screws.
The final steps was replacing the plunger and spring.  Here is what the old one looked like after I removed it:

so. sad.

Swapping it in was pretty easy.  It involved loosening the hole's switch to get access to the nuts for a plate that held the coil in position, then everything slides out cleanly.
The hardest part was finding the courage to trust the playfield in the upright position.  I didn't find it.  I did the whole repair with one firm hand keeping it vertical.


I also swapped in proper fuses for the few remaining ill-fused stragglers.  Right now the only incorrect fuse is F4, which has a 1/2 instead of 3/8.  Not sweating that one too much, but do still have some 3/8 ones on the way!

I reattached the subwoofer in a test, but it is so BUZZY.  I play my games with the volume somewhat low, so screw it, no sub.

So a few small things remain, but when the biggest issue is that you maybe want to replace the flippers?  NONE TOO SHABBY.


TODO
get flipper replacement kit
adjust left extra ball center target
deep clean of playfield, removing all plastics and cleaning the screws + replace upper-playfield rubbers
cleaning the under-playfield troughs
replace playfield glass
get cliffy protectors
Replace car crash flipper rubber + glue car to crash mechanism
replace stargate ramp coils (but not reason to do it yet though)replace upper left flipper solenoid with correct one  (should be A-25959) (have it, no reason to do it yet though)

DONE
fix 2 out lights in backbox
secure coin door
solder diode across the right slingshot coil.  Replace Q3 transistor on driver board.
left VUK: new spring, new plunger
get replacement fuses for under the PF
 re-secured VUK mounts to provide extra-strong kicks + added extra screws
installed lower playfield rubbers
installed new power module
replaced Q3 transistor to solve right slingshot issue
reattached ground wires
replaced VUK solenoid to correct one
replaced fuse for stargate ramps
reattach tilt mechanism
bend left playfield bracket back in to proper place
new beer seal
Flipper rubber for Chun Li
Replaced flipper rubbers (except car crash flipper)
Cleaned backbox charring + replaced dead + charred lightbulbs
initial basic playfield cleaning