Stars: finishing up

The last bulb in the game was a connector wire, loose up at the board.  That had all of the lights working fine for a while, until this happened:

look out below!

As it turns out, lights that snap off don't work so well!  Replaced that light socket.



During a few nights of heavy play it was noted that sometimes when some drops were down, they would continue to score 500 points.  Either by themselves, or when a flipper solenoid fired, but it was erratic.  I cleaned the contacts with a flexstone, and hopefully that problem won't return.

new drops and springs were added

cleaning the contacts seemed to help the repeated scoring issue

One issue that does return periodically is the right flipper getting stuck in a halfway position.
This occurs when the up/down rod gets rotated a bit, and sits improperly on the switch beneath the playfield.  I tightened the metal bent around it with needlenose pliers, and hopefully it will sit there properly for a while.
Eventually, that might need to be swapped out with an unbent switch plate.

wire from above is nuzzled between the edges of the switch plate.  Imagine the displacement if that 90 degree metal wire was rotated and sitting on top of the switch's channels.  That would mean the spinner is sitting at the half-rotated position.

And that is IT!   With that I say goodbye to this lovely Stars, back to it's home looking and playing lightyears better than it did when it arrived.

Stars lights!

Stars needs all of it's indicator lights!  Very important for decision making.
After replacing a few more sketchy light sockets, it was time to hunt down the bad transistors.

The manual for Stars is a bit of a mess.  Go download it at IMDB, page 5 is a long list of corrections for the lamp driver board.
On top of that?  We found that even the CORRECTIONS had a mistake!
J1-10 is listed as SPECIAL WITH WHITE STAR, but we confirmed it is actually just the WHITE STAR.

So we proceeded carefully with the transistors we had.  But J1-10 needed a MCR-106 transistor, and I only had bought 2N5060s.  So the game will be missing that single light.
BUT, the rest are now working!

With the light board removed, we also noticed Capacitor C1 was disconnected.  Looking at the schematics, I don't quite understand where J4-3 connects to, but it's back connected now.
Lamp driver A5-J4-3 connects to A3-J3-16, on the voltage regulator / solenoid driver board.
So looking at the schematics, I really think this capacitor is there to connect two voltage test points, so probably not critical to gameplay.


The wires connecting the left flipper are now sealed properly, with the flaking electrical tape removed.

At this point?  I think we might just be one transistor away from a fully working game!

Stars: lighting update

I got in a bag of light sockets, so it was time to start tackling the light bulb issues on Stars.

First up was the task of figuring out what sockets do not make a good connection, and therefore should be replaced.

Open the game door and press the test button and all of the controlled lights will start flashing.  With the playfield up, for each one that doesn't blink, I use an alligator clip to jump from the connection of a working light to a non-working one.

If the light does not light then, you know you have to replace it.  I replaced about 5 of them.  

There are also a handful of lights where the light is rather dim, due to dirty sockets, and I'll probably replace those as well.  

Stars uses a single lamp driver to drive both Stars on the playfield:  the one at the target, and the same colour at the spinner.  Problem is, if one lamp socket is dirty and intermittent and goes out temporarily, the other other will as well.  So doubly best be sure the lights are OK.

But now that the bad sockets are located, time to move up the chain to the connectors and the transistors on the light board.

quick updates: LOTR & Stars

Hey all!  Summer's been going great.  We had a mini pinball flea market / convention / tournament out in Hawkesbury, Pinball Women Ottawa has been going strong, and the weather has been wonderful.

Stars:  
I installed a proper sized lock.  It took forever to get the old drilled-out lock mech out for whatever reason, then the first lock I installed was a bit too long.  That means the door has wiggle room to move out, and when you move it back in, you can trigger a tilt/slam switch.  There are actually like THREE different standard replacement lock sizes, so I will start to stock them all.

The metal inlane rail also popped out again, but a friend who was playing at the time glued it back down.  Just in case it happens again?  I noticed over the the PBResource Specials page they actually have NOS Stars inlane guides!  WHAT ARE THE ODDS?
Steve Young is a precious treasure to pinball.  He has been sitting on these damn things for probably 38 years waiting for me to start work on an old Stars with bent-to-shit metal rails.

Another great thing from Hawkesbury:  a friend brought me 2 old Stern/Bally displays.  One had a sticky that the 10s and 10000s were out.  The other had no sticky.  And at the flea market I bought one that was degassing for $5.  One of these would do the trick!
I  popped in the one with no sticky and it works!

Now, if we look closely, we can see that it is not perfect:

note the damage to some digit segments

But hey it's readable, bright, and better than no score.  And only $5 was spent!

I took a look at the display that had the 10s and 10000s out.  Do you think you can spot where the problem might be?

I think I am going to also order some replacement fuses.
Check the fuse chart in the machine.  Most pinball machines use slow-blow fuses, but the early Sterns are one of my first odd-duck examples.   the slow-blow fuses are marked, so the rest of the fuses here are fast blow.

Lord Of The Rings:
LOTR was down for want of the gollum hole.
Or, as a friend exclaimed "GOLLUM'S HOLE IS BROKEN!" as she laughed to herself.
Well, Mr. Gollum, I will RESPECT your hole, and I ordered a replacement switch.  At first I thought it was just out of shape and I could bend the wire to register properly, but no.  With my multimeter in continuity mode, I checked the switch and there was no continuity when pressed.
The switches are kind of cool that they have their center connector, then you can connected to one node for NO (Normally Open) behaviour, or the other node for NC (Normally Closed).  The NC terminals registered as expected, the NO one not at all.
Part got delivered to me in Hawkesbury the other weekend, and I was stymied by not being able to unscrew the darn switch screws:

I remembered something my tech friend Andrew taught me:  when in doubt, tear the whole damn thing down.
So I disassembled the entire VUK assembly and removed it from the playfield.  Only then, with a clear 90 degree angle on the plate, could I impact the nuts in any meaningful way.
Removed switch, desoldered, soldered in a new one, and reassembled.  Then played my first game of LOTR in maybe a month.  JOY!

Stars: basic progress

I have really not had much time to spend in the back room, so things have been slow and erratic.  And things have been a struggle.


First up, this game needs to be properly leveled, but all of the casters were seized something fierce.  I took one leg off (swapped in one of my spares I keep for issues like this) and went to work on it.
24 hours in evaporust, no help.  WD-40, no help.  I even went and bought a product called PB Blaster, an intense penetrating oil, but still couldn't get it off.
With the help of a friend's extra muscle, it came off.  So much effort for one damn caster!


I had stripped the playfield for a cleaning.  The plastics were all quite dirty, but cleaned up well. 
New rubbers everywhere, and that revealed how both flipper bats had a small hole smashed in to them, so ordered some replacements.


Time to change the flipper bats!  What could go wrong?


Ugggggh how about shards of metal in the flipper shaft, making it nigh impossible to remove?  After 2 days of on-and-off struggle, I finally got face to face with those goddamn little shards.
Go to replace the right flipper bat, then afterwards notice that the coil needs replacing.  No worries, can get a new coil, but ummm  wow one screw has had it's head cut off, and the other was weak and stripping with any torque.  MORE FUN!

ugggh

Then there was the kickout hole.  This era of games, there is no bracket to slide the game forward on so I accidentally shorted the playfield kicker coil.  Uggh.
Got a new one, put it in and it played great.  Put the metal apron back on, started up and it fires right away.  DAMMIT, there was no real clearance under the apron and it shorted the coil leads, blowing the transistor.  So now the transistor gets replaced.  Thanks to my friend who had a spare, and to my other friend who swapped them on the board while I wrangled my daughter.
Now with that coil, I'm bending the leads down, but yeah, I have to remember this is a 1979 game and a lot of common-sense things in later games, like proper clearance, support rods, etc, weren't yet implemented.




Another thing to tackle was that the left inlane guide rail had popped out.  It was previously rebent, so the flipper was smacking it and it eventually popped out.  I struggled to bend it in a way that would give clearance from the flipper, but also good gameplay.
Then I went and got some Gorilla Glue.  Then I read that that stuff expands 3-4x, according to the label.
So then I returned it and bought some Gorilla Glue GEL, which doesn't expand, and that did the trick.


Next up?  Order a bunch of extra light sockets.  In this game you are chasing a lit target, so it is quite essential to gameplay to get all of these old and corroded sockets working 100%.
Check this thread on MAACA for more bulb discussion.



More fun:

looks like at some prior time, something fried on the CPU board!

Introducing... Stars!

Let's all gather to welcome the newest entry in the basement... Stars!
From 1978, it's one of the earliest solid state games, and the 3rd SS from Stern, using their M-100 MPU.

Apollo 13 is Done and Gone and I am so relieved.  From one space themed game to another, and to be quite honest I've already gotten more enjoyment out of Stars than A13.
One thing to note is the new preferred method for getting games up and down the difficult turning staircase:  removing the playfield.
After trying and failing to arrange for 3 people to help get Apollo 13 up the stairs (it is a very heavy game even with the head off!) I decided to see what it'd take to get the playfield out.
This was inspired by Rollergames, where we quickly realized that once you disconnect the head, the playfield is already disconnected and easily lifts out.
On A13, there were just 3 additional connectors to label and detach.  I can only see this being an issue on 90s Williams machines, where they have the brackets+sliders that also secure the playfield in.


So with the playfield removed, A13 was able to come up with just the two of us:  playfield, body, head.
The owner came and grabbed it, leaving Stars in the garage, which I got down a few days later another day.




First thing I noticed about Stars is that I hate these ridiculously thin and fragile board connectors. 

This game also has the back left leg plate busted, and so the leg only attaches there with bolts on the inside. I am NOT the person to work on this cab and get the plate back.  Perhaps the next owner will take a stab at that.


The playfield is super dirty, but the plastics were in great shape.  Only the left sling was warped, but I can fix that in the oven. 
Backglass is in good shape, and seems to already be sealed with triple thick.

yeah that might need some fixin

that's gonna need some fixin

warped plastics? that's a fixin

seized solenoid in the school's canoe?  you best believe that's a fixin

Lots of lights out on the playfield.
Needs all new rubbers.
4th player display is non-working. 
Casters are seized in to the legs, making levelling nigh impossible.




Let's fix some pinball!

Mr. Gorbachev:  TEAR DOWN THOSE RUBBERS

cleaned plastics!