LEDs and instruction cards

I mentioned it in the last post, but it bears repeating:
Comet Pinball is my favourite place for LEDs.  
Excellent customer service, and they ship via USPS (United States Parcel Service).  This is huge for people in Canada, since we all know UPS is a spawn of satan company that survives by fucking over customers in every way they can.  ESPECIALLY on customs.
Oh, and fabulous prices, bulk deals, and wide selection!


Also, props to http://www.pinballrebel.com/pinball/cards/ for their great selection of pinball instruction cards. 
Swapped newly printed ones in to Monopoly and Flintstones.

guess which ones are the old ones?

Flintstones: drop bank board FIXED!

I got great advice from commenter Atomicboy that it was most likely a cracked solder joint. 
Since the problem just moved down the line after replacing the center opto, I figured they were probably right, so I reflowed solder on the board and LO!  It works now!
No false-positives when the solenoids go off.  I wish I had been able to identify which one it was, but hey, it's playing great now.

I wasted money on optos I didn't need, but they can go in the spare parts bin.
At least I didn't spend $34 on a new PCB like most everyone else who was dealing with this issue did.


I do need to get another E clip though.  It's kind of scary:  you are removing the PCB and taking off those little clips then... *tinkle* it has fallen... somewhere.  I couldn't locate it.  I reviewed every wire beneath and made sure that it wasn't somewhere shorting out something, but I will be a touch paranoid until I find it again.
Cardinal rule:  Always have a white sheet beneath where you are working to make it easy to find anything that has fallen!

Flintstones: pop bumper part, and replacing the drop-bank opto

I received the parts for Flintstones:  a metal yoke plate that had been noticed missing from one of the pop-bumpers, and an extra opto for the one that seems to be flaky on the drop-bank board, registering false-positives.

I had never taken apart a pop bumper before, and kept trying to see how little I would have to dig through to get it in.
I found this video very handy:

The game was playing fine, but I imagine with that supporting metal yoke it would wear and fail far sooner than if it was properly sheathed in place.

Here it is almost fully reassembled.  Need to attach one last nut on the right, and align the spring properly.

the drop-bank assembly, with the opto board removed, just chillin' out beneath it.

I had never desoldered anything before, and after much struggle I finally managed to get the center opto out!
I was using a solder sucker at first, but a friend reminded me to use a solder wick with flux and that did the trick.  I was worried in my clumsy attempts that I had charred some of the traces, but in the end everything tested fine.
My solder joints were little unsightly blobs, but I got out the multimeter and did connectivity tests and everything was lined up the way it should be.

my glorious tools

The plyers acted as a great stabilizer for all this.  And yes, I did trim the wires a bit.  :)

So now the middle opto is not giving false-positives!  I put it back in the machine and it's great!
Only problem?
THE TOP OPTO IS NOW FLAKING OUT IN THE SAME WAY!
Drat.  What could it be?
Could the top opto just have developed the flakiness suddenly?
If there was a problem somewhere else, by replacing the center opto how could the issue be exchanged to the top opto?

What a mystery.  Maybe I just should have paid the money and bought the replacement board...  but I did order a 2nd spare opto, so maybe I'll take some time and replace the top one too.  *sigh*


DONE
fix always-down 'K' drop target
Installed metal plate for underneath pop bumper bakelight
Replaced opto on left 3-bank drop target PCB

TODO
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.

Flintstones opto board analysis

I am trying to figure out if I can salvage the 3-bank opto board, or if I'll be forced to buy a new one.  Background here.

char lines line up with the bigger resistors

there is a touch of charring under the resistors, but they all check out.  Ran continuity between solder points to check traces, diode tests, all seems ok.
With it installed, the switch edge tests are fine.  The optos work as they should, but opto #2 will also register when a coil is fired.

WHAT COULD BE GOING ON WHERE A VARIATION IN THE VOLTAGE ACROSS THE BOARD WOULD GIVE A FALSE-POSITIVE ON ONE OPTO, BUT NOT THE OTHERS?

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.

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.