First Shopped Machine

2012-01-05T08:54:00.000-06:00

I've recently finished creating a Flynn's Sign to be installed into a Tron Pinball machine. If you are interested in ordering, you can order through the link below.

Thanks!

Mike

** If this is an international order, send me an e-mail and I will send you an invoice with the additional International shipping cost.

The Switch Matrix

2011-12-18T22:08:00.000-06:00

Switches go on and off. There are two leads and a diode. What's not to get?

It can be confusing to someone new to the hobby. Matrix questions come up all the time on RGP. I hope to help clarify the switch and light matrix here with an example and an illustration.

The system 11 board can support up to 64 switches. If you were to wire that conventionally, that is to say a wire going to the switch and a wire coming back from the switch, you would end up with 128 wires. Also, to manage the wires you would want them to be different colors. You could get away with 64 colors, but it would be easier to have 128 colors to signify 1 color for a "To the switch" wire and another color for a "From the switch" wire.

For the switches alone, you would have 128 wires, and then you would have to add another 128 for the lights. You can see where this might become confusing and expensive for the manufacturers. So what they adopted for the switches (and the lights) is a matrix.

You create an 8 by 8 matrix (grid). 8 colors on the X axis and 8 colors on the Y axis. This gives you 64 intersections. Like the game battleship.

What the game CPU does is checks each intersecting X and Y to see if that switch is closed. It doesn't do it all at once. It scans them. Is the Green/Brown wire connected to the White/Brown Wire? Is the Green/Brown wire connected to the White/Red wire? Is the Green/Brown wire connected to the White/Green wire? 1,1 then 1,2 then 1,3 then 1,4 etc.

Here is the Switch Matrix diagram from F-14 Tomcat, however you'll find this diagram in many more pinball manuals.

What I've done is highlighted a single switch in yellow. The Upper Right "C" target. What have we learned from this diagram that will help us with troubleshooting?

Look at what I highlighted in yellow and note the color of the wires. There is a wealth of information here.

Looking at the Upper Right C Target under the pinball playfield, it should have a Green/Violet and White/Blue wire. Make certain that this is the case and that the wires are connected properly.
On the MPU board, the White/Blue wire should go to connector J10, pin 6. Make certain that this is the case and that the wire is connected well.
On the MPU board, the Green/Violet wire should go to connector J8 pin 7. Make certain that this is the case and that the wire is connected well.
You should check to see if all of the other switches on the White/Blue wire work.

If for example, the Left Center Eject switch works but the Lower Ramp, Lower Right "C", etc switches do not work, then there may be a broken wire between the Left Center Eject switch and the Lower Ramp switch.

You should check to see if all of the other switches on the Green/Violet wire work.

If for example, the Upper Right "T" target works, but the Upper Right "A" target does not work as well as the Upper Right "C" target, the "Kill Gen. Yagov" switch, etc do not work, then it may be a broken wire between the Upper Right "T" target and the Upper Right "A" target.

Check the diodes on the switches for the string that does not work. It's possible that a downstream diode, or the diode on the Upper Right "C" target itself is bad.
If the whole column of switches is not working and the wires and connectors are all sound, on the MPU board, transistor Q42 should be tested.

The same design applies to the lights. And by lights I mean the special lights, not the general illumination lights. As a quick review: General Illumination lights (GI) are not controlled individually. Those are the lights that all turn on at once, and all turn off at the same time. It's the accent lighting.

The special lights are on a matrix like the switches. The CPU scans through the connections and if the Lower "C" Light should be on, it briefly sends a pulse through the two wires to light that individual light.

As an aside, I'm not sure exactly how this works. I imagine it connects one wire to ground and connects the other wire to a current source. I'll have to look into that, but it's not important at this point. We're looking for bad transistors, wires, and diodes right now.

This information allows you take a more methodical approach to troubleshooting the problem. Also, you'll spend less time digging around through wires and wondering where they lead to next.

It also lets you into the designer's head a little and I hope demystifies an aspect of the hundreds of feet of wire. Also, this design is common in many, many games. Understanding this concept will allow you to quickly attack problems without even having to resort to a manual.

And the blog wakes up again, like a horror movie monster.

2011-12-18T21:22:00.003-06:00

Recently, I was asked by someone who found this blog why I didn't blog anymore. My answer was, I was kind of done with this project, but I always meant to continue in some other way. I'll be trying to figure out a way to put this blog in some other format that can be indexed by subjects like, "Rebuilding Flippers", "Rebuilding Targets", etc.

Mark asked me, (Oh, his name is Mark, Hi Mark!) some questions about pinball as he was new to the hobby. It sparked something for me. I have learned a ton and demystified many subjects for myself. However, I'm still new enough to remember those things that completely had me confused at first.

Thus, I start phase two of this blog. Explaining stuff that will help a beginner better understand how a pinball machine works. Understanding these concepts will really cut down on troubleshooting time and costly mistakes.

Things like:

How does a coil work in the context of a pinball machine?

What is a switch/light matrix?

What resources are available to me to learn about [Soldering, Electronics, Buying a pinball machine, etc]

My display is out, how do I tell what I need to re-order? Why would I buy an LED replacement?

LEDs are cool, why are they flickering? How do I make it stop?

I brushed away all of the bad looking stuff that leaked from my batteries, do I really have to do more to fix it?

And other stuff I remember as I go along.

Into the sunset

2010-11-27T23:49:00.000-06:00

And this, my friends, is it for a while. The F-14 is done, for now. Is it perfect? Not at all. However, it's in very nice shape, everything works, all of the parts are there, and it's 1000% better than when I got it.

I had some pretty lofty goals when I started. Make it perfect. Factory perfect. Better than factory perfect. Knowing next to nothing, it didn't seem unreasonable to shoot for the moon. Like many of these projects, you start out and wonder, "How hard can it be? Especially if I'm determined!"

Well, it's hard. This week it will be 9 months since I started and in that time, I've met a few dozen really great people. I've traveled 4 different states to find parts, machines, and pinball shows. I've had the privledge of unboxing a new machine with a new friend, and I've seen how even a brand new machine is imperfect.

Chad and I had the goal of finding a few machines. I think we thought it would be great to have maybe 3 machines each to work on over the past 9 months. We've done much better than that. I've purchased 7 machines and sold 2. Chad has found 7 machines, and sold one.

This has been a great experience, and I'm so happy to be done. I was afraid it would end up like other hobbies of mine, where it was fun at first, but then got old and I was done with the hobby before the year was over. While I may be done detailing my repair efforts on pinball machines, I'm not done with pinball.

I have tournaments to enter, I have my first DMD machine to purchase (Dot matrix display -- basically a more modern game that is expensive), I have a few more machines to clean up, and then Chad and I have to do what we originally set out to do -- Start selling games.

Selling games, just to feed the habit. You have to be a special person to make a living doing this. However, I would like to get those fancy games that cost $3,500 each. The way to do that is to buy a game for $300, fix it up, and then sell it for $1,000. All the while having fun, meeting people, playing pinball.

Thanks for reading this blog. I'm not sure what my next updates will be or when, but I'm sure I'll have something to say every month or so.

Here is my current basement lineup. The F-14 is truely my first shopped machine. The other three in this shot were purchased with a little more experience and savvy. They worked pretty well when I got them, all there is to do is to clean them up and play them.

F-14, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man, High Speed, Space Station

One last pass on those slingshots and pop bumper

2010-11-27T23:29:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, no pictures on this post. Entering the home stretch, I put the playfield back in, put the old head on, connected the wires, and it all worked beautifully -- Except for the slingshots and pop bumper.

I thought that maybe my past board repairs failed, but I learned some things about troubleshooting coils. If you connect a wire to ground, and then touch the metal tab on the transistor for that coil, if everything is correct, the coil will fire.

Also, you can touch the ground to the non-power lead on the coil (maybe you can touch either tab, I'm not sure and I wasn't going to try this late in the game) and it will fire, if everything is correct.

None of the coils would fire. I checked the power and accidentally fixed the problem. The coils were getting about 25 volts. I tested the voltage up at the power supply, and it was 40 volts. This seemed odd. So I checked the coils again and they were at 40 volts, and they were now working.

Just touching the wire going to the power supply was enough to re-seat the wire well enough to get a good connection all of the way through. Knowing this, I replaced the whole connector, and the game is 100% now.

I just have to slide it into place, put the new glass on it, and be done!

Holy crap! That's a lot of work.

2010-09-06T23:26:00.000-05:00

I've just finished "shopping out" the lower playfield. This means I stripped the parts off, cleaned them all up, touched up bad scratches, polished up metal, and gave it all a good look before reassembling it all.

It took me a little over 8 hours. And I didn't make any mistakes that cost me any time really. I didn't have to re-do anything and I didn't spend much time puzzling over how things went back together. I may have been a little too meticulous, but really, can you be?

I'm happy with the results, and a bit daunted by the upper playfield which is much more complex than the lower playfield.

Before. Some parts already stripped.

After. Clean and bright. About 95% assembled.

Home Made Playfield Rotisserie

2010-09-03T14:44:00.000-05:00

I've finally reached the point where it's time to work on the playfield. I have seen three or four of these home made playfield rotisseries and since it costs about $250 to buy one pre-built I thought it prudent to make my own.

This is with about $60 worth of parts from the hardware store. Chad helped make it (them really, we made two) and I'm very proud of it. The feet on the bottom swivel away for easy storage and they may it rock solid.

If there's one flaw, it's that I made it too big. The playfield sits maybe 8 inches higher off the table than it has to. I'll be modifying it a little to drop the "pivot" hardware the eight inches. It shouldn't take long to do.

One day when I'm feeling a bit more industrius, I'll post the measurements.

Night and Day

2010-09-02T10:50:00.005-05:00

It's nice to be at the point where I'm doing little things like polishing plastic. I am shocked by how well the Novus products work.

Before

Novus 3, then 2, and finally 1. Oh, also a lot of elbow grease and paper towels. (Toss some arm cramps in there too.)

Note the paint scuffs and fine scratches gone. They have a nice iridescence now.

Painting

2010-08-30T21:10:00.000-05:00

Work is really wrapping up. It's hard to tell from these photos because the glare is so bad, but this work resulted in a significant improvement in how the cabinet looks overall.

Prepped.

Sprayed.

Unmasked.

It's hard to tell, but this really is MUCH better.

Click on this photo and note the area between the 1 and the 4. I know it's dark, but you can see where the paint cracked and the wood is showing through. I used a black sharpie to touch this up. I will do the same with the red, and I'll get a white paint pen for the white areas.

Here it is "post sharpie". It makes a big difference. Now, so you don't think it makes the cracks disappear 100%, here is a shot under the harsh light of a flash bulb held 12 inches away. You can see, if you look closely, that it has been touched up. However, short of stripping the entire cabinet and repainting all of the artwork, nothing is going to be perfect.

Under the unforgiving eye of the macro lense and flash bulb.

This touchup is good for normal play lighting, even bright room lighting while standing a few feet away. It will not pass the inspection of a perfectionist. However, I'm learning that I can't be a perfectionist and still hope to actually play a machine I've purchased. Maybe someday, but now is not the time. I have pinball to play.

A very wise man once said, "Hey, you don't play the cabinet!"

Fox Hunting

2010-08-30T19:00:00.010-05:00

AIM Chat Session:

chad:wtf... almost 40 and finding out about pinball now... wtf!!
mike:Yea
I thought about that some.
I'm OK with it because I don't know if we could have justified this earlier.
Or if I would have had the life experience necessary.
I'm at peace with it.
chad:true. its just weird and peculiar.
makes me wonder... do I love fox hunting but dont know it?

New Dog in my stable... er, pony in my yard? Goat in the pasture?

2010-07-25T22:07:00.000-05:00

Picked this up a couple of weeks ago. It was a very low price and in such good shape that it went straight into the basement. I had to replace a flipper coil and a couple of resistors on it, but other than that it's working great.

It's the first machine that I get to just "shop" out. I jsut have to clean it up the dust, replace some bulbs, maybe get a new glass for it and that's it.

I'm a little worried because I've already scored almost 4.5 million on it and it rolls at 9,999,999.

New Power Connector

2010-07-25T22:00:00.000-05:00

One of the connectors on my power supply was discolored and if you felt it with the power on, it was hot. This usually happens with an old connector that isn't making good contact. I missed one picture, that's of me crimping a new pin in place. But you'll get the point. I think that I showed the pin crimping in an earlier post anyway.

Here you can see the burnt connector.

I usually move one wire at a time to the new connector so I don't lose track of which wire goes to which pin. You can clearly see the difference between the old connector and the new one.

Here the new connector is in place, and it stays cool as we're playing. Another successful repair.

Coming soon: Transfer into the new cabinet and then down into the basement.

Oooh, Shiny.

2010-07-25T21:49:00.000-05:00

Not too much to say. Windex and paper towels then "000" steel wool, brasso, and elbow grease will turn pinball legs shiny.

Lower Leg = Before
Upper Leg = After

PIA Error

2010-07-02T22:38:00.000-05:00

You may recall that my display, the "J" segment to be exact, was not working on the Player 1 and Player 2 LCDs. I fixed it by cleaning up corrosion on the board.

Well, it was always my intention to remove the chips, clean up all of the corrosion, then solder in sockets and hopefully reuse the chips again.

I was playing the game one night as Chad and I were deciding what to work on next, when both P1 and P2 displays started to flicker. I shut the game down, reseated the cables, the started the game up again. I got a "PIA ERROR" on the screen. PIA stands for Peripheral Interface Adapter. It's a common chip in many games.

I knew that my time had finally run out. I had to replace the chips that night.

I removed the board from the game and commenced work. First, I tried to nicely unsolder the chips so I could reuse them, but I didn't get as far as the 3rd pin before I gave up on that idea. The first two pins were very difficult to remove, they were a little mangled, and I had another 78 to go. I just broke down and cut the pins like the Pinrepair guide told me to do.

Here is U41 with the pins cut.

After the chips U41 and U42 were removed, I cleaned the board some and then Chad helped me desolder all of the chips. It required four hands so there are no pictures of that. However, once the pins were all removed, I used my desoldering tool to remove all of the excess solder from the holes.

Here I am heating up each hole and using the vacuum bulb to remove the extra solder. Doing this a few times is no problem, after 80 desolders, my fingers were cramping a bit. Some day, when I can afford it, I'll get the really nice tool with the automatic solder sucking vacuum. It's about $300.

After the solder was removed, I used some vinegar to neutralize the alkaline of the battery corrosion, and then some alcohol and a toothbrush the get the board nice and clean.

The board is clean and ready to receive new parts.

This picture has no real significance. I just thought it looked cool. This is the bottom of the board with a 100w lamp shining on the other side.

Here are the new sockets, installed and soldered. The advantage of this is that if there are any other problems with those chips I can just swap them out instead of desoldering 80 points and resoldering them.

Here it is, all finished up with the new chips installed. When I put it all back together, it fired up with no errors. I don't think this problem will return. I think it took me about an hour to get this all done from beginning to end. Having a friend help you by heating the pins as you pull them out with pliers really helps the job go much faster. Friends are good. Thanks Chad!

Back from F-14 Haitus - Beacons

2010-07-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

I'm back. I will probably have a few rapid posts as I catch up on my blogging. Some of this stuff has been sitting on my camera for a while.

I finally sourced out the last two beacons that I needed. I know these look rough, but they just need a little cleaning. I cleaned them a bit with Novus 1, but the paint still remains on the top of them. I'll cover cleaning the paint up and polishing the plastic in an upcoming post.

This entry is about cleaning up and rebuilding the beacon assembly.

Here is the assembly with one of the reflectors removed. I used some Naptha, Acetone, Novus 1, and Novus 2 to get it all cleaned up.

You can see that there is quite a bit of grunge and dust built up. There was oil on the electric motor and I couldn't figure out where that could have come from. The belts were misssing, I got new ones from Marco Pinball, but you can see the rubber built up on the pullies. The reflector needed some shining up too.

I used some acetone to clean up the oily grimey mess. Here is a shot of it half finished so you can see how bad it was. Where did that oil come from?

Here are the parts all cleaned up.

There isn't much else to say about this. The parts are cleaned up, I put it all back together again, and this is how it looks in action.

You can see they spin and light up, it's really cool. The thing you don't know from these pictures is that with everything all squeaky clean... it squeaks. I had to put a little oil in the bushings, and my guess is that over time, oil built up. As I'm writing this, it occurs to me that I should have squeezed some graphite in there to kill the squeak and not get any oily buildup.

So the beacons are done.

I spent some time cleaning up the rest of my stationary targets. I rebuilt 20 of them in all.

On to some of the other things on the list.

Oh, yea, I made a list too.

Dear Alex,

2010-06-16T17:45:00.001-05:00

My nephew Alex. I have not lost any interest in pinball or restoring mine. I know I have this habit of starting on some interest only to abandon it after a few months, your concerns are valid; however, this isn't the case!

This blog was supposed to be of my work on my F-14 Tomcat and until last Wednesday, I hadn't touched it in a while.

I took a trip to Jamaica, got a new job, helped Chad repair a power supply on a Secret Service, helped him move it into the basement, I also helped him pick it up in the first place. Also, he got a sorcerer, which we drove for 6 hours to get on Memorial day.

I've spent many hours working on his pinball machines and to be honest, enjoying playing! I've logged many hours on the F-14 but no one wants to read that, I don't think.

Last week I replaced two 6821 chips and completed a bunch of work that I will put up on the blog this weekend.

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, I'll have something else up soon and I think I'll split the blog to include all pinball related activity going forward.

Regards,

Uncle Mike

PS: This update is also for the guy in Norway that reads my blog. Sorry! Also, it's OK for you to call me Uncle Mike too.

You never forget your first...

2010-05-12T13:13:00.000-05:00

I've been playing a lot of Ripley's Believe it or Not at lunch time. I have finally made it onto the high score list of a pinball game in the wild.

You never forget your first...

... unless your second follows a few minutes later.

Back in the shop - Pandora's Box Part 2

2010-05-11T20:50:00.002-05:00

We left off with a cleaned, rebuilt, and nicely lit pop bumper. The problem was, it was locked on. I've got a couple of months of experience and reading under my belt now, so I know that I probably have a bad transister.

I know now, that to test your transistors quickly, you put one lead of your Digital Multimeter on ground, then test continuity to the metal tabs of the transistors. I do this and I find Q17 has continuity! Here's my culprit!

I feel really clever and smart, so I unplug the corresponding connector to the board and turn the machine back on, fully expecting the pop bumper to be silent. If there's no connector, there's no short, and there's an unlocked pop bumper.

I turned on the power and "WHAM!!" it locks down. I found that inside the front cover of my F-14 manual is a list of all of the solenoids and their corresponding transistor.

Q17 is labeled as "Flash Lamps". Wait, so what number is the pop bumper? (I've heard Jet Bumper and Pop Bumper, in the manual it's "Jet"). Q69?

Yep. That one buzzes out also. I checked all of my transistors and found that I had 4 of them out. Jet Bumper, Flash Lamps, Left and Right Slingshot bumpers. What I don't understand is why aren't the slingshot bumpers locked on? I really wasn't looking at them, maybe they were.

*Sigh*

I guess I have a lot more work to do than I though.

The pinrepair guide recommends replacing the pre-driver transistors as well as the main transistor. After removing the board from the back box, I cut them all out and started on replacing them.

There isn't much else to say about this. I cleaned up my flux, replaced the board, and everything worked great!

I have no idea why, but the slingshots are stronger now. I have no explanation for that and no one on RGP did either. I could be imagining it. One person said that maybe just the act of taking off the connectors and plugging them back in made a better connection so the slingshot bumpers worked better. I'm picking that reason because the alternative is admitting that I'm nuts.

I did OK soldering on the board with my 15w Radio Shack soldering iron. But for this job I used my nice new Weller soldering station ($99) and it made a big difference. The end result was the same, but I was much more confident that I would not lift the traces because the Weller has temperature controls. Also, the soldering pencil was much more comfortable to hold and the tip was made for soldering on boards. The old 15w jobber has a general purpose tip which means it does everything OK but nothing great.

I'm down to fixing my lit beacons, putting the new toppers on them, then moving everything to the nicer cabinet. I'll clean each part as I move it. After that is done, I'll have a fully functioning F-14 Tomcat which I will put in my basement.

Then the F-14 project will go on a break while I work on the Jungle Lord. I'll start a new sub-blog for that machine. Once the Jungle Lord is done, I'll start back on the F-14 to Remove the playfield, remove all of the mylar, re-set the inserts, and then clearcoating!

Back in the shop. Opening Pandora's Box Part 1.

2010-05-02T13:31:00.001-05:00

Someday very soon I will cronicle our adventures in eproms, but the story is still open. That will have to wait. I was able to finally get some time in the shop again today. It needs cleaning very badly, but I really didn't want to spend time cleaning up instead of making my F-14 functional again. I'll clean tomorrow, tonight, I get my hands on the pop bumper!

This is my Pop / Jet bumper. It's a little dirty, it's not currently working because the coil blew, and also, anyone who knows the F-14 can see that there should be a lightbulb in there. There's not even a socket for it. I suspect that there was a problem along the way where the bumpber needed fixing, the light was removed, and the tech decided to just skip putting a new light socket in.

I've never done this before, so first I took a bunch of pictures, as per usual:

I'll spare the details. There are a lot of pictures.

I then set about taking it apart. I'll tell you what I did, then I'll follow up with what I should have done.

What I should have done:

With it all disassembled, I would clean it all up, install a new coil and new springs. Finally, a new light bulb socket.

I may have made a mistake. I like to polish up all of the metal before I put it back. It's under the playfield and no one sees it, but when you lift the hood, I like to see shiney parts. But I may have gotten overzealous here. I don't know if that's brass colored for a reason or if they really oxidized, but I polished it right off. It may just be me, but it looks like a surprised face.

With the parts assembled, it was time to put it back in place, then start working on installing the light. I wish I had a picture of it properly done for you to see, but I don't, so you're stuck with how I did it!

Then it's time to lift the playfield and work underneath.

On the other side, I could not re-use a staple, and unless I wanted to simantle that side of the playfield, I could not staple it down. Instead I used some shrink tubing to insulate the post. I'll figure out a way tack that down.

With everything assembled, and an LED instead of the incandescent bulb. Here is what it looks like.

So it was bright and happy! But, why did I title this "Opening Pandora's Box"?

I turned everything on, and then tested the bumper. It popped half heartedly 3 or 4 times and then WHAM! It popped down and stayed down!

I turned off the pinball machine right away as not to damage anything. Based on my reading, I now have a bad transistor. I did some tests and confirmed that I didn't have one bad transister, I have 5. I did check that a while ago and they were all fine. I don't know what caused this but I suspect it was the shorted bumper coil.

More in the next post.

20 hours of driving over 1,100 miles

2010-04-19T19:00:00.006-05:00

This isn't going to get out of hand, Remember that?

March 29th – Brookfield, Wi – Midwest Gaming Classic – Purchased a $10 display, got a free bottle of Frank’s Hot Sauce, Passed on a Xenon for $450 which I regretted 15 minutes later.

April 9th – St. Charles, Il - Chicago Coin-op Show Flea Market

April 10th – St. Charles, Il - Chicago Coin-op Show

April 12th – Brookfield, Il – Met Ken who had a project Pinbot machine Chad was interested in.

April 13th – Indianapolis, In – Picked up a Williams “Blackout” purchased from Josh. He needs some parts and I said I’d look up in Kalamazoo.

April 16th – Dyer, In – Picked up a “Banzai Run” cabinet from Matt who had done the work for Scott on RGP. We picked it up to deliver to Eric, who would then deliver it to Scott. We were meeting Eric at the “Pinball at the Zoo” show. Matt’s got a neat workshop and we discussed spray booths. I bought 3 black pinballs from him. One will go in my “Blackout” that I picked up way back … 3 days ago.

April 17th – Drove through to Kalamazoo and spent the night. We then drove 15 minutes to Ron’s house to pick up an F-14 cabinet that is in much better shape than mine. Met his friend Todd.

April 17th – Kalamazoo, Continued – “Pinball at the Zoo” show. Many things for sale, some good deals, others… good just out of my price range. Played many games, searched for many parts. It was in a room the size of a high school gym but we were busy all day. There was a reptile show next door. There were lizards for sale.

Items purchased in Kalamazoo:

$100 - F-14 Cabinet, Topper, Legs, and Misc parts still attached. It's in much better shape than mine and will now make it unnecessary to spend $250 on new cabinet decals.
$20 - Populated “Jungle Lord” playfield. It had a lot better plastics than mine. Between this one and mine I can make a complete game.
$5 – Various LED’s
$2 – Caramel Cream Soda
$12 – XXL Pinball at the Zoo t-shirt.
$3 – White stationary target for my F-14.
$2 – Played Iron Man, just to pump in a couple of bucks. I play it plenty down the street at GameWorks.

Stopped for dinner in Benton Harbor. There was a game room with a NASCAR in it. We pumped a couple of bucks into it before we left.

When the U-Haul trailer was returned and everyone was home and I was able to relax, it was 9 PM on Saturday night. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. I remember saying that I wouldn’t let this get out of hand. Twenty hours of driving over 1,100 miles, meeting 8 new people, making 4 or 5 pick-ups or deliveries…. was all of that out of hand?

There were a lot of things that we were waiting to start “After Pinball at the Zoo”. I’m glad we’re there. It’s really time to stop running around and get back to work. I have 3 non-functional pinball machines, a half dozen new tools, dozens of new parts, and a messy workshop. I haven’t touched any of them in a while and I can't wait to get back to it.

Coming soon, pop-bumper repair.

Chat's with Chad

2010-04-14T21:36:00.003-05:00

chad: your memory of electronics class is learning about diodes and shit... my memory is putting resistors and capacitors in the outlets before the teacher turned on the power
mike: Well
mike: I was a bad student.
mike: I rarely knew why.
mike: Just how.
mike: Here's a circuit to build.
mike: Ok, part A goes to part B.
mike: There were plenty of exploding capacitors.
mike: Also dodging of charged capacitors.
chad: oh, your blog about the bad light fix... you need to highlight the fact that the diode looked perfectly good visually... so most people would not suspect that the diode was bad.

Gift out of the blue

2010-04-14T19:30:00.002-05:00

I got a message out of the blue from Joe who I bought the machine from.

Hi Mike,

How is the restore going? Any thing I can do?

I would like to send you something in the mail to commemorate your first pinball. Send me your address and you should have it in a week. Don't ask it's a surprise, no it doesn't go into or on the machine.

Joe

Wow, mysterious! I sent him my address and a few days later, this cool thing arrived:

When I picked up the machine from Joe, he had a new laser cutter in his garage that he would be using for some top secret projects. I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceburg.

It's cut into a piece of ... well, I'll let Joe tell you. At first I wasn't sure if it was OK to post this as I know that sometimes there are licensing concerns, so I asked Joe first.

Hi Mike,

Glad you liked it. Yes, I did it on the laser. That is a piece of Absolute Black Marble. I have been cleared to make these so don't worry about posting it. Display it proud, you have the only one ever made.... for now.

Joe

Hah! FIRST!!!
Thanks Joe, that was really nice!

Field Lamps!

2010-04-13T22:11:00.002-05:00

I went to Pinball Life and purchased new replacement LEDs for my field lights. They're colored and that color makes a big difference with some inserts. The Reds are OK, the Oranges are better, and the Blue REALLY makes a difference. I'll post some before and after pictures soon. This article isn't about LEDs though. It's about my blue 4K lamp that wouldn't light.

This wasn't a simple bulb replacement. There was something more complicated that was wrong with this lamp. I tried some tricks like giving the socket a little tweak, flicking it while it should be flashing, things like that, but none of those things worked.

I decided to test the voltage while the system was in lamp test mode. This flashes all of the lamps so proper testing can be done.

I can't recommend this as the exact way to troubleshoot this problem. It's just the way I approached the problem and it worked out. With the bulbs flashing, I tested the voltage on a working lamp. My multimeter is not fast enough to lock into a voltage with the bulbs flashing, but I thought that I might get enough information to eliminate wiring as the problem.

The good bulb readings rattled around and as predicted, never locked on a number. The highest number I would see was 3 volts. I tested the bad bulb and found that it got a reading, but never above 1.

I tested the one other component on the light socket and that was the diode.

EDIT: (From a chat session)
chad: oh, your blog about the bad light fix... you need to highlight the fact that the diode looked perfectly good visually... so most people would not suspect that the diode was bad.

Testing the known good bulb without removing the Diode from the circuit.

This is a good reading. I did the same test on the other diode and got this no matter which polarity I tested.

Now, I've read that a diode in circuit can give odd readings, so I decided to clip one lead and test again. At this point it should be noted that the bulb socket was buried and it was time to unscrew it from the playfield to get proper access.

I dug it out and clipped one lead:

Testing:

All of these tests yielded the same result. .0L

So it was time to solder a new diode in place. Here is the new diode!

After all of this, what was the result?

Success!

I was very happy. This was the first time I didn't need to consult a guide to figure out what the problem was. It was only one light and the solution wasn't that complex, but it felt good to fix something based solely on my own, if misguided, troubleshooting.

Here's the thing, lets get serious here for a minute. I have a couple of years of High School electronics under my belt. But like most people's high school Spanish, I can barely remember any of it. It's coming back to me as I go and really, I'm loving it all. It's not that hard to follow a schematic and to test every component of a circuit to see if it's in spec.

I guess that's the first point. No one should be afraid to try this. I'm doing some of these things and I would love to say it's because I know what I'm doing, but really it's just a few tool skills and following instructions.

This blog is a work log and it's supposed to be an adventure with a guy who is learning as he goes, I guess this digression is to let any readers I might have know that I'm aware of that. I have no delusions of expertise. I hope someone learns from what I'm doing here not because I'm an authority but because I wasn't afraid to try while others were watching to see what happened.

Now, donde esta mi cafe con leche?

Time slips by...

2010-04-13T21:38:00.002-05:00

In an effort to participate in the pinball scene and also stay married and employed, I have had to balance these responsibilities. Over the past week or so, I have been to the Chicago Coinop Show, off to visit a Pinbot in Brookfield, Il, and I'll be going off to Kalamazoo Michigan over the weekend for Pinball at the Zoo.

Oh, also I'm driving to Indianapolis tomorrow night to pick up another pinball machine, but that's another story.

I have received new and exciting tools:

Fancy soldering iron

My very own Oscilloscope. Not perfect but it works!

I have received more supplies:

More parts and tools

A different cabinet that according to the pictures is WAY better than my current cabinet.

Which by the way is in Michigan.

I have a lot going on. Hopefully Chad will finally find his project machine and I can finally settle down and start working on the F-14 again instead of chasing parts and pinball!

Coming soon, fixing a field lamp and rebuilding the pop bumper!

Stern

2010-04-06T19:00:00.002-05:00

I had an errand to run that took me to Melrose Park. I remembered that Stern is in Melrose Park so I searched their address on my phone, plugged it into my GPS, and it was only a couple of blocks out of my way.

I thought it would be fun to snap a picture of me in front of their sign.

I really expected it to be pretty bland. You always want the building to be amazing, but honestly, a building shaped like a giant pinball machine really doesn't generate any cash and at the end of the day, cash is necessary. But I kind of hoped it was a little less of a dirty looking warehouse. But, if not painting the plywood entrance means they stay in business, I say let the wood rot!

Rebuilding Targets

2010-04-04T21:46:00.003-05:00

Rebuilding a target or two is interesting. Rebuilding 20 targets is a little less interesting. I'll just talk about the first one I did, then you can read it 20 times if you want to relive the whole experience with me.

Here is the before picture of a bank of targets:

You can see they are a little grungy. Also, these targets have a bit of foam behind them to cushion the blow from the ball. I was getting a lot of "Airborn Balls" when they would bounce off the uncushioned targets. It's not just a matter of saving the switch, but preventing damage done by the ball flying around.

I removed each of the targets one at a time. Before I did, I would take 3 or 4 pictures of the wiring on every bank I removed. There are a lot of wires in place and honestly, I have a bad memory for these things and I need to refer back to the pictures.

I think you can see where I might get confused. Which lead was the white/red wire soldered to? Oh man, where did the green/purple wires go?

Here is the lineup of tools and supplies I got for this job:

Novus 1 and 2 for cleaning up the plastic pads. A X-acto knife for removing old foam and cutting new foam, Acetone for cleaning old glue, a roll of 3/8" wide weather stripping bought at the hardware store for $3.99 (enough for more targets than you have), lastly, not shown are q-tips for getting the tight spots clean and a business card for cleaning contacts.

Before:

After removing the target, I cut the old pad and scraped away much of the glue with the x-acto knife.

I got much of the glue up with the knife, then used acetone and a q-tip to clean out the rest. I then slipped a business card between the contacts on the switch, lightly squeezed it closed, then pulled the business card out. I'm told you don't want to do much more than that. The contacts can be damaged be cleaning any more aggressive than that.

I then cleaned the front with Novus 2 then finished the front and as much of the back as I could get with novus 1. Using the old piece of foam as a size reference, I used the x-acto knife to cut off a new piece of foam. The foam has an adhesive back to hold it in place. Here are the after shots:

Really there is not much more to it than that. I put them back where they belonged, made sure the solder joints were strong and clean, then tested the target with the system switch test before I moved on to the next one. I found it take about 8 to 10 minutes per target once you get on a roll.

I just need to repeat the process 10 more times and I'll be done!

Switches

2010-04-04T21:14:00.001-05:00

When I started my machine, the knocker would knock for or five times and then I would get a message telling me to adjust some switches. In my case they were the pop bumper, the right sling, and the right flipper. I had rebuilt the right flipper and I knew the switch was good, so I was a little worried about a more serious problem.

In the Pinrepair guide, they have a really detailed writeup about the switch matrix. I wont try to reproduce that. I'll just say what I did to fix my problems.

First, I did what the manual suggests, test the switches at the main board first to make certain it's a wiring problem and not a main board problem. Using the matrix in the documentation, I identified the two pins I needed to jumper.

Here you can see a few things about the switch the system was saying to check. It's on 1J10, pin 2 and 1J8 pin 2. While in test mode, I should be able to connect those two switches and have the system tell me that the switch is closed. Also, you can see they identified the color of the wires. There should be a White/Violet and a Green/Red wire connected to the switch.

I jumpered those two here:

The result:

Phew, the board is OK. I checked the other two switches on the board and they were fine too. It was definitely a problem in the wiring somewhere.

After that, there isn't much to it. The matrix lays out each point those wires touch. I had to check the whole chain to see what I could find. Having never done this before, I didn't choose the most efficient way to go about this, but it worked out OK in the end.

I connected one end of my continuity tester to the first lead in the chain for the white / violet chain. The slam tilt. I checked each point along the way, Slam tilt, Right Flipper E.O.S., Right Center Eject, Middle Ramp, etc... and found that I had continuity end to end.

It didn't take long on the Green / Red chain. Here is what I found when I got to one of the ball trough microswitches:

I soldered the wire into place and it started registering in test mode! One fixed and two to go!!

I checked continuity through all of the other chains and found the wiring to all be intact. I went from point to point, but I could have just checked continuity between one end and the the other in the grid to see if the wiring was all in tact. If it wasn't in tact, I would have to check them all one at a time anyway so I didn't see the harm. Also, I was learning A LOT and I really wanted to check every point just to see how it was done!

One end of the chain, the right coin switch:

The wiring was OK, so I checked the switches themselves. If I was interested in solving the problem as quickly as possible, I should have done that first. This was an exploration too, so it was OK. But take note of that, first check the switches. (Also, I started with the flipper switch which I was certain was OK...)

Pinball machines us a lot of these leaf switches. Sometimes they need to be tweaked a little. First, get yourself something non-conductive to check the switches. I have a couple of long wooden coffee stirrers that I grabbed when I bought a cup of coffee at a big coffee chain that rhymes with "Starbucks"...

I don't like poking around with the machine on, but sometimes you have to. Here's something bad that can happen according to pinrepair.com:

"When in a hurry, many make an under playfield adjustment with the game turned on. Doing a switch adjustment with the power on could easily short a coil lead (+25/50 volts) to a switch lead. This will immediately blow the switch matrix, and can fry most anything up to and including the 6821 PIA at U38."

So, don't do that. Be careful. Don't poke around with a screwdriver. I only use the stick to close or open a switch in test mode -- Never to make an adjustment. Adjustments are made with the machine off and using a neat little tool I got from Pinball Life. (Ultimate Leaf Adjuster Tool - Worth the $7.)

Making an adjustment to the slingshot bumper switch. It's MUCH easier with the right tool. When I bought this tool, I didn't need it for anything at the time. I just figured it would probably be something I needed someday. I've been working on this F-14 for 3 or 4 weeks now and I've used it 10927150915 times.

I tweaked both switches and now I don't get any warnings at start. What is funny is that you can get these warnings when everything is working just fine. These switches are in place to audit how often each of these flippers, pop bumpers, trough switches, etc actuate. If a switch isn't activated more than (I think it said 50) times in some period of time, the game things something is wrong and warns the operator.

In this case, the system in place to warn me about problems actually was the thing with problems.

Beacons

2010-04-04T20:21:00.001-05:00

They neatly covered the holes left behind with a piece of plexiglass painted black. I removed that, then mounted the beacon mechanism. I replaced a bulb and figured the other two were fine. It didn't matter anyway, I just wanted to see if any would light.

It turns out those lights are wired in series, so if one goes out, they all go out. I replaced all three bulbs and played a game. They worked great. Here is a picture:

Those are plastic covers from 100 CD spindles. I just have them there as place holders. I may put some clear colored plastic inside them until I get the real things. Once I get the belts, I'll post pictures of cleaning and rebuilding the pulleys.

Spring Break - Lots of work done

2010-04-04T20:16:00.001-05:00

I took the week off because this was spring break for my kids. Like many in this economy, we stayed home. We're homebodies anyway and it was nice to pretend that I was a retired guy for a week. I did a lot of things on the F-14 but waited until now to post. Mostly because I would rather be out in the garage working on the pinball machine than in my basement office writing about it.

Here is a short list of what I did in no particular order. I'll follow up with articles on most of these things:

- I put the rotating beacon mechanism in place. I have no plastic covers yet. I bought a red one off eBay and it's sitting at my desk at work. Usually I have stuff shipped there, I didn't want to make the trip in for it though.

- I was getting switch errors on startup. I traced those all out and got incrementally better at understanding pinball wiring.

- I rebuilt many targets. There are 20. I've got 10 left to do.

- I ordered some tools. A weller soldering iron which I got to use and is really great. TIP: If you get the super saver shipping from Amazon and they say it will ship in 5- 10 days, chose that option anyway. I ordered it and got it the next day. I bought an old analog oscilloscope on eBay for $65. I hope it works.

- I ordered spinner stickers, a new set of rubbers, a couple of chips and sockets, and a set of beacon belts from Marco. They said it was all in stock, but when I checked a couple of days later, the chips and belts were back ordered. Not that it would have stopped me from ordering, but I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up of getting it while on vacation.

- I ordered some coils and other things from Terry at Pinball Life and was hoping to pick it up on Monday. I was dumb, his kids are on spring break too, he was out of town! That was OK, I had plenty to do without the new parts.

All of this isn't counting the display problems that I fixed and wrote about already!

Without further ado, onto the details...

j!

2010-03-31T19:16:00.003-05:00

I spent $7.50 and ordered the new chip. But I didn't want to give up just yet. Someone in RGP said you'd be surprised at what would cause a signal from the chip to go funny.

You may remember that my batteries came corroded and the main board looked like this.

When I cleaned it, I was really too easy on it. I lightly brushed it until it looked OK. But there was just too much of a connection between the "j" being one of the corroded traces and the "j" being the segment that wasn't working.

I tested some sanding and cleaning techniques on a piece of junk board so I could get a feel for how rough you can be on a board before you break a trace, and it turns out that they can be pretty tough. I then cleaned the system board more agressively.

I used a scotch bright pad, the one that's plastic, but equavalent to a 000 steel wool. (Don't use steel wool! You don't want conducting junk flaking off all over your board!) I used it and cleaned the small section of board. I then used a magnifying lense and a dental pick to make certain there was nothing between the traces.

When I fired up the machine, the "j" segment worked! However, I've decided that the corrosion really needs to be cleaned up, so I'll still be removing the two chips, cleaning the area thoroughly with vinegar, cleaning it with the scotch bright pad, and then finally soldering in some sockets and replacing the chips.

Here is what it looks like now:

Good news, bad news?

2010-03-29T23:29:00.004-05:00

I feel a great victory has been won, but at the same time, I'm worried that things may be worse than I thought. We left off at my display. Player three had been successfully replaced with a $10 piece taken from a junk pile. All that was left were figuring out the "A" and "J" segments of my alphanumeric displays.

I read the pinrepair.com guide on checking segment problems on a system 11 machine. I was held up because I had neither a logic probe nor an oscilloscope to diagnose problems. Luckily, I was able to borrow an oscilloscope. Also, I called my friend Eric M. who has experience setting them up. He was an enthusiastic partner in getting these display problems resolved.

We were both pretty certain that if we found the solution for one segment, it would be the same for the other. Boy were we wrong. On with the story:

First, I determined that the display board for my F-14 had come out of some other Williams pinball machine from that era. However, I wasn't able to figure out which one. I checked the schematics on http://www.ipdb.org/ for other machines from that era but they were too hard to read to be certain. Bad scans? Bad source materials? Can you read this?

I couldn't. I figured that since you could take a display board from almost any system 11 pinball machine and swap it out, even if the board schematics were different, the connector pins had to be the same. (J1) was the common denominator between all of the boards for the "A" and "J". So we set out to identify and document the paths for the "A" segment (J1-19) and the "J" segment (J1-12). Then, once that was done, we would start to test each link along the way.

This is me figuring out where each line started and ended. Eric took notes. I stopped documenting at the "IN" side of the 7180 chip. This is important to know for later.

We took notes and then Eric set up the scope. Here are Eric's disembodied hands setting up the o-scope:

Because there are two different voltages, we had to adjust the scope twice. Everything up to the 7180 chip was low voltage, 12v I think. Everything after the 7180 was -100volts. At first we were a little worried about the scope handling that voltage. Eric had never used it for more than 5 volts. We read the manual and our fears were laid to rest, we were OK with -100 v.

First we tested known good segments so we knew how the wave should look. This is what we saw on good segments.

This was a known good pulse. So we expected to see something like this on the "A" segment:

But we didn't! We got a good pulse all the way through the 7180 "out" pins on the "A" segment! That was a relief. I thought I was going to have to spend $20 replacing the hard to find 7180 chip. Since the chip was fine and the resistors after the chip tested within spec, I must have a bad trace between the out of the 7180 and the glass display.

We figured we would get to that during the "repair" phase. Next we set our sights on the "J" segment. We were hoping to find that it was the same thing -- a bad trace.

See our careful notes, well, we knew what they all meant at the time.

We tested the "IN" for the "J" segment on the 7180 and the signal was bad. It wasn't gone, it was just really really weak. That was a relief because we figured that the problem must be with the cheaper 4050 chip.

We checked the out (Pin 6) on the 4050 and the signal was weak. That must lock it right? Wrong. We checked the "IN" on the 4050 (Pin 7), weak. Ah, so then it must be a bad trace from the J1 connector to the 4050!

I buzzed out pin 12 to pin 6 and there was no continuity! But then we noticed that I was checking the wrong pins. It gets confusing when you're flipping a board over back and forth. I checked again and the trace was OK.

Then we thought it was a bad ribbon cable! That can happen! It's the next thing in line. We tested it and, nope, that was OK too. We kept testing signals until we were completely off the display board and on the actual "J" segment pin of U41 on the main board.

The weak signal is coming off pin 3 of U41, the 6821 chip on the system board!!

Disaster! That chip is huge! How much is it?!!?

It turns out that it costs about $6 - $7! What a relief! I'll order one tomorrow with a new socket! Hopefully that's the end of that problem!

We then returned our focus to the "A" segment. We checked every trace and found, with a Digital MultiMeter and a magnifying glass, that the very last trace before display pin 1 was broken. It was very hard to see. We couldn't get it on camera.

I took tweezers and pulled the trace off the board. The trace had lifted from the board and I didn't want it shorting on anything. Here is the trace pealed away from the board:

With Eric manning the camera and being a third hand, I soldered in a jumper.

Completed work:

And does the "A" segment work? You bet it does!

I'm down to fixing just one more segment, and we're fairly certain that U41 - a 6821 chip - is the problem. I'll update you when I get the new chip in!

To conclude. I said it was important that I stopped checking traces at the 7180 chip when I was tracing out each leg of the circuit. I should have gone all of the way to the display. Next time I'll check each trace segment end to end. Had I done that in the first place, I wouldn't have needed all of the fancy equipment to fix the "A" segment.

We also guessed wrong that the "A" and "J" problem were the same. They actually couldn't have been further from each other. One was a bad trace at the display end of the circuit and one was a bad chip all the way back on the system board. I'm glad we tested each separately otherwise we would have wasted more time chasing an assumption.

We both got a real high from tracking down these problems.

Is it wrong to hope something is wrong with a machine so you get to fix it?

Better to be good or lucky?

2010-03-27T23:15:00.001-05:00

Today I went to the Midwest Gaming Classic in Brookfield Wisconsin which is just outside Milwaukee and less than 2 hours from my house. There was a lot to look at and maybe once my head has stopped spinning I will post about it.

This is a work journal though and the work I did was on my display. While up at the classic I dug through a "junk" box and found this:

It's a 7 digit numeric glass display from a Williams game older than my F-14. I thought that since it was Williams and I'm sure they wouldn't re-invent the wheel, this might be the same display as is used in my F-14. I paid $10 for this. Not knowing if it worked or not I probably should have paid $5. I'm just not savvy enough yet.

What I would need to do is unsolder the display from this board, unsolder my bad display from my board, then solder this "new" one in place. I had no real concrete evidence that it was the glass display on my board that was actually the problem. I checked the voltages on the pins of my working and non working displays and found them both to be the same.

I figured that if the voltages are making it to the display that if it was good, it would do something. But it was black. The downside of my gamble was that I could go through all of this work to put a bad display in place of another bad display. I could have tested the display in another pinball machine, but I don't have one that works.

Here is a pictorial of the process:

This is a desoldering tool. I will use this to heat the solder on each connection, then release the suction ball and the liquid solder will be sucked off the board and into the tool. Here's a tip: Before you squeeze the ball again to prepare for the next "suck", make sure it's over a paper towel or something and not over the board -- you'll shoot molten solder back out of the tube onto the board!

On the left you see where I've unsoldered the pins (is it unsoldered or desoldered?) The pins are pretty big so this was pretty easy to do.

Now that the pins are all unsoldered, I need to remove the display from the board. You can see it's attached with two sided foam tape. I used a razor blade from a utility knife (no knife, just the blade) to separate them. I was being carful to not cut myself while also cutting on the board side. I was cutting on the board side because if damage was done I wanted it to be done to the board which I was going to throw away, not the glass I was re-using.

Separate!

OK, Onto my board. I have to repeat the same process on my board.

This is the F-14 board after the display was removed. You can see that there is a lot of left over flux. I used a toothbrush and a little acetone to clean the flux off the board.

Here is an "After" shot, much better!

Here the pins are all fed through the board. The toothbrush isn't the only handy dental tool. You can buy a set of dental picks really cheap from Harbor Freight tools. This was key for getting all of those pins through the holes on the board. before soldering, I "backed the pins out" a little bit. I didn't want to solder that much pin, plus I thought I might need every bit of length of those pins on the display side.

Soldered!

So did it work??? Did my $10 gamble and 30 minutes of board work pay off?

It works! There is a problem though. The pins are just a HAIR shorter on this display than the current displays. It's making it sit weird. You can see it here. Since I know it works, I'll cut the pins and use the pins from the bad display to extend the length enough to make it sit correctly.

I excitedly showed my wife and she said, "Uh, good." and left the room. I stood for a few minutes appreciating my work, a little disappointed by her reaction. I found her and said, "I'm a little unsatisfied with the enthusiasm you showed for my victory."

"To be honest, I don't really understand what you were showing me", she said.
"Well, I fixed a $200 board with a $10 junk part."

That's when she gave me the high five.

Now to fix this:

Oh, no... oh, yea!

2010-03-26T00:14:00.002-05:00

It's called Jungle Lord. It is VERY dirty and needs a lot of work, but that playfield is really nice for this old game. I got it really cheap. Now I can stop worrying about what's next after the F-14 is done.

In case you were thinking I might make some kind of business out of this:

2010-03-25T19:30:00.002-05:00

Let me start by saying that I never had any intention of making any kind of living doing this. I did think that maybe I could buy a machine cheap, then fix it up really nicely, sell it, then take the proceeds to buy 2 cheap machines. The idea is to build the stable of pinball machines so to speak, also to gain more money to get into the more expensive pinballs.

This new hobby also couldn't cost my family anything. I "borrowed" money from our budget to start this hobby and I need to pay the family back. I swore we wouldn't miss a vacation or something because I spent our money on pinball machines.

I've put up for sale a lot of stuff I had laying around so I could pay my budget back right away. I've almost got that accomplished.

I put together a spreadsheet of all of the things I've purchased and a worst case cost of those things that I still need.

I'm new to this hobby, so I have no connections. Having no connections means I may have paid too much for this F-14 Tomcat. But I was itching to go and it was cheaper than I had originally budgeted. Also, having no connections means at this time every part comes at a premium. I have no buddies with 8 year old plastics in a drawer somewhere that they'll sell me cheap.

I have a lot of nice F-14's on my watch list on eBay. Not one is priced lower than $1,495, which you would think would be encouraging. But not one has sold.

My only hope of staying right side up on this pinball machine is to find the toppers for less than $135, find replacement plastics cheap, and to repair the backboard display instead of replacing it. I could go without the decals, but, it needs the decals.

I have had a VERY good time working on this machine and I can't wait for more. I'm not in this to make money. I just posted this to burst the bubble of anyone who is thinking of starting the hobby to try and make money. You'll need one of two kinds of connections.

1. Someone who will sell nice machines, cheap.

2. Someone who will buy machines for a lot more than they're worth.

There is one last problem. I really like the F-14. I don't want to sell it. I want to play it.

Treasure found in the nether regions of the cabinet

2010-03-20T18:15:00.003-05:00

I vacuumed my cabinet out today. Before I did, I dug around in the back corners with a magnet and my hand. This is what I unearthed. There look to be parts from a coil rebuild and some leg bolts.

I scored a nice little T-20 security torx tool. There are two plastic pieces though, I don't know where they come from and they look important. I'll have to ask R.G.P. and also look through the manual.

Wednesday Night Maintenance

2010-03-18T22:58:00.002-05:00

Many things happen Wednesday's when I have Chad's help.

The spinner switch was fixed. It just required some bending. There was a diode loose on the right (currently good) flipper which we soldered back into place. We replaced some lightbulbs, did a trial on a couple of LED's, cleaned up the grunge with Novus 1, and finally, yes finally, checked all of the fuses. It turns out I had 3 over rated fuses in the box. They were only off by .5 to 1 amp, but that can be enough to cause problems.

Also, we replaced the left flipper which had stopped working. I wonder if it stopped working because of this artful wiring job some "tech" did:

Yea, he even used wire nuts on the capacitor. I think this was actually more work than just soldering it. I wonder if this wiring had anything to do with the coil failing.

There's only one other interesting thing about this flipper rebuild. There is a secondary switch on the main flippers. Here it is pre rebuild:

Here is the after shot.

The rebuild kit only came with one switch, so we cleaned up and reused the original switch.

And here it is from the other side. No more wire nuts.

Edit: I thought that I should add a couple of things. First, I bought two rebuild kits that included the parts to rebuild 4 flippers. I rebuilt the top left flipper, then pulled parts out from the same bag for the lower left flipper.

The plunger assembly all comes together and apparently, it matters which side they go on. You can't use one rebuild kit to rebuild two lefts. They are meant for one left and one right. You may be able to take apart the linkage and flip a part over so the tab that moves the EOS switch is oriented correctly. I haven't checked that yet. But it's something to think about when buying a rebuild kit.

Second, the game is finally playable. I posted 1.8 million last night. I'm sure I'm not breaking any records but I'm starting to figure out the rules and flow and I have to say that I'm liking it a lot.

This past week I fixed a doorbell, our clothes dryer, and my pinball flippers. I like fixing things, but fixing the pinball machine has a much better effort to fun ratio. It's nice that my clothes are dry, but I'm not inviting any friends over to have a beer and dry clothes with me until midnight.

Digging through my stuff

2010-03-16T22:20:00.003-05:00

Old laptops, telescope, hard drives, tape drives... gotta get them up on eBay to pay for this new hobby.

Tidbit learned

2010-03-16T18:20:00.001-05:00

All of the system boards have serial numbers. If the machine was new, all of the numbers would match. The fact that very few of mine match means that many parts have been swapped out over the years.

Display Problems

2010-03-15T22:41:00.004-05:00

This is driving me bonkers. I just checked all of the traces from U41 on the main board to J22, the connector. I toned out everything on one side of the chip. Everything was going OK and making sense.

I'm trying to do some recommended tests on the chips on the display but things aren't adding up!

Schematic of the display board showing U1 being a 6118 Chip.

Picture of my board showing U1 being a 4050 Chip

Is my display board out of some other game? I need that schematic! Or am I just reading this wrong?

Here is the whole board:

Fuses

2010-03-15T19:10:00.000-05:00

Finding more to do

2010-03-14T19:52:00.003-05:00

I took off the rear plastic so I could get to the rear rubber. It had rotted out completely and I wanted to get a new one in there so I could play. By play, I don't mean "I'm done!" but just test plays.

I found more problems than the rubber. First, boy is it dirty! I know it's not time for finishing, but leaving it as dirty as it is will only cause problems. I'll be vacuuming it out and cleaning up all of the dust.

The targets have foam backing. It's missing. The targets are $6 each. I wonder if I can refurb them or if I'll need to buy all new targets.

There were also som holes where something must have been screwed at one time. I wonder what those are for?

I'm coming to the conclusion that I have to stop worrying about making things perfect. I wanted to make everything as good as possible, but this is my first machine and I'll drive myself crazy trying to make it perfect. I'll settle for clean, functioning, and reliable. I don't have enough experience for perfect and this machine has been too hacked to hope for that anyway.

Flipper Rebuild

2010-03-14T19:08:00.008-05:00

I picked up my coils and the other miscellanious small parts to rebuild my flippers this morning. I had a lot of stuff to do, so it wasn't until 3 PM that I could start on the rebuild. I assembled things and disassembled them at least a half dozen times to get it right... I hope I have it right...

First, the thing on the left is a bushing, the thing on the right is a grommet. I kept calling the bushing a grommet (see previous posts). Don't do what I did. It created unecessary confusion at the supplier.

I started by putting the new bushing in. It takes a little pushing and prying to get in place. I used needle nose pliers to pinch, push, and pull it in place. Then I put in the new stop and last I put the coil in place.

The coil didn't fit correctly. I thought maybe it had something to do with the coil sleeve, but that sleeve came with the coil in that direction. I thought it must be right, who am I to question?

So I did what a guy who used to work in a body shop does. I used pliers and "adjusted" the stop. I figured that maybe it came from the manufacturer a little bent or something. The coil fit a little better, but you can see here what happened.

I put the front bracket in place before I realized that the plunger wouldn't go in with it put together. So I took it apart again. I put the spring and plunger in place and when I tightened it all, the sleeve pushed out of the front bracked about 1/8 of an inch. It was then when I finally realized something was really wrong. I checked the coils I hadn't touched yet and yea, it was backwards.

After I figured out what I had done wrong, I bent everything back the way it was supposed to be and it all lined up correctly... like they meant it to.

I soldered the EOS switch and capaciter (with heat shrink tube on the capaciter) before I put them on the mechanism. Another note, put the heat shrink on before you solder the capacitor in place. I forgot on the first side and had to redo it.

Here it is, all soldered together. I used nice new clean green 18 gu. stranded wire.

I wasn't sure how the bushing screws went in at first. The plate is threaded so I tightened the screws in first, then I used the nuts to lock them in place.

Here it is, all together, correct, I hope.

The next step was to get this new flipper in place.

Here is the underside of the playfield with the flipper post coming through.

I screwed the flipper assembly in place and tightened it just enough so the flipper wouldn't swing around. I adjusted the flipper so it was in line with the ball exit then tightened it the rest of the way.

Before I soldered the wires back in place, I put some cardboard down so I wouldn't drip solder on anything. I used a clamp to hold the cardboard in place against a strong bracket.
Here it is, all done. I fired up the game and it worked great. The bottom left flipper was still weak, but I already knew I would probably have to rebuild it. I played for about 15 minutes and asked my wife if she wanted to try. She did, but before she got to the machine, this happened. I guess I used the last few flips. Sorry hon, gotta rebuild another flipper before we can play.

Saturday Morning Order

2010-03-13T07:32:00.004-06:00

I just sent an order off to Pinball Life. 2x11630 coils and 2x11722 coils. One of the 11630 (Lower flippers) tests completely fine, but I'm already replacing the other 3 so why mess around. I'll hang onto it for the next order.

I also ordered 4 flipper grommets. That's the only part not included in the rebuild kit. So, with a rebuild kit, coil, and grommet, the only original part left is the bracket.

$12.50 Rebuild Kit (2 flippers for $25)
$9.75 Coil
$.85 Grommet
----------------------------------------
$23.10

A full flipper assembly is $32.50. So, if you have time, it's cheaper to rebuild one than buy new.

I posted this blog to rec.games.pinball. Hello if you are visiting from there. I have gotten a lot of nice comments and so far, 71 visitors from the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Finland, Australia, and the Netherlands.

I got this helpful comment from user MarchAFB in RGP:

Mike,

I was just looking at your posted pictures and your playfield is in much better shape than mine was, but I noticed your sling plastics are wrong. They are not from an F-14.

Nice blog, keep it going.

Corey

Thanks Corey! Chad looked it up for me. When you said this, he said, "Yea, I thought that it was weird that an F-14 had Oil Pressure and a Turbo Boost." He went looking and it turns out that the plastics are from a "High Speed".

Thanks for that, I don't know how long before I would have noticed.

John Wart, jr posted a long list of suggestions. I skimmed it because I have to run off right now, but I can't wait to get into it.

So, thanks for the warm welcome RGP! I hope I can contribute in a meaningful way, even if it's just documenting my noob woes for future new guys to learn from and for the veterans to remember what it was like to do things like:

To remove the flipper grommet, I held the nut with a wrench and turned the screw. The first one came out OK, but had plastic in the threads. The second screw sheared right off with almost no effort at all. Am I supposed to just be removing the nuts and pulling the grommet off screws and all?? Or was that just a freak accident. Did I mess up something simple? Oh jeeez....

Rules Broken

2010-03-11T23:37:00.001-06:00

I made a rule for myself that I would read all of the documentation. I read the basics, but I didn't read the whole system 11 troubleshooting guide. I've been fumbling around with the display for a couple of hours over the past few days. I posted some questions on rec.games.pinball and I thought I would have to spend a whole day messing with the thing and guessing what to do.

Then I looked at the guide for how to check everything on the coils (I don't want to order a new coil if it's just a $.50 diode) and I found a very detailed section on what to do about failing displays.

Stop everything... slow down... read the guide... start again.

Stuff to order and stuff to fix

2010-03-11T23:36:00.000-06:00

I'll be hanging a clip board on the wall with a pen attached so I can quickly write down things to fix and things to order. Sometimes when working on something, you find another thing wrong. I'll just write it down so I don't forget and come back around to it later.

Before anything else, take care of the leaking batteries

2010-03-11T23:35:00.004-06:00

There is a list of problems. When got home from work I checked the flippers and found that the upper left flipper was seizing. This caused the fuse to blow and that's why the flippers weren't working. I really wanted to start looking at flippers and the display but the battery corrosion problem had to be taken care of immediately.

The F-14 is a Williams system 11 type pinball machine. Thanks very much to the guys at http://www.pinrepair.com/ for publishing great repair guides. Here is their guide for my machine.

In that guide, there is a section for making a modification to how the batteries attach to the board. The idea is to get the batteries to a remote location so if they leak, the main board isn't damaged. I followed their advice, but with a few modifications.

I didn't want to turn the machine on again until I had the corrosion all cleaned up and this modification done.

Click on the pictures for a better look at my notes.

I had a 3 battery holder in my parts drawer. It's not much, but I wanted to save the $2 so I went with the three battery holder rather thatn the 4 battery holder as outlined in the pinrepair guide.

Here is some other stuff I saw that concerns me. However, if it’s working, I’m not going to mess with it at all.

These were sent in an e-mail to Chad, he said that it was a good work log and that I should start a blog. So here it is. I'm getting it all caught up and from now on, all of the work will be logged to this blog.

Supplies and the first collaborative shop night

2010-03-11T23:35:00.003-06:00

Chad and I make a habit of getting together on Wednesday nights. I needed some supplies to continue work and we thought it would be a good field trip to www.pinballlife.com. The world headquarters is 10 minutes from my house.

Before I go on, I want to say that I really wish I had gotten into this hobby sooner, but there's nothing to be done about that now. I have been involved in a lot of things and I always wished that I lived in the mecca of those places.

Silicon valley in the 80's or Missouri / Arkansas during the 90's (bass fishing man!). It seems that I finally hit on something. It's 7 minutes from my desk at work to GameWorks in Schaumburg where I get to play the new Stern games. A good parts distributor is 10 minutes from my house. Chicago was the epicenter of pinball.

The last pinball manufacturer is nearby. Last Wednesday at GameWorks, Gary Stern watched me and Chad play big buck hunter for a couple of minutes. We didn't know who he was at the time or we would have said hi.

I'm in the right place just not at the best time.

But I digress.

I learned a lesson tonight. Know what you need before you go to get it. I bought a new multi-meter the other night and I quickly checked the coil resistance on the bad flipper. I thought I had done the whole machine, but in my haste to play with the new multi-meter, I just wasn't at all thorough.

I ordered rebuild kits for the 4 flippers, a new top glass, Novus 1 - 3, and a switch tool from Pinball life. Chad and I went after work.

Terry is the owner and he seems like a good guy. He showed us around and gave me some tips on how to fix my flippers. He welcomed us to the hobby and we went on our way.

[Here's the flipper assembly off the board. The rebuild kit comes iwth everything except the coil and that really grugy white grommet at the top. I'm going to have to order both. Should I replace the wires with bright new green ones? I think I'll do that too.]

After going to dinner, we pulled the bad flipper off the board and dismantled it. I tested the coil again and... it's bad. It looks burnt and the resistance is .9 ohms. It should be closer to 5. The end of swing switch was bent badly and there was no way it was closing. I'm sure that's what did the flipper in.

[The leaf closest to the edge. The one with that 45 degree bend in it? That should be straight. That bend kept the contact from working correctly.]

I really wanted to get that flipper working, but it was too late to get a new coil, so work stopped on the flipper. We took the time to methodically test all of the coils.

The upper right flipper coil was measuring 90 ohms, so something is wrong there. The lower left coil is measuring (Insert). So that one needs to be addressed too. I wish I had gotten new coils tonight instead of the glass.

All of the other coils measured OK.

It's funny how one thing can lead to another and next thing you know it's midnight.

We found that one of the targets had a broken wire.

One of the coils that closes the "launch" gates was stuck. Whoever put the retaining clip on, put it on funny and it was causing the plunger to bind.

We ran through the switch test and found the right spinner is stuck closed. We did what we could to adjust it, but even with the switch forced open, the problem wasn't going away so we moved on.

The "ball popper" turned out to be a contact that wasn't closing. We adjusted that and now it works perfectly.

Under the apron in the ball trough area, there was a piece of metal underneath that was loose and badly rattling around so we tightened that down.

I found that there's a plastic grommet that the flipper post goes through that does not come with the rebuild kit. I was going to clean it all up but new ones are less than a dollar, so I'll just buy four new ones.

There is more to say about the number display, but I'll save that for another post.

And the journey begins

2010-03-11T23:34:00.001-06:00

We got the machine set up in my garage and started taking a few notes. First, my garage / workshop is a mess. I have unfinished projects, bikes, tools, bags of I don’t know what, and stuff I’ve been saving for something that I can’t remember.

Next, on the Pinball machine: The display isn’t working correctly, a ball is caught in the upper right “popper”, the batteries are corroded, and the flippers aren’t working.

I really wanted to dig in immediately, but it was late, I had someplace to be, and I really wanted to do this right. I’ve imposed a limit on myself. I have to finish a few things before I’ll allow myself to start.

First, clean up and organize the shop. Next, read the manual for the machine. Then read the “Beginner Guide” on Pinrepair.com and read it all of the way through before I do anything.

It was Sunday evening before I finished all of that.

The first thing I did Sunday night was to get my camera out and take about 50 pictures. Not only because when I’m done I will want before and after shots, but also for reference. I’m certain a time will come when I don’t remember where a wire used to be or which direction something is mounted and a picture will be priceless.

When I was done, it was movie time with the family, so the real work would start on Monday night after work. What did we watch? Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I haven’t seen it in twenty years at least. It still held the same magic for me.

Mission 1 Accomplished: Find a machine

2010-03-11T23:32:00.000-06:00

I found a listing for a decent F-14 Tomcat on Craig’s List. At first, I wasn’t sure that I really wanted it, but Chad knocked some sense into my head. I wish I still had the listing, but it’s gone now. In short: F-14 Tomcat – Plays but needs work.

From: Mike
To: sale-*****-**********@craigslist.org
Sent: Mon, March 1, 2010
Subject: F-14

** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

Where is this machine located?

From: Joe **********
To: Mike
Date: Mon, Mar 1, 2010
Subject Re: F-14

crystal lake 60012

From: Mike
To: Joe *************
Date: Mon, Mar 1, 2010
Subject: Re: F-14

Joe,

I live really close (Lake in the Hills) and I'm really interested. Is there anything else I need to know? This will be my first Pinball project and it seems like a really good one.

Will you be around tonight?

From: Joe **********
To: Mike Date: Mon, Mar 1, 2010
Subject Re: F-14

someone is coming now to buy it. If they for some reason don't I'll let you know.

Joe

I am crushed. Joe is a nice guy and he invited me over a few nights later to see some of the machines in his garage. A Whitewater, Lost in Space, and Sharkey’s Shootout. It would be nice to meet someone in the hobby that lives nearby so I took him up on his invitation. Chad was going to come with me. I sent him an e-mail saying we’ll be there at 8 PM.

From: Joe **********
To: Mike
Date: Wed, Mar 3, 2010
Subject Re: F-14

Sounds good but.... I have another F14 for sale. I am picking it up tomorrow, are you interested?? I will be asking the same [$] for it. It works but needs work so the guy tells me.How about meeting tomorrow and you can see and play the F14. If not I will list on CL tonight.

Joe

The clouds part, a beam of light shines down on me.

It turns out the machine is in rougher shape than the first one and Joe agrees to sell it for $150 cheaper. He also threw in a few new rubbers. We played some Lost in Space which is a lower rated game on IPDB, but I had fun. The magnetic spinning disk is wicked. Maybe it’s been in 100 games already, but these are my first.

After that, we brought the machine home and the journey started.