Re: Gottlieb System 1 Pinball Pool help (n00b questions)
- From: homebrood <homebrood@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 09:22:44 -0800 (PST)
On Jan 11, 10:35 am, KF <Axle.Fo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hey everyone, let me start by saying this is both my first post and
first attempt at repairing a pinball machine.
A buddy of mine moved out of town and wound up leaving behind a
Gottlieb System 1 Pinball Pool machine.http://gallery.mac.com/kevinfinisterre#100418&bgcolor=black&view=grid
(Photos of machine before new MPU)
This machine was basically a room accent in my buddies house for
several years. He was not the original owner and essentially inherited
the machine himself. None of the history is known.
When we first met my understanding was that the machine was in at
least partially working order. "Supposedly" the game would drop balls,
and keep score , but only the left right side flipper worked. Knowing
what I do now I am not sure how believable this is. When he moved out
I came over and picked the machine up and we moved it via small pickup
truck.
Just before loading the machine into the truck I gave it a quick test
fire. I plugged it in and pushed the power button, a wonderful
sounding bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz came from the sound card and all the non-cpu
controlled lights fired up. Nothing on the displays and no real
startup chime apart from the first note that turned into
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. We quickly unplugged the machine and just moved it
on to its new home. Once I got it home we tried to fire it up again
and this time all I got was the non-cpu controlled lights, it seemed
pretty obvious to me that the MPU was not happy.
I did not have the cabinet key so I was unable to see what was going
on inside. My fiance and I tried several times to pick the wafer lock
on the cabinet, I've picked a few locks in the past but I knew for
sure this one was not for me. Out comes the trust drill and the
problem is solved. Once inside the cabinet I get my first look at the
power supply, MPU and Driver board. I knew enough about circuit boards
to pull the boards out and check for rotten traces or signs of blown
caps or burn marks and such. It was quickly made obvious that the
solder traces were hurting at best, eventually I discover this
DataSentry "thing" that was not looking all that healthy. After a few
minutes of goggling I ran acrosshttp://www.pinrepair.com/sys1/index.htm
. This gem of a document helped me understand that my MPU was a very
unhappy beast and I would need to either get started cleaning it up or
simply buy a new one.
After about an hour of trying to clean the board up I had found myself
on the ni-wumpf website ordering a replacement board. Over the next
few days I wound up ordering several other replacement parts, power
supply / driver board, connectors etc just to be on the safe side. As
the parts arrived I started making the appropriate swap as needed. At
this point there is a BostonPinball Driver board with BostonPinball
MPU -> DriverBoard cable, new Rottenberg power supply and a new Ni-
Wumpf system 1 board.
Before the power supply or connector cables showed up I wanted to test
the Ni-wumpf and see if it made a difference. The result was quite
pleasing. Pushing the power button yielded a nice startup chime, the
displays activated and I heard two fairly loud clicks. The video of
this is at the following URLhttp://gallery.mac.com/kevinfinisterre#100418/f191488&bgcolor=black
Thinking I was in the home stretch I opened the coin box and attempted
to insert some credits. So I flicked a few quarters in an tried to
push the start button, nada. So I opened it up to try to manually add
credits. The previous owner had drilled out the coinbox lock in an
attempt to find some spare change so it was not in the greatest shape.
The lock-out coil did not appear to be energized (I had no clue what
it was at the time) and the two switch blades in the lock box were
bent backwards and pushing against the metal in the coin box. After a
bit more googling I figured out what I needed to do to get the
switches fixed, so I did that, and replaced the light in the quarter
slot and tried to fire it up again. Still nothing out of the credits
or start button. This time the lock-out coil did energize though. The
coin box light worked fine too.
After the huge let down I tried to search around and figure out how to
get some coins into the machine so I could actually play it, Ace from
Ni-wumpf suggested that I put the machine in free play mode but
unfortunately the test button did not work either. Some googling
turned up a few notes about manually pushing the start button. I read
the following from a few random posts to this forum.
Add Credits:
A1J6-6 -> A1J6-5 or
A1J6-6 -> A1J6-4
Start Game:
A1J6-6 -> A1J6-3
So I tried it... I grabbed a random piece of wire and shorted A1J6-6
to A1J6-4 and I heard a chime that sounded as if it were part of the
start up tone. (For some reason it only worked twice...I was never
able to do it again after that) Next I started the game by shorting
A1J6-6 to A1J6-3. Both balls dropped down on the playing field, they
fell into the hole. One popped out ready for play. I was pumped! It
seemed to be working. The bumpers seemed to work and toss the ball
around the field. The flippers were fine. Then I noticed that the drop
targets were not working correctly and that there was no score being
kept. I was actually able to partially play the thing though! So I
turned it off and went back to some other random coin door related
research, later I went to try it all over again and to my surprise no
more coins or start button for me.
Now I am both worried and bummed. I am wondering what I did to the ni-
wumpf or something else. Any time I try to short the pins mentioned
above I get nothing. The Ni-wumpf does not display any error LEDs from
the manual so it seems to think its OK. Does anyone have any ideas
here? What should I check? I've ordered all new connectors for the
rest of the parts but they won't be in till later next week. In the
mean time I am trying to figure out what to test so I can get back to
inserting credits. My assumption is if the shorting does not work on
the board directly... I should not expect anything to change once I
get all new connectors everywhere else. (I'm guessing I'll be sending
Ace my board)
Assuming that the jumpering technique is an OK thing to do in the
first place.... is there a similar pin combination that simulates the
Test button being depressed?
All of the stuff in the System 1 Genie coin door posts sound
strikingly familiar but no cigar, I have no hacked up tilt or bob,
everything is intact.
Thanks.
-KF
I think all your issues are probably connector related. Also the Slam
tilt switch by the Roll tilt inside the cabinet front left side should
be normally closed so make sure that switch is clean and closed. It
should open when the ball rolls to the front when the machine is
slammed too hard. There is a wire that goes from the test switch to
the mpu that probably has a bad pin at the mpu, that is why that is
not working. Also never ever dissconnect or reconnect any connectors
to any of the displays while the power is on, if you did this you may
have and probably did fry a chip on the Ni-W.
If so don't panic, Ace can fix it for a very reasonable fee and return
it pretty fast. Do not dissconnect or recconect anything with the
power on is the best practice. GI lights are the only exception though
I don't even like doing that.
If you replaced the connector from the mpu to the driver board and the
connctor from the power supply to the ni-wumpf that is a start but if
this machine has been sitting for a while you need to re-pin all the
molex connectors (white plugs with all the wires that snap onto the
edge of the boards) and the ones at the power supply also. For testing
purposes sometime you can re-tension and clean these pins with a small
probe or a saftey pin you can pull the pins up inside the housing so
that they grip the board tighter and so that they make better contact,
and try the machine again. If it works then you'll still want to repin
them, but I have done this cleaning and retensioning of pins and
truthfully if you see no bluish corrosion this can work for a long
time. If you do see any corrosion though don't bother with it change
the pins!
Tom
.
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