Tag Archives: premier

Feb 07 2014
Leave a comment
My Games, Tech Tips

Flash lamp weirdness

I chased down the flash lamp problems on my Monte Carlo.

The flash lamps next to the roulette wheel were locked on. I found a out-of-spec transistor on the driver board.  The under-playfield transistor (MJ2955) tested fine once the driver board was disconnected, so I just left it.

The other one was weirder. The “left dome” flashers did not work. Lamps themselves were fine. The transistors tested okay, and there was voltage at the lamp socket, but grounding the lamp socket did not cause the lamps to light.

I found that the two lugs of the lamp socket were shorted together. Apparently the resistor in circuit that steps down the voltage is good enough to protect the transistors from failing, or I just got lucky.

I might have caught this sooner if I’d noticed that the last person to re-rubber the game had looped rubber around 89 sockets rather than reading the manual for the correct rubber ring sizes.

Tagged , , ,
Jul 18 2013
Leave a comment
My Games, Tech Tips

Spring Break restoration notes

Old notes are bulleted, with inner bullets updating the work I did:

  • Battery corrosion.  This had one of the “DataSentry” style black batteries of doom.  … I have so far removed the battery but not cleaned the damage.
    • Ultimately, I just stopped.  I have parts to rebuild the reset section, but it’s working; why fight with it?
  • Computer has been trashed.  Like every 80B computer, this has a piggyback board arrangement where the solder joints fatigue and crack. … [T]his involves desoldering the board so I can work on the underside.  Unfortunately someone decided to go to war with the thing on the top side.  I did finally get the board off, but I am afraid I have damaged the plated-through holes.  I obliterated at least one pad on the bottom and damaged another.
    • I bought one of the GPE daughterboards.  Highly recommended.  The redundancy that this board adds helps make up for my mistakes, and Gottlieb’s mistakes.
  • Ramp cracked at entrance badly.
    • I have a new ramp, but it’s not installed.
  • Sounds lacking.  So I can hear some correct sounds, but mostly it’s static.  Can’t hear the music. I want to take a look at this, but there’s no reason to until grounds are verified.
    • I did put this off until after the ground mods, but the ground mods weren’t required.  All the grounds in this game are one big common (eventually) and that was easy to verify.
    • The actual problem was one or more bad ROMs on the sound board. I verified this by swapping parts with my Monte Carlo, which had a working sound board. This was much easier than trying to go at it with an oscilloscope… which I also did.
  • Ground mods not done.  I suspect this is causing sound problems.  At least one set of pins (this game has five) is burned badly.
    • I did the major ground mods.  Didn’t fix the sound (not surprising).  I’m not happy with them, though, because it means permanently rerouting a cable in a way I just don’t love.  I may try and come up with another method the next time I do this.
  • Lots of lamps missing.
    • Bad sockets and bad bulbs. I need to solder some sockets “shut”, but that’s about it.
  • Driver board has transistors replaced with the twisted-leg hack.
    • Replaced with CEN-U45.
  • Black rubber on playfield.  Ew.
    • Yeah, still haven’t had time to shop the game.
Tagged , , ,
May 13 2013
Leave a comment
Tech Tips

Maybe they’re all blown.

In the vein of the Maybe they’re all burnt out rule, I recently got a Gottlieb Monte Carlo  and none of the pop bumpers worked.

I got really lucky with this one. Each pop bumper is fused separately, but each and every one of them was blown individually. I could have gone checking the power train back to the transformer, but I was sort of smart and checked the fuses first. I say sort of smart because if I was legitimately smart, I would already have pulled every fuse on the game and made sure they were as originally specified, and I haven’t.

All of that said, why did three fuses die simultaneously? Well, the game was moved several hundred miles on the back of a truck. The drop target reset fuse had also blown. Maybe the fuses were just old, or perhaps I have another problem. In any case, though, they certainly needed to be replaced.

Tagged , ,
May 13 2013
Leave a comment
My Games

I bought a Spring Break

Chris goes to the Captain’s Auction Warehouse coin-op auction regularly, at least recently. I started getting some bids in on some weirder titles that are going for reasonable prices. First I got a Spanish Eyes, then a Monte Carlo.  Most recently I picked up a Spring Break for $500, plus premiums and tax, which are actually pretty steep.

But I was happy to get it. The game is complete. The playfield is a little rough, but they’re still available. The cabinet is very good.

So far, I’ve found the following problems with it:

  • +5v regulator pot was bad.  They’re all bad, unless they have been replaced.  Mine was running a little north of +5v and the adjustment pot just didn’t work.  I replaced it, and it’s OK.
  • Battery corrosion.  This had one of the “DataSentry” style black batteries of doom.  Unlike my Monte Carlo, which is a few months older and had a beautiful, clean computer, this one has some damage in the reset section.  I have so far removed the battery but not cleaned the damage.
  • Computer has been trashed.  Like every 80B computer, this has a piggyback board arrangement where the solder joints fatigue and crack.  The solution is straightforward: resolder the pins.  The difficulty is that this involves desoldering the board so I can work on the underside.  Unfortunately someone decided to go to war with the thing on the top side.  I did finally get the board off, but I am afraid I have damaged the plated-through holes.  I obliterated at least one pad on the bottom and damaged another.  This won’t be too hard to mitigate, but it probably would not have happened had someone done good work to begin with.
  • Ramp cracked at entrance badly.
  • Sounds lacking.  So I can hear some correct sounds, but mostly it’s static.  Can’t hear the music. I want to take a look at this, but there’s no reason to until grounds are verified.
  • Ground mods not done.  I suspect this is causing sound problems.  At least one set of pins (this game has five) is burned badly.
  • Lots of lamps missing.
  • Driver board has transistors replaced with the twisted-leg hack.  I have the right transistors and I’ll fix that.
  • Black rubber on playfield.  Ew.

On the upside, a lot of lamps DO work.  The flippers are pretty strong.  The cabinet is very good, other than some duck tape glue that should be pretty easy to clean off.  The translite is a little faded, but not too bad.  I dropped in the regulator and computer from my Monte Carlo, and that gave a lot of hope.

Tagged , , ,