Tag Archives: system 80

Feb 13 2024
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My Games, Repair Notes

Counterforce shop notes: Lamps

My new-to-me Counterforce had most of the lamps in the insert panel (behind the backglass) missing. I grabbed my supply of LEDs and populated the lot. The glare was so bad it made the game hard to play.

I replaced a bunch of the LEDs with #47 incandescents, except where I liberally used #455s, the blinky bulbs. I love these — although I see they seem to be out of stock at several suppliers. I suppose they will go NLA soon. But I have them for now, and I love their randomness and the noise that they make. Plus, since they’re usually off, the glare is greatly reduced.

When I cleaned the playfield, I upgraded several lamps to LEDs–Nifty frosted warm white, generally, since I still have a stock of those. But a lot of the playfield holes won’t accommodate the larger plastic ring on the LEDs, so I used #47s.

Initially, I didn’t know if I would LED the controlled lamps or not. But I had a couple I wanted to brighten up, and they looked so good, I started installing LEDs in all the inserts. Counterforce has quite a few non-controlled inserts — around 12 that are on when a corresponding drop target is on. All of these are yellow inserts, so I used TJ’s trick of lighting them with a pink bulb. A yellow LED bulb tends to look washed out. The pink ones look great. They look really hot in the purple inserts that Gottlieb used for extra ball.

Another 28 lamps are stepped up with an under-playfield transistor. These provide the incoming bomb lights. I haven’t done these yet, but I think they’ll look great when done.

But on my way there, I’m soldering shut a bunch of lamp sockets, or maybe replacing sockets. This is a trick I learned from Tim Arnold’s handouts a long time ago. Here’s a PDF. On old sockets, the press-fit loses its will to press-fit. But a drop of solder on the joint provides connectivity and can revive a dying lamp socket.

So far I’ve had a couple that look great with the upgrade.

I plan to do this on the bus sockets used for the bomb lamps and the bonus ladder, both of which are irreplaceable, have lots of individual wire connections, and quite a few loose sockets.

[Originally written in early 2021, minor updates in early 2024.]

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Feb 16 2014
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My Games, Tech Tips

a note about rebuilding Gottlieb “fat boy” flippers

In general, I don’t rebuild Gottlieb “fat boy” flippers as part of shopping out a game. This is in contrast to Williams solid-state flippers, which do wear out. The exception is the EOS switch. The lever arm will chew a hole in it over a couple decades of play, and it’s worth checking first. It may be fine, or it may need replacement.  I have also seen the plunger/link crack apart. But otherwise, these flippers just work.

On my Monte Carlo and couldn’t make the Firepower-esque lock shot, up the left side and into a saucer. Without this shot, there’s no multiball, and no way to spin the roulette wheel. The flippers seemed fine otherwise, but were clearly missing some oompf.

I replaced the sleeve because it’s cheap and checked out the link assembly, which seemed to be fine. I decided to get more drastic. I have a couple MA-989 upgrade kits with NOS link assemblies and new EOS switches that should make the EOS switch also nearly indestructible. I decided this was a fine occasion to use one. Ultimately, I replaced the EOS and lane change switches, the coil, the coil stop, the plunger/tip, and the lever that clamps around the flipper shaft. Still, it was weak, and in fact it was a little worse.

But in the process, I had installed the flipper with an angle that was too horizontal at rest. I think I was working off the angle of the left flipper, which wasn’t necessarily right to begin with.  I went back and took a look the flyer and went for a droopier angle, and happily, I can make the shot!

I suspect that flipper mechanism develops a lot of power at the end of its stroke.  Plus, the angle made the flipper play funny, and I may have had a hard time adjusting.

I will keep all the parts I took out as spares—I don’t think they’re bad. And I will pay more attention to the angle in the future.

I am not enamored with the MA-988/MA-989 upgrade kits. They require some care to ensure that the return spring isn’t touching the switch. The geometry of the flipper just doesn’t allow this fix to be very good. Plus, my NOS parts came with NOS factory rust in non-critical locations. The original flippers work pretty well without the fix.anyway. I will probably use these kits up and switch back to the original-issue parts once I exhaust my small supply.

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Jul 18 2013
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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.
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May 13 2013
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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.

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