Archives 2023

So, I’ve been working on the power supply board as it has to be fully operation before anything else can even be checked. Its also probably the easiest of the boards to restore as there is little to no logic on the board. I replaced 3 of the 4 main capacitors. The big one (yellow) I could not find a replacement for at my local electronics shop, so I will need to source that from the beloved Internet.

Since I have my Firepower motherboard on my bench, I decided to pull the MPU from Gorgar and just see how it would react on the bench. I cleaned up a bunch of the black suet on the board and hooked it up to the old PC power supply that I use for testing. To my surprise, the MPU appeared to boot straight up. Incredible!

If this holds out, then we could be in for a much easier restore than the Firepower. The MPU and Driver board on that system is in bad shape and is taking forever to repair. I did see that the sound board on Gorgar is pretty suspect. There is a large capacitor on it that looks really bad, I’ll need to order a replacement for that as well.

Anyway, I can’t wait to put some of this back in the machine and see just what happens. Sometimes, all you can do is just plug it in (within reason) and see what works.

Well, I did it again. I saw this machine come up at a local auction and I had to put a bid on it. Its the Williams Gorgar from 1979. It is a System 6 machine, which as it would happen, is the same generation as our other current work in progress, Firepower.

The machine was sold as “power’s on, but doesn’t work”, which is equivalent to we don’t know if it will ever play again. Judging from the back box, the electronics look remarkably good at first glance. The streak of black suet is an indication that it has not had maintenance in quite a while.

Most of the capacitors are original, these will eventually need to be changed. There is at least one visibly blown fuse (could this be the main problem). The original battery backup holder is still intact and some very old looking Ever Ready Classic batteries sit in the holder and will need to be removed ASAP. Fortunately, no visible corrosion leakage. We will definitely be replacing the battery holder with an external pack to safeguard this in the future. The playfield is not as bad of shape as the Firepower, which clearly sustained some moisture damage.

All in all, there is a higher than even chance we can get this working again. Stay tuned for updates as we go through and try to bring this puppy back to life.

Welcome to Silverwood Wood Design’s Maker’s Log. In these short videos we step through our process of making all of our various gaming accessories. I hope you enjoy this first episode which focuses on our most popular item, our Dice Towers.

Welcome back to Episode 3. I wanted to get a video update on some minor progress that I’ve made on the machine. Two big gains is getting the head mounts repaired on the cabinet so that we could actually mount the head, and initial testing of the power supply/board, with general illumination appearing to come alive.

The one take-away from this session is that the voltage coming off the power board going to the CPU does not appear to be where it needs to be, which means I need to go back to the power board and check rectifiers and diodes.

We made some changes here. By changes I mean we have finally gotten into the modern era of internet bandwidth. Just a few days ago, we were blessed to have fiber installed to our home out in the middle of no where, and now I have 1 Gbps of beautiful up and download speed.

Most of you are are like, so what. Well, when you spend your life as an IT professional and the last 3+ years have you working remotely on a legacy DSL circuit that at best gets you 3.5Mbps (I know its not dial-up, but I’ve been there, done that, got the T-Shirt, ripped up the T-Shirt, burned the pieces from the T-Shirt and buried the ashes), you tend to only use the internet for absolutely the bare minimum.

Hellooooo Fiber! One of the things that I have put off doing, because of stated internet limitations, has been the sharing of videos that seem to be the rave across the blogosphere. So, you should expect, or dread, a new channel of uselessly entertaining content coming forth from Silverwood Wood Designs. I promise we’ll get better with our production quality, but for now, its a matter of just churning out content, because that’s what all the publishing houses do. You know like, Disney, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.

So, without further comment, I welcome you to our first Unboxing Video, featuring our newest tool in our Wood Designs stable, a Creality Falcon 2, 22 watt laser engraver and cutter.

Please understand that as with many of you, I only get to spend small amounts of time on my pet projects like this. As such, I’m afraid the episodes might not be the most compelling or lengthy, but hopefully that will inspire you to take the 5 – 10 minutes and just check out what I’m doing as mundane as it may seem.

In this episode, we tackle cleaning out the base of the cabinet. Petrified mud nests, mummified mouse and a plethora of quarters. I mean, a lot of quarters. I was surprised, first of all, that the money box was still inside the machine. This is the first machine I’ve purchased in which it was still in place. Unfortunately for me, the mouse had apparently decided that George Washington’s metallic presence was a great place to go to the bathroom. So, before we get to count our treasure, old George needs to have a good bath.

I also hit a lot of the plastics with some rubbing alcohol to see what yuck I could pull off. It wasn’t cutting it, so we removed all of the ones we could, there is one that is fused with a rusted screw into the playfield. I’ll probably have to drill out the screen to free it. Initial inspection of the rubber bumpers indicate that they could be salvaged, but the cost to replace all of them with new ones is so minor, I’m just going to toss them since they have yellowed so much from the environment they’ve been left in.

I hope you enjoy the progress. Little steps and we can possibly get this beast back on its feet.

Welcome to this first of a series of blog posts which will hopefully document my attempts at resurrecting this corpse of a pinball machine that I purchased recently at an auction. During the COVID years, lucked into a 1978 Bally Harlem Globetrotter pinball machine that needed some work. I decided to take the chance and started my adventure down the road to pinball machine restoration. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. My love the era and the machines has grown as has my respect for what goes into the designs.

This machine is in much worse shape than that one or the 1991 Data East Phantom of the Opera machine which I purchased less than a year ago. While neither of those machines were functioning, they had not sustained the kind of neglect and damage that my current project has endured. The good news is, its one of the highest produced machines in existence, which should translate into easy access to parts. The bad news is, I’m going to need a lot of them and the superficial damage to the cabinet and playfield may well prevent it from ever landing in someone’s collection.

In this first episode, I basically document the total condition of the machine as I have received it from the auction site and my initial observations of the machine. The one glimmer of hope that I have is that the back box is not in bad shape and the electronics look to be fairly solid. I will need to go over each board and verify key solder points and chips connections, but we have at least a 30-40% chance of powering up with some basic TLC.

Enjoy the video. Please let me know what you think.

2023 is a New Year, and with the New Year comes new shows, new products and new goals for Silverwood Wood Designs and our associated products, Silverwood Chronicle Books and Silverwood Tableworks. We’ve kicked the year off with 3 new shows in Frankfort KY, Atlanta GA, and Butler County OH. Frankfort and Atlanta were both disappointments on many different levels. CincyCon at the Butler County Fairgrounds in Ohio, was moderate success. The show by our normal standards was relatively small, but because of the gaming nature of the show, we managed to do well.

Spring brings more new shows in new locations which we are very excited for and hoping for a positive response to our product offerings. With these new product offerings we have just showcased our newest items at the last two shows a modular game master screen and accessories and new dice sword case. Response has been very positive for the game master screen so much so that we sold out in Atlanta and sold half of our stock at CincyCon. The dice sword case has received much less excitement (certainly gotten some ooohs and aaaaahs), but our first two are still in our inventory.

Silverwolf Illustrations has been busy working on new images to sport on our products which we will be introducing in the shows to come. Let us know what you think and check out our Super Bowl commercial that didn’t quite make it to prime time!