Archives December 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.