This is really episode 04, but somehow, I lost 03’s post and the corresponding video. If I find it later, I’ll update this.
To recap what has happened since Episode 02, we were very excited that with just some minor repairs, the MPU (main board) booted to the game. This was very exciting as I have been working on a sister game, Williams Firepower, for several months now, and I still do not have the main board functioning.
The excitement was short lived as I inadvertently plugged the solenoid power incorrectly. I’m sure most of you have heard that within every electronic component, there is some magical black smoke that is used to make it work and when the black smoke is released, the components cease to work. Needless to say, I let loose a bunch of magical black smoke from under the playfield. This mistake was due in part to Williams (for some reason) placing the key pin on the connector as one of the last pins, thereby allowing me to shift the connector by one place which sent voltage to places it shouldn’t have gone.
To the best of my knowledge, I either caused the following, or I eventually discovered the following as a result. We continued to blow a fuse whenever the solenoids were plugged in. After several hours of trial and error, I was able to finally discover that the right kicker solenoid was locking on. I removed it from the power, and as a result, I was actually able to boot into a game and play, reasonably well.
More trial and errors finally allowed me to figure out that I had blown a transistor Q10, and at least IC 7, and possibly IC 6 on the driver board. Fortunately, my local electronics store carried those chips and I was able to switch them out. I also discovered that one of the leaf switches for the kicker had basically disintegrated. So, I ordered and replaced it.
Lastly, the sound board has been rebuilt with new caps all around, and I burned new eproms for the Green Flipper ROMS and the Gorgar code choosing to use a single chip.
Next on the agenda will be cleaning and adjusting switches. New rubber bumpers all around, and replacement of lightbulbs. The flippers will also need to be cleaned and possibly rebuilt, we will see once I get them apart.
