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    ✈️ Repair log: Supersonic (Bally, 1979)

    1979 Bally Repair log Supersonic
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    ✈️ Always loved the backglass on this machine. Perfectly captures "the magic of flight" at a time when the Concorde had just entered service and the world still seemed like a big place...


    Anyway. Where were we? Few things to fix on this Supersonic. Game booted up and played OK... except for the total lack of playfield solenoids. Sure enough, playfield fuse was blown. Replaced it and powered up again. Fuse held until the very end of the boot sequence and blew again. I could tell that it was blowing the instant the drop target reset coil was firing. The coil was very crispy, and measured only 2 ohms. It should be about 10. Clearly this one was fried. Hard to find a replacement for these big drop target reset coils (24-1400). However, most of the large size coils will work. I found a 26-1900 which fit, and worked a treat. 


    A few displays were wonky. Two were missing some digits, one was flickering. Reflowing the header pins on these and replacing the six 100k ohm resistors solved these issues. But still couldn't get the last display to light a hundreds digit. No problem... here's a sneaky trick. The ball in play and credit display don't need a hundreds unit, so whack the display into that slot and nobody will ever know! 🀫


    During testing I realised some of the switches weren't registering nicely. Cleaned their contacts which certainly helped, but some were still hard to register. Took a closer look and realised that someone had cut the capacitor off every single switch on the playfield. Sigh. These are needed for the CPU to read switch closures properly, so don't cut them. Soldered them all back on and switches were all good. Someone had also cut the playfield tilt switch out of circuit too. Savages!


    Lots of lamps needed replacement/adjustment. Playfield got a good clean. Checked the backbox and noted a bit of corrosion on the CPU board, but we will deal with that another time. Sound board also needs a rebuild as some of the sounds are a bit scratchy and out of tune, so we'll do that at some point, too. But for now it plays nice and fast like it should!


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    πŸ‹οΈ Repair log: The Incredible Hulk (Gottlieb, 1979)

    1979 Gottlieb Hulk Repair log
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    πŸ‹οΈ Helping a Hulk learn to smash stuff again. This game wasn't booting up right. Some weird buzzing sounds, lamps turning on, and some garbage on the displays is all we got. There was some minor corrosion on the CPU. Probably not the root cause of the issue, but certainly the first port of call to get repaired. Board was stripped of bad components, neutralised, coated and repopulated.


    The J6 connector was tricky. The pads were almost completely destroyed by the battery puke, and would never make a solid connection with the original connector. In these cases I solder a 0.156" header to what is left of the pads, and lock them down with a good amount of solder. Then simply swap the connector for a typical Molex style connector with Trifurcon pins. 


    Some more groundwork... ground mods installed. Connectors repinned. Voltages all checked out OK (a miracle!). Now we got a little further into the boot process. Displays were showing zeroes now, but the boot wasn't finishing. This seemed like a slam tilt issue, which causes the CPU to hang up during boot. Simply install a jumper on the CPU board to disable the slam tilt switches; they're too finnicky on a System 1 game anyway. Once this was done we had a successful boot up!


    Gameplay was a bit wonky though. Left flipper and pop bumpers would not respond. The high current switches on these mechs were pitted and dirty. They were all filed down and cleaned, after which point they started working again.


    One last issue before I called it a day. The feature (insert) lamps were not working. Bulbs were fine. Fuse was fine. At this point I usually have to replace the rectifier on the transformer panel, but it was fine too. Since Gottlieb was still doing lots of shit with relays at this point, the next component upstream of the rectifier is the tilt relay. The switch for the lamps was WHT-GRY wires. It is an NC switch but was not making good contact. Adjusted it a little, and the lights came back to life.


    Game is working reasonably well now. Not the most exciting game of the System 1 era, but a cool licence nonetheless. 🧟


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    Repair log: Tri Zone (Williams, 1979)

    1979 Repair log Tri Zone Williams

    ο»ΏRepair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, πŸ“¬ Contact Us to discuss how we can help!


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    I haven't had to do any System 6 game repairs in a while, so here goes! This game was having a couple of issues. The top pop bumper wasn't working. There was a bunch of hackery under the playfield from someone trying to solve this issue in the past. The old solenoid was shorted, so that was replaced. Switches were adjusted for correct operation. This is very important for the special solenoid circuit, or the coil will lock on! The driving transistor in the backbox was also fried, so it was replaced as well. Pop bumper was back in action after that.


    Next was a sound issue. No game sounds would play although the sound board would play its diagnostic tune when the button was pressed. A faulty sound select switch was the cause.


    Finally, a flipper issue. The left flipper wouldn't work. Flipper assembly was all OK as was the cabinet switch. The connector in the wiring harness between the playfield and backbox was not making proper contact. After it was properly seated the flipper came back to life.


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    Bally Star Trek Circuit Board Repairs

    1979 Bally Circuit Board Repair Star Trek
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    I've been repairing a few classic Bally games lately, so it's only fitting that this one came into my care recently. Star Trek (Bally, 1979) has some cool playfield features including a saucer which spits the ball out into the pop bumpers, and a free ball return lane. Star Trek appears to be the only Bally solid state game that had a free ball return lane feature, and it was a great way to rack up scores by collecting bonuses continuously. The "Where No Man Has Gone" horseshoe at the top left of the playfield was also a cool gimmick, causing the left pop bumper to fire the ball back at the left flipper.

    This will be a relatively short blog post as this restoration was focused mainly on circuit board repairs and upgrades. Only minor playfield repairs were conducted, and the machine was otherwise in good, playing condition. The playfield was stripped and cleaned, various broken parts were replaced, and the flipper assemblies were also rebuilt. However, there's nothing particularly exciting about any of that. Instead, I intend for this blog post to serve as a generic reference for those troubleshooting classic Bally boardsets and to explain some of the basic modifications and upgrades I perform.
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    Trident

    1979 Stern Trident
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    Trident (Stern Electronics, 1979) was my first foray into classic solid state (SS) game repair for a customer. I had bought Stars (Stern Electronics, 1978) a little while ago and while I hadn't restored it yet, I had done a lot of reading about common problems, the boardset, and playfield mechanisms. While I initially wanted to work on Stars as my first classic SS restoration, a customer approached me about fixing his Trident so I decided to bring this one back to life first. He had actually asked about selling the machine to me, but instead decided that he wanted to have the game repaired so he could play it again. As this wasn't a full game restoration, this blog entry will be shorter and will cover only the more interesting aspects of the repairs.