SNESNESCUBE64

10 minutes ago, achavera said:

By chance would you be willing to repair mine, I would pay you of course.

I'm sorry, I am not offering repair services at this time. I don't have bandwidth due to my day job and the current projects I have on my plate.

I also don't have the kiosk anymore. So I wouldn't be able to just be sent the boards.

15 hours ago, achavera said:

I am also having a sound issue from my Wii U kiosk. Everything works fine just no sound. I saw you replaced the capacitors, I've never done that before, could there be a chance I damage the board?

Yes if you aren't careful you can damage the board when replacing the capacitors. The boards are kinda cheap.

If you are comfortable soldering then it should be fairly straightforward. Otherwise it might be a bit tough.

On 12/24/2023 at 6:42 PM, a3quit4s said:

Must be a Williams thing, my High Speed had the same issue with the EOS switch as your Earthshaker

It's a common issue with solidstate pins in general. It's important that your EOS's are properly aligned. Fuses popping is how they protect the coils and the flipper driver board.

59 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

I’m always in awe of your electrical engineering troubleshooting work. Do you do this work by trade as well? Electrical Engineering degree or similar?

I have a bachelor's in both Computer Science and Computer Engineering. The Computer Engineering side is what really helped me with digital logic and whatnot. PCB design I am mostly self taught. I am a software engineer by trade but work as a arcade/pinball technician as a side hustle. The eventual goal is to be able to do pinball and arcade work full time, but that is long ways away.

In terms of actual troubleshooting, I am self-taught. I've used lot of resources online. I have gotten help from several knowledgeable folk online and also have gotten help from a handful of local folk. Forums like KLOV are nice places to soak in info as well as reading other folk's repair logs.

I write these with the hope that they can be used as reference material for people in the same boat. I'm still a firm believer that you don't need professional training or proper education to become a tech.

I still use my rendition of the banner...

You forgot who Agumon, who literally became ambassador to the digital world...

3 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

If you let me know which ones you need he probably has them, I dunno if he will sell but I can take photos

Thanks, but I should be good for a while. When the time comes I will source a manual, although I don't forsee myself working on any in the near future. Mostly Bally, Data East, and Williams pins for me :).

2 hours ago, a3quit4s said:

He probably supplies them too. He actually bought like all of Gottliebs original machine parts to make their plastic pop up targets and stuff like that. His factory is a gold mine of parts for almost any pinball machine you can think of

No doubt their stock is big. Their partnership (or ownership, not sure what the deal is) with Gottlieb is actually a source of frustration for me. They are the only source for Gottlieb manuals as Gottlieb is very litigious over the rights to the manuals. For context, most manuals are available on ipdb.org, but not Gottlieb manuals. It makes it much more difficult to service games, especially solid state ones, because of this. The only place to get them as far as I am aware is pinball resource who makes new copies for a fee. Not sure if these shinanigans are connected, but it's part of the reason of why I don't work on those machines as much.

It actively makes my job harder and hurts people who want to keep these Gottlieb machines going. Granted they are my least favorite machines to work on due to the hardware they used (I can rant for hours about that one), but the blocking of public information is really annoying.

Pinball resources is an interesting remnant of the past, they are more like an old catalog as you have to mail a check and order form, no online payments. I'm sure I'd use them if I needed a part I can only get through them. Glad they are still making parts though, it's good to have resources.

17 hours ago, a3quit4s said:

Fun fact if you ordered parts from Steve Young’s Pinball Resource his warehouse is about 5 minutes from me.

Neat. I've never ordered from Steve personally. My goto is Marco Pinball if the shop I work for on the weekend doesn't have what I need. They have been awesome. Very cool that they can make their own coils though, it is super important that folk still make em.

The beanbean kingdom and the mushroom kingdom are in the same world. Mario and Luigi get to it via bowser's battleship or whatever. Same with Princess peach who traveled there via plane. It would be like saying Isle Delfino is its own world when Mario and friends just travel there. Perhaps I am missing the point...

Perhaps I am missing something, but what is Video Game Masters vs. The League of Darkness?

21 minutes ago, Br81zad said:

I'm really enjoying it, and learning all of its quirks. It'll randomly drop a ramp switch (yellow or green) and I don't really know what could be causing it. Sometimes it will happen right from start up, sometimes it'll happen mid game after a few plays. Cycling the power on/off seems to fix it for awhile. I've also noticed that the game likes to warm up a bit before being played. If I start it cold and immediately jump into a game, the DMD will scramble and eventually drop out. Again, cycle power and it's fine. 

Check your connections in the backbox, those connectors get dirty after a while, these data east games also are known to have power board problems. I know some of the fuse holders are paper thin and the holders should be replaced. Some of those connections also get super burnt due to bad connections and cold solder joints, I would make sure they are all in good shape. That might solve some of your "warm up" problems. I've also had to replace caps on a couple of those...

1 hour ago, Br81zad said:

Recently got my first pin, a Data East TMNT. I've thought about replacing all bulbs with LEDs, but I'm leery of running into issues just as you've described here. I'd REALLY like to at least replace the bulbs for the 4 target banks with LEDs that correspond to the appropriate turtle's color.

I broke out the owners manual and started looking at the wiring schematics and was unpleasantly surprised to find that Data East screwed up their own manuals by including the schematics for "Checkpoint" instead of TMNT. Apparently Checkpoint machines were used to make early TMNT protos. Funny bit of history, but it doesn't help me with knowing the wiring on my machine...

The conversion to LED is SOOOO worth it. If you color it out correctly, it really makes everything pop, plus the added benefit of not having to change bulbs. Congrats on the first machine, they are a lot of work but once you get everything taken care of, they are so much fun. Data east games are some of my favorites, I hope to have a Data East Jurassic Park one day.

5 hours ago, docile tapeworm said:

when i put up the grid in 240 test suite its crooked

Like the whole picture is turned slightly? Sounds like the yoke is physically turned by a little bit.

What do you mean by "geometry is off"?

2 hours ago, docile tapeworm said:

@SNESNESCUBE64 thank you for your time. i have a panasonic tau 20sl15 that has some geometry issues on the left upper side. its not in the corner or on the boarders its kinda in the center of the tv still. i did get into the service menu and was able to adjust it but its still "wonkie" in that spot.

i realize crts are perfectly imperfect. and you have to live with some of the geometry issues.

i also have a toshiba 20af44. the service menu is elementary. no pin/yoke adjustments only vert and horizontal. i got it decent though. i would have to take the shell off this one.

Part of the charm of CRTs is its imperfections. Unfortunately some of these adjustments require use of magnetic strips. Everytime I've done it, its been just trial and error. I recently did it with my Bubble Bobble monitor, that required a lot of strips to 'fix' the bottom, unfortunately its not perfect but its a lot better. Good luck with your endeavors, maybe next time I need to screw around with convergence, I'll do a log or a video on how I do it.

This video does a pretty decent job at explaining how to do this: 

45 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

you know how to adjust convergance with magnets?

Convergence is rough. There are two types of convergence, static and dynamic. Static is where you adjust the three sets of rings on the back of the tube. Dynamic is where the yoke is not aligned, this will typically cause warpage on the corners/edges. Magnets/convergence strips should be used only if you are having convergence problems in the corners.

Even so, adding convergence strips and magnets should only be used if you can absolutely not live with it and you've already have done static and dynamic convergance alignment. The scary part about doing this, is that it is a pain in the butt to do magnets, it involves sliding strips into the yoke while the monitor is on, which poses risk of shock and serious injury as you need to see what changes when you add the magnets. I wouldn't try to add magnets unless you really cannot live the inherent flaws with CRTs. Unfortunately I don't really have a whole lot of advice to give, its all experimentation.

These strips can be purchased online, I bought a ton a while back to have them on hand. If you do choose to adjust convergence, make sure you mark the rings with a paint pen so if you make it worse, you can always go back. Pages 6 and 7 of the K7000 service manual has a really good explaination of setting up convergence:

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-monitors/Wells%20Gardner%20K7000%20Manual.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwj11MX8wtnyAhWHXM0KHR8gBnoQFnoECAIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2VXkXr7Orf5alpJLoZ80Vl

5 hours ago, spacepup said:

This pretty much flew over my head "whoosh!" but nevertheless, I think it's awesome that you did it and shared this here.  I'm sure other people who are more knowledgeable about this stuff will also find it interesting. 

I love the passion you have for this stuff - keep up the great work!

 

I appreciate the kind words. I'm trying my best to make these so that new folk can maybe do more themselves as paying a tech is expensive. If it went over your head, maybe I need to rethink how I go about explaining my process. I've been doing it a while and some things that are common sense to me might not be for others...

6 hours ago, acromite53 said:

Great write up! This is so cool. I love seeing pre-DK games from Nintendo. An interesting time for the company for sure. Largely unknown with no hits to their name. Those sound effects are great. You can clearly hear Donkey Kong's sounds from there. 

It's funny you mention the sounds. The reason why they sound so similar is because the soundboards (as well as a good chunk of Donkey Kong's hardware) was exactly the same minus a few minor changes. To show the comparison, the boardset on the left is an earlier 4 board Donkey Kong boardset and the right is a later revision Radarscope boardset. The similarities are wild. It makes sense though being that Donkey Kong was originally made to be retrofitted in these radarscope cabinets.

10 hours ago, Abelardo said:

Nice, did you do any pot adjustments at all? I bet you can easily get the image centered and stretched correctly.

I didn't need to do much. I adjusted B+ and position a bit. But it worked pretty good. Unfortunately G07 doesnt have a horizontal position pot, only 3 jumpers

5 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

Thanks for sharing. I have very little understanding of this type of electrical work, but I find it fascinating and would love to get into it some day.

Anyone can learn, there's tons of resources online that you can read up on. It's super rewarding bringing things back to life like this.

I'm always confused by these incomplete lists, especially when they are duplicates of each other.

10 minutes ago, Lincoln said:

How do you piggyback chips? Is it literally sitting one on top of the other so the legs touch?

Yep. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. It is particularly useful with RAM chips if the chip is just corrupting the data, as it can help stitch it together. But if the outputs are stuck low for example, it might not work. It is very important that the chip's pins are tight, otherwise it might not make a good connection.