Argosy progress

As you read last time. I am still waiting to get into my WIlliams Argosy Electromechanical Pinball machine.

The locksmith arrived for round two and after another hour declared he could do no more that day. Quite frankly I was ready to drill out the lock, it is a cool idea to preserve the original if possible but its not earthshattering if it needs a replacement lock.

But he was now determined and offered to come back once more on his own dime and try a last time.

#rd time was a charm! and after many more hours than expected I was now able to open the unit and see what was going on.

Step 1 was to see what happened when power was added. Basically nothing. Time to start checking fuses

Harlem Globetrotters pinball power trouble

The power troubles for the Harlem Globetrotter on Tour pinball machine appear to be solved!

After connecting the boards up, the test point on the board was showing low voltage. I was looking at having to pull components of the circuit board to try and solve the issue but after reading about Nic's "swab-polish-swab" technique where he wipes with alcohol, then polishes with a dremel and wire brush and then a final alcohol wipe - I decided to try it on the connectors. 

It solved the problem! Although they looked perfectly ok to me and I had seated and unseated the connectors many times, this time it seems to have fixed it and I was getting the correct voltage.

I plugged all the boards in, including my new MPU board and turned it on with great anticipation.

The lights came on, but the MPU board would not go through its self-test successfully. I could hear a coil pop and then it looks like it froze.

My guess is that I have a bad coil and its causing the new power board to pop its internal breaker.

Tme to start testing coils!

WIlliams Argosy troubles

As is usual, I have yet to get a pinball machine in decent condition. They look ok on the surface but have troubles deep inside.

In the case of the Williams Argosy, I literally could not tell how it looked inside as the key had been lost. In most cases people simply drill out the lock and get on with life, but I have a locksmith I know and he agreed to take a look at it - confident it was a 5 minute job.

After an hour of work, he said he needed different tools and would be back next week.

While waiting, I turned it on - nothing. I opened the back and tried to move things around manually, there is a big wheel in the back - the player motor responsible for connecting things to the different players when playing multiple. I moved it around but could not do much.

We wait for a key...

Power Trouble

Well, I didn't get the table up by New Years as I had hoped. I plugged everything in and started checking voltages.

According to the manual that came with the CPU board, do NOT plug it in unless the voltage at TP1 is 4.9-5.2 volts

Mine shows at 6.30 volts....sigh...and this is with a BRAND NEW voltage regulator board.
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more posting to the forums
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I get the reply back - "You should check this measurement at TP1 of the solenoid driver board, not the rectifier board."

Nice of them to provide 2 test points with the same name...sigh

Unfortunately, plugging the multi-meter in to the correct spot didn't work either...

As I suspected, I would need to replace the big Capacitor on the solenoid driver board...stay tuned!

update

I haven't posted much. Been busy with binging Netflix and my wife and I getting back into World of Warcraft. 

It is a lot of fun to quest together.

But the holidays are coming up and I have some time off, my goal is to get the Globetrotters table up and running by New Years.. wish me luck!

installation

Now that the Hot Tip is working again, I have started work on re-assembling the Harlem Globetrotters pinball table back box.

After getting it all painted up, the next step was to get the shell pieces back installed.

Its amazing, how I am able to miss important pieces when photographing the old set up. I took over 40 pictures of the old shell as I took out the boards, mounting brackets and metal sheets, and I never got one picture that showed if two pieces were supposed to connect or not.

oh well, I am doing my best on this and should soon be able to turn it back on and see if it works!!!

Hot Tip Finally Working

After my soldering woes, I was getting close to throwing in the towel on the Hot Tip and start looking for a replacement board.

I pulled the board again, scraped some more, plugged the board back in, turned it on. And again - no solenoid action except one that was on continuously until the fuse blew.

I lifted the playfield and thought I might unsolder the solenoid that was having trouble to see if that helped, but when I looked underneath it looked to be in great shape and worked manually just fine. Besides, the only thing that changed was my soldering in the new DIP-Switch.

sigh...

Time to pull the board out and scrape some more, I must still have a short where I accidentally over-soldered the connections.

This time I noticed one of the chips was halfway out of the chip holder, one side was up high and the other down low. I pushed it in, scrapped some more and put it all back together.

Low and behold it worked!

Now that I think about it, it may have been the chip all along and I may not have needed to do the scraping at all.

But, now everything seems to work. In test mode, all of the lights, bumpers, switches, etc. all fire just fine. The game plays, scores count, everything is good except...


Now the flippers won't work.


...sigh...

I checked the fuses again, and traced the wires I could see, but whey would any of that have been messed with. All I did was unplug the circuit board a bunch of times. I was really getting nervous that I had somehow totally broke the table and was getting ready to post a "help me" message to the pinball forum when I had a thought tug at me. I seem to recall something similar happening on the table. I could not pin it down and I spent all evening trying to remember. Then just as I was heading to bed, I remembered!

There was an extra wire on the connection between the head and the body. Although I never touched it, it was worth checking.

Low and behold (again) it was disconnected!

I reconnected the wire and the flippers started working. It appears the table is back to functioning again. But it was past bedtime so I didn't have much time to try out the DIP-switch and see if it worked correctly.

Today I dug back through my posts and found the relevant one.  It details exactly the same problem I had. I don't know why the wire was disconnected, it doesn't plug into the boards I was removing, I must have just hooked it somehow during one of the processes. But hey, at least it is up and running!

Another New Table - Meet the Williams Argosy ElectroMechanical Pinball

After playing with the United Brazil Bingo Pin ( link ) I decided that I wanted to try an EM pin.

EM = ElectroMechanical,meaning the pinball machine was made before electronics became available and so it was all done with pure mechanics. Wheels and gears to keep track of targets, scores, balls, money, etc.

Its an interesting mechanical problem and toying with one seemed like it would be a lot of fun. So I kept a lookout for one. This last weekend one popped up. It was an estate sale and there wasn't a lot of info but it was definitely a EM pin so we thought we would go down and take a look.

It turned out to be an Williams Argosy and it was in great looking shape! the backglass was perfect

Argosy Pinball Backglass

and the playfield showed almost no signs of wear. It turned on, lights came on, made noise, the wheels clanked but it would not play.

Since it didn't work. We negotiated a price and I think both parties came out happy.

They got some money and I got a pin that looks to be in good shape, hopefully it is something easily fixable!

Harlem Globetrotters Soldering

Now that the box for the Harlem Globetrotters pinball table is painted and looks good, I am starting to put everything back together.

As you may recall I pulled everything out of the header ( link ) and painted it.

Time to put it all back in. As I re-assembled the light-panel (The wood with the lights on it) I noticed one of the LED displays had what appears to be burned out resistors on its little board:

Burned out resistors

Another soldering disaster! 

While I was able to get the resistors out of the board, I managed to deconnect the tiny traces and ring that the solder is supposed to connect to - why is my soldering so bad???

I spent all evening soldering them back in, using a meter to verify I have connectivity but I have no way to test them until I get it all put back together.

Looking at my soldering iron, I am going to try and lower the temperature on it. I have it set all the way up,  under the theory that hotter means faster but it could be its just too hot and is screwing things up. We will see if that helps.

In the meantime the Harlem Globetrotter table awaits reassembly as somehow I managed to lose one of the back pieces of sheet metal. Not a big deal but it means a wait until I can go back to the store for more.

Hot Tip Wounds

When my son arrived for vacation, the only pin I had in working condition was the Hot Tip, and it had a problem. The DIP-Switches on the motherboard had broken and I was trying to manually set things by sliding the tiny sliders with a pair of needle nosed pliers.

Once he was gone I decided it was time to replace the switches. It seemed easy enough, unsolder the old switch, solder on the new switch.

The old one came off easily enough, and I soldered the new one on:

The new dip-switch

However when I turned the system on, it groaned (hummed) and made weird sounds and woudl not work.


....sigh....

so I reflowed the solder intro each socket. No change...

so I reflowed and added more solder. this time (or perhaps the first time) I noticed that it looked like I had melted the green stuff and there might be a connection under it:

Arrgghh.. another self-inflicted wound!

I ended up scraping it away with a knife. But I have been unable to test it as all the fuses are blown.

I replaced them but the one that runs the solenoids keeps blowing, but I noticed one of the solenoids was stuck in the on position and it finally went back, but that was my last fuse... so back to the store to buy another batch of fuses and see if that was the problem or not....