PINBALL MATTERS JUNE 2, 2004 VOL.1 ISSUE 2 This has been a very busy month for us in field service calls, while the Coin-Op Industry has not generated much in the way of news we can convey to our readers. We can only find one local Pinball Expo to report and one additional pinball game was added to our inventory. This is why there are extra Top Tech Questions and Answers in this issue. EVENT ADVISORY The Houston Area Arcade Group Expo is being held at the Holiday Inn Northwest in Houston, Texas on June 4-5, 2004. The show this year will have about 70 pinball and vintage video games on free play and for sale. For more information visit the web site www.arcadecenter.com EVENT UPDATE We will have a booth at this year's “Texas Pinball Festival” in Dallas on November 5-7, 2004. We invite you to come by our booth as we are bringing fully restored pinballs, pinball and video arcade game parts, and the popular Yellow Jacket Pinball and Billiard Table Dolly. We would like everyone in the great country of Texas to stop by the expo and manipulate the Silver Ball on all those Free-Play Pinballs, “yee-haw”. We will be giving demonstrations of our Yellow Jacket dollies, talking repair and tech tips,giving restoration advice and playing the best game of skill ever made - PINBALL. TOP TECH QUESTIONS OF THE MONTH This ones been on our Tech Tips page for awhile, we just felt that some clarification was needed. The Tech Tip question was: “How can I keep my Gottlieb System 80 displays bright?” Answer: Both Gottlieb System 1 and System 80 have the same brightness renewal process, although, they don't share the same display tube. We assume that the dimness issue is not caused by a faulty power supply, dirty sockets or any other pinball game related problem. The display tubes form oxidants inside the tube and this process “burns” these deposits off and allows more current to flow through the display tube during normal operations producing brighter displays. Step 1: Unplug the pinball from the wall. Like the first step in cleaning a gun, make sure it is not loaded. In this case, we are practicing a safety procedure eliminating the chance that the high display voltage is present at the display tubes (in case the CPU is locked up and not refreshing the displays). The game might appear to be turned off but is instead suppling the painful to touch display high voltage. Unplugging the game will eliminate any hazardous voltage. Also, unplugging a display that is powered on will cause damage to both the display and CPU boards. Step 2: After removing the scoreboard glass, remove each display one at a time. Rejuvenate the display and then reinstall. Proceeding with the brightening with the displays plugged into the game can cause damage to sensitive and non-replaceable electronic parts. Step 3: With the display out of the game, place the display facing you down on a nonmetallic surface. If you can read the digits on the display tube then you have the display in the right orientation. Step 4: A regular nine volt battery works the best as a supply voltage. It will work on six and seven digit displays as well as the four digit credit display tubes. Using alligator clip leads, apply the nine volts supply battery to left most and the right most pins on the display tube, not the display board's pins. The horizontal filament style wires inside the display tube will glow a very dim red color. If they get to be a bright white in color you are using too much voltage. Hold the alligator clips to the display tubes for approximately 7 to 20 seconds. Step 5: Simply reinstall the display back into the game. If all went right, they should be nice and bright. You may have to repeat this process about once a year to keep them bright. Some more bright display ideas: Move the lower wire leg of the 10K resistor (This resistor is located between the UDN6118 display driver chips on the display board) and connect it to the top leg of the .01 mfd capacitor. This will give you a better power connection and less power supply noise on the display. It is advised that you replace the 10K resistor at the same time. It's always a good ideal to re solder all of the solder joints going to the display tube's pins and the UDN6118 chips. A re-cap of the capacitors on the display board would not hurt either. Top Tech Tip Too Got a lot of idle time on your hands. Been meaning to clear-out your spare fuse drawer, then this is the perfect project for you. In the olden days of Williams pinball games from High Speed to Millionaire, flipper coils were wound in serial fashion. This caused numerous burned EOS (end of stock) flipper switches. These EOS switches are like the points on an old car. They are used to carry a lot of current for a brief amount of time. In this case, the switch shorts out a coil winding to make the flipper pull in with greater force. When the flipper is almost to its end of travel, the EOS opens to allow more flipper solenoid coil wires to be energized, increasing the total amount of windings on the flipper coil and reducing the total current flowing though the coil. All this means, is that the flipper coil will not burn up if it is held in by the flipper buttons on the pinball (useful when holding the pinball on a flipper to get that hard upper ramp shot). With the introduction of the pinball F-14 Tomcat, Williams changed to the parallel wound FL11630 style flipper coil, most of the newest pinball games now have parallel wound flipper coils. This modification greatly reduces the arcing of the EOS switch and greatly increases its longevity. The Series wound coil like the FL23/600-30/2600 can now be replace by the more current version parallel wound coil. Your flippers will now last a lot longer with less stress on the EOS switch. Only a few wiring modifications and a new coil is all it takes. INSTRUCTIONS: Converting from serial wound to parallel wound flipper coils. We will be converting an older FL23/600-30/2600 or FL24/600-30/2600 flipper coil to the new parallel wound FL11630 or FL11722 flipper coil and adding a 2.2 mfd capacitor to the EOS switch. Step 1: Unplug the game and remove the FL23/600-30/2600 or FL24/600-30/2600 coil from the game. You will have to unbolt the coil stop and unsolder the coil to do this. Step 2: Install the new FL11630 or FL11722 coil. It's best to install the coil with the solder lugs furthest away from the coil stop, but the flipper wires aren't always long enough to do this. If this is the case, the only way to extend the length of the flipper wires is to splice them or mount the coil in “backwards” with the solder lugs next to the coil stop. If the coil is mounted in this way, the flipper wires and the coil's terminal wires will receive a great deal more vibration during normal flipper operations and this can cause premature solder joint failure. Note: The lug on the FL11630 or FL11722 coil with BOTH the small and large diameter wires attached to it is the lug that the band on the coil diodes should point towards. Step 3: Connect the EOS switch wires to the center lug and outside of the non-banded side of the diode lug, where the small diameter coil winding wire is attached. Connect a non-polarized 2.2 mfd 250 volt EOS switch capacitor across the EOS switch lugs. The capacitor helps to absorb the inrush (high) current caused by the opening of the EOS switch and the flipper coil's inductive kickback. Step 4: Connect the power wires to the two outside coil lugs. It DOES matter which wire goes to which lug! The main power wire should attach to the outside lug closest to the diode bands (the common lug with both the small and large coil winding wires attached). This should be the same wire you removed from the old coil lug where the banded side of the diode was attached. If you get the two outside lug power wires reversed, a 50 volt solenoid fuse will blow, and the flipper buttons will not control the flipper coils. Instead they will do something weird like turn the flasher bulbs on. Just reverse the wires, install a new fuse and you're all set to go. For a brief description of what flipper coil goes where: FL11753: parallel wound, used for small flippers, like the "Thing" flipper on Addam's Family. Requires two flipper diodes. FL24/600-30/2600: series wound, "weak" flipper strength and is used on Grand Lizard's upper flippers. Requires one flipper diode. Same strength as FL11722. FL11722: parallel wound, "weak" flipper strength, like Twilight Zone's upper right flipper. Requires two flipper diodes. Same strength as FL24/600-30/2600. FL23/600-30/2600: series wound, "standard" flipper strength and is used on games High Speed to Millionaire only. Requires one flipper diode. Same strength as FL11630. FL11630: parallel wound, "standard" flipper strength, as used on nearly all Williams system 11 games. Requires two flipper diodes. Same strength as FL23/600-30/2600. FL15411 : parallel wound, strong flipper, as used for main flippers on Addam's Family, Twilight Zone, etc. Requires two flipper diodes. FL11629: parallel wound, strongest Williams flipper. Used on most of the newest WPC games. Requires two flipper diodes. NEW GAME INVENTORY We have received a rather troubled old pinball of the name of “Drop-A-Card” Drop-A-Card / IPD No. 735 / November, 1971 / 1 Player Manufacturer: D. Gottlieb & Co. (1931-1977) [Trade Name: Gottlieb] Type: Electro-mechanical (EM) Production:2,600 units (confirmed) Theme: Cards/Gambling This game is NOT ready for our showroom. If you are interested in it, we could remove it from our storage. The game has an almost perfect playfield and all the mechanisms are complete. The game played a month prior to when we received it. It, however, had the wrong backglass installed and will have to be replaced. It came with a stripped and stained cabinet. This does NOT increase the value of the game. We will have to either repaint the cabinet or use this game for spare parts on another Drop-A-Card. We are striving to improve our web page at http://www.pinballmedic.net . The amount of time to do this endeavor has been greatly limited to late-night sessions with the computer and by the amount of black coffee we can consume. Please stand by. TO RETURN TO THE TECH TIPS WEB PAGE -- USE THE 'BACK' BUTTON ON YOUR BROWSER. Pinball Medic Austin, Texas www.pinballmedic.net