D.O.A. Super Flipper

marxtoys

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So... I take a fun road trip to fetch my latest prize - a Chicago Coin Super Flipper advertised as dead. Get there and ask if it's indeed well and truly dead.. He says he didn't want to get anyone's hopes up about an easy fix and plugs in to a nearby cord... There's a HV >SNAP< from the monitor(no raster), hum from speaker, the displays light up with garbage digits, and Game Over is lit.

Bring home and set up.

Plug in switch on... no >SNAP< from monitor and still no raster. Switch off and unplug monitor connector. Switch on and check 5V supply... .14VAC across terminals of big blue cap.. 3.8VDC output; adjust pot up to 4.2VDC. Disconnect 5V supply and connect old computer supply... game draws 2.3 to 2.5 amps at the 4.8VDC that cheapo 'puter supply puts out. Order new 5V 5A supply box.

With 4.8V to game boards, Game over is lit and credit displays 0 .
Touch together the 2 wires that look like they went to a coin switch and credit display reads 1(sometimes 3).
Press start button - Game Over goes out, credit display goes to 0, score display goes to 1000(sometimes 3000).
Once, there was a bip bip bip from the speaker instead of hum. Game sound or wishful thinking?
Once, the score went from 1000 to 2000 when the plunger was pulled.
After a bit of head-scratching, figured out that the lights for the optical flipper controls were powered by an extra 5V supply in the monitor. fun facts.

Brought home a small TV with a/v inputs from Goodwill for $10. Nice pic with the old NES hooked up, no pic at the Molex plug that went to the monitor.

Never did well with TV repair so the monitor chassis is probably off to someone that fixes them. Tube filament lights up and the screen isn't burned real bad.

That's where it's at. Manual/schematic would probably be helpful but have not been located yet.

Any ideas?
 
update time... yeehaw!!!

I figured it was time to update this....

Bought a cheap 5v 5a switcher and hooked it up. cute little thing. A full 5v didn't change anything. bah. Wasn't quite right so I kept looking.

Found an old CC coin door that had the parts to replace SF's missing insides, at a decent price. Not wired up yet but the stuff fits. yay.

Power supply has arrived. $12 for an exact replacement. NOS in the factory box. $5 shipping(!). Sorry purists - the date code is a couple years off. Now have 5.02v at board. yay. Instruction sheet has no schematic. bah.

"Justin Bieber" scanned the manual and put it up on IPDB - many thanks! Yeehaw! Might have been nice if the fellow who drew the schematic had put the mundane little parts like capacitors in the picture... maybe even numbered them? <sigh> Better than nothing for sure.

Silence is golden? Someone had ripped out the wires and terminal strip on the "chime box". Went to Lowe's and got the cheapest doorbell that they had. $11.50 for a Heath/Zenith chime that is a nearly exact clone of the Nutone unit that CC used bitd. Put all the wearing parts and coil assembly on the original base. Found a plug with some wire that fit the harness and connected the "chime box". fixed. yay.

Took the game board out to make sure there were no tools, parts, or critters behind it shorting something out. Nothing like that was found, but looking at the board from a different angle was good anyway... One of the 2.2uf plastic caps had a hole in it. Ordered parts.

Replaced electrolytics on rectifier, score, credit, and game boards. Sound and monitor later. Replaced holey plastic cap. Power up and nothing smokes.

Poke around with a logic probe. Lots of highs and lows. Pulsing activity is conspicuously absent. A slight wiggle of the pot in the 555 timer chip circuit gets the oscillator(?) running. Now there's something to give the probe a buzz, but pulse disappears at the first 7404 it hits.

Logic comparator lights up on the 7404 in question, as well as a couple others... and a 7400, a 7410, and one of the 74193s, which seems a little warm. A couple bucks worth of chips and sockets isn't going to hurt too bad. Replace the 7404s, 7400, 7410, and retest...

Power up and there's backbox GI and Game Over lit, and a <bling> from the chime.. Touch coin wires for a credit.. Push start, credit display goes from 1 to 0, Game Over goes out, the score display is blanked(for a change!), ball counter shows 5 to play, and there's a <pok>.... <pok>.... <pok>.... <pok>.... <pok>.... from the speaker.. What?!?.....

Pull and release shooter knob.. all kinda stuff starts happening.. speaker makes noises like a ball bouncing around bippitybippityboinkbipboink.. stars twinkle on the backglass(feature lamps).. score increments upward along with the various noises from chimes and sound.. for a few seconds until the 'ball' drains.. Balls-to-play goes from 5 to 4 and there's that <pok>.... <pok>.... <pok>.... <pok>.... <pok>.... from the speaker.. no flipper controls because the monitor chassis isn't plugged in.

Connect a cable from monitor plug to tv video in.. sync is way off and no knobs to diddle on newfangled tv. Is that supposed to work, anyway? Seem to recall something in the Motorola manual about a video monitor and a TTL monitor.... hmm. back to the book. later. (fwiw, there was just a blank screen when the game board was dead)

Go through a couple more games and the -hp- gadget still doesn't like that 74193, as well as a couple other chips that passed the first round.

There's a spot on the schematic marked "120 Hz Test Point". Apparently, I need to scrounge a frequency counter and fuss that dirty pot to make the all-important 555 run at the correct speed.. pretty sure there's another pot with another test point somewhere else. Maybe that has something to do with scrambled 'test monitor'?

I'll probably swap out a couple more chips that the gadget didn't like. (holy crap that thing is like cheating) I might even order up some caps for the monitor, as well as the sound board. Who knows.. might get rid of some of that hum when the volume is turned up.

So.. that's where ol' Super Flipper is at. Signs of life.

Cheers.
 

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Wow. There's a lot going on in your post. How can so many things be wrong... or is some of it just "shot-gunning"... regardless, it seems like the parts replacing is moving you forward so some of that stuff has to be bad.

I have been considering one of these but was feeling apprehensive about it.

I will follow your posts and see where they lead. Thanks for sharing what you're doing with it.
 
Wow. There's a lot going on in your post. How can so many things be wrong... or is some of it just "shot-gunning"... regardless, it seems like the parts replacing is moving you forward so some of that stuff has to be bad.

I have been considering one of these but was feeling apprehensive about it.

I will follow your posts and see where they lead. Thanks for sharing what you're doing with it.

Well... I did bring home a 35 year old game advertised as dead. One must expect a few issues. It takes a fair bit to play a game into the ground.

Call it both... a lot of stuff wrong and cheap ammo for the scattergun. ha. I extended the cap kit from the monitor to the rest of the game. There went a couple bucks. Some of these 74XX series ICs cost a whopping 10¢ a piece. I'll be stingy with the 74193s at a buck and a half. Thanks again to the folks at -hp- for their magical scattergun sight.

There are 6 gates in a 7404 chip. It only takes one stuck gate to make a bad chip. There's almost a hundred chips on the game board - I'm not surprised that a half-dozen or so may have failed. The game actually does something gamey now.

And it's a neat looking game. It looks like a pinball machine. It sounds like a pinball machine. That's how it snuck in here in the first place - "Video Game disguised as a pinball machine".

Cheers.
 
Wonders of not so modern technology:

Monsanto101B-front.jpg


My $20 frequency counter showed up and appears to work. The game instructions say I should adjust the crusty pot to make the counter read 100hz at G4, pin 3. The schematic calls that spot "120hz test point". The pot adjusts from 109 to 155hz. We'll try 120hz for now.

That nice little tv set is going back to the thrift shop. I found something better. A Commodore 1702 with a whole mess of little knobs to fuss with. Pix attached.

I'm going to make another sweep with the -hp- gadget and see if it doesn't like another chip or two. The video sync is really weak. At least there's something resembling video. HAH!!!

Time to get some more caps and see if the game's monitor can be coaxed back to life.
 

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Well... I got the board to work but not the tube. Ended up trading SF off for a real pinball.

New owner got the monitor fixed and the game is a player. Pix attached of Super Flipper at the 2016 NW Show.

Happy ending!

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