My Williams Flash Tear Down

dieseldogpi

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OK, figured I'd start a thread for my Williams Flash Pinball rebuild. It is my first pin, and I have gotten myself in pretty deep. I explained a couple of things in my prevous first pin post, but i figured this thread will follow progress and allow people to yell at me when I do things wrong.
Here are a cpouple of pic:

Pinball4.jpg


Pinball5.jpg


First, I picked up this pin Wednesday. When it plugs in lights light up, and thats it. The two LED's are lit on the MPU board. After jiggling the MPU board, I hear a "bong" from the speaker, a selanoid clicks, and the LED's go off, but the gme is still inoperable.

Before I do a complete tear down, clean, wax and make everything look nice, I would like to get the machien into some working order,this way I know it works BEFORE I pull it apart, that way if it doesn't after, I know it was something I did.

Some things I noticed so far:

Pinball.jpg


In this pic, you can see a couple of things. First, the AA batteries are hard soldered in, so I will have to get a battery holder and replace that. Below that, you can see two of the IC's are dis-colored, and very loose, guessing from acid leakage from the batteries. Also in this pic you can see the 40 pin connector between the two boards has had some work done. It appears that some of the male pins were replaced at some point as they a sticking out a great deal (left side of the plug).

Pinball3.jpg


In this pic you can see there is some black area near the reddish resistors(?). Other than that, I don't really know. I have no experience with a logic probe, but I will order one this week and start testing the IC's. Any other ideas or comments welcome. Also, just wanted to say thanks to Mike from economy pinball repair in Long Island and New York City http://economypinballrepair.weebly.com/
He took some time to go through a bunch of crap over the phone, very thurough. He definitley knows his stuff.
 
Did a little more investigating. I took the Main board and the driver board out of the backbox. After pulling them apart I noticed that it wasn't that the male plugs of the interconnector were longer as I thought, the previous owner, or who ever, used the molex connectors along with some solid wire, to wedge into parts of the 40 pin connector that had been messed up. Here is a closer shot of that:

IMG_1893.jpg



Also, upon de-soldering the hard wired batteries, I noticed the trace was completely coming off the board...all thanks to the leakage. You can kind of see it in this shot:

IMG_1896.jpg


I am going to get a cheap battery box and mount it completely off of the board as suggested. First I have to take out the corroded components (looks like 2 IC's and a diode), and give the board a vinegar/water bath.

In the mean time I have an inter-connector rebuild kit coming from big daddy pinball. I will try to order the other components tomorrow and hopefully by the end of next week, when I expect to get most of this crap, the game will at least be functional...then starts the real fun. Again, if I'm going about this wrong, or you don't like something I'm doing, let me know. First time doing any of this. Thanks.
 
Sounds like you're off to a good start. Like you're doing, replace any connectors that are a problem, but also look for connectors that look to have gotten hot, dark, etc.. and check for cracked solder joints at all of the header pins.
 
Dammit, just typed a huge entry, and it got wiped out... ARGH.

Where in NY are you located? I'm out on the Island, in the Islip area. Mike is a good guy on the phone, always loves talking pinball, and man does he love his EM machines! If you need board work done, I'm pretty well set up to deal with the old Williams solid states. A lot of guys won't work on System 4's, but I really can't understand why. Other than the hard to get clock chip, they aren't much different from System 6 boards. There is also a modification to do on the reset circuit, but again, easy stuff.

You've already spotted the big things to take care of. That 40pin on the driver board is hosed, and you need to replace the ROM sockets that are corroded. But from the sounds of it, you're at least marginally booting up, which is a good sign. A non-booting board is tough to diagnose, but anything else is normally easy to take care of. I'd also recommend resoldering the 40pin on the CPU board, and doing new male header pins on the CPU and power supply boards for the logic power circuit. All of these tend to get cracked solder joints.

The driver board, those resistors always bake like that. The transistors driving the lamp matrix take a lot of power to operate, and the resistors get up to 200 degrees or so. The heat also causes havok with the switch matrix, and I see the PIA and logic chips fail in that circuit, usually with delaminated traces and pads. Here's one way to take care of that heat problem permanently..... toward the end of this page.(as I pimp my website a bit)
http://www.siegecraft.us/blackknight3.htm

I'd also suggest picking up a high-voltage rebuild kit from GPE for the power supply. This upgrades the rectifier diodes, which sometimes fail and when they fail they can burn a big hole in the board. The kit also drops the 100v circuit down to 90v, which extends the life of your displays. You an also remove the 300v circuit on the power supply, Flash doesn't use it anyway, only the first couple system 3 games need it.

-Hans
 
Thanks for all that info Hans. I'm right in the Selden/Centereach area. I am definitiely going to do the same modification you did for the heat problem. I have a full interconnect kit on order, which comes with both the male and the female connectors. In all honesty I wasn't sure if I was going to replace the male side on the cpu as I read if they aren't corroded, you risk cracking the traces. Is it worth it if the cpu side looks good?

Also, before I go and order what I need as far as components, I'm having trouble figuring out what IC's to order. One of the corroded IC's are veery loose, so I believe I will have to replace the socket, BUT I was reading on that pinball repair guide that there is an upgrade I can do to add a particular IC to socket IC14, which will eliminate IC21, 22, & 26? I'm a little confused on this one. Is it worth it? This is the area I really have absolutley no experience with...IC's. I am hoping to get all of the stuff ordered by the end of today so I can have everything by next weekedn. I really wish there was a good electronic supply shop on Long Island. Where do you get all of you stuff from Hans?
Thanks again guys.
-Scott
 
It all depends on the male side. If the pins aren't corroded or damaged, there's no need to replace them. But I do like to resolder them if the boards are giving me problems, as they often do have cracked solder joints. The other potential problem is that sometimes the backsides were trimmed too close to the board, that would also need new pins in the long run.

The IC's in question are the ROM chips, those are game specific, but I can burn you a set if you need them. The modification you're talking about, you're pretty much going to have to do, unless you find an old original ROM set. IC21,22,26 were 512byte bipolar ROM's.... and those pretty much aren't available anywhere, nor is the equipment to burn the data onto them. The modification puts all the info from those three chips onto a single 2kb 2716 EPROM, which is available and easy to burn. I'm a bit short on the EPROMS at the moment, but have more on the way, which should be here any day now. Though I don't discuss prices on forums, PM me if you're interested. I'll look it up,as you may not have to do any mods for a Flash other than just install the different chips..... IC14 already has a socket. But you may still need do new sockets due to the corrosion. How good is your soldering?

I normally order all my stuff from Ed at Great Plains Electronics, but he doesn't always have everything I need. Bob Roberts is another guy I recommend highly, as is Steve at Pinball Resource and Terry at Pinball Life. E-bay is pretty good for a lot of the common stuff such as diodes. Don't be surprised if you've got to do multiple orders for parts, as you'll probably be going through a couple 'layers' of problems that don't pop up until a previous one was repaired. No matter how many parts I have on hand, I always seem to need one that I don't have.

Definitely snag a few TIP102's, 2N4401's, .156 header strips and 7408 chips, as these seem to fail the most. #47 bulbs, chip sockets, etc...

I assume you've already read up on things at pinrepair.com? Can be confusing with the sheer volume of info there.

I agree, would be nice to have a good electronics shop around here. There used to be a really good on in Patchogue, but he's been gone for a while now.

-Hans
 
I would say my soldering is above the average joe. I have been soldering on pcb's here and there for the last year or so...and previous to that I had a good amount of soldering from r/c cars and general tinkering. I have a decent soldering station as well. The soldering does not intimidate me.
when I do the IC upgrade, do I just pull the old IC's off and throw them out...they are completley not needed? Also the socket at IC14 is not near the corrosion, and I think it is the better type of socket. Mike from economy pinball repair said that the type of socket that sucks is the solid plastic ones. Mine have the window in the middle so the board is visible, so I'm guessing I should be ok there.
I will PM you today as far as pricing the ROM and everything.
Would you not suggest mouser then for components?
Thanks again...all awesome info. I'm just sitting at work day dreaming about how I'm going to fix this. Also, excuse any spelling or grammatical errors as I am posting from my blackberry.
 
Mouser is good too, but a lot of the stuff on that board may not be available through them.
Jameco is another place that carries a lot of stuff too. I just prefer to stick with the "little guys".

The sockets you have there are the RN brand. They aren't bad as they contact on the flats of the legs, but they are single-wipe and 30+ years old. I'm just a paranoid perfectionist, in reality your existing sockets that aren't corroded should be fine. The other ones, the Scanbe's, those are just horrible..... thankfully you don't have them.

As to the ROM chips, yeah, the old ones are basically junk at this point. The good news is that you won't be using the same corroded sockets. Pull the three corroded chips, and put one new chip in that socket which is currently empty. Everything I'm seeing so far says that you don't need to do any changes to the board like you would on Firepower.

The three game ROM's are definitely toast, those are the corroded ones, and they hold the ruleset that's specific to FLASH. The other two ROM's there are called the "Flipper" ROM's, and those hold the operating system that's the same on all the System 4 boards... these don't look like the corrosion hit them at all. I figured in this case a picture would help avoid confusion.
http://www.siegecraft.us/pinball/flash001.jpg

-Hans
 
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That era of machine is fun to restore. Make sure to replace all of those red resistors on the driver board with nice, new white sand resistors.

I also replace all of the ROM sockets.
 
I am definitley upgrading the burnt up area to handle more heat...but before I do upgrades, I want the machine to work so I know I didn't mess something up while uphrading. Since I have to replace the AA batteries, I was thinking about doing a lithium battery...I think it looks cleaner.
My next step, tonight, I'm going to give the board a vinegar bath to get rid of the battery alkaline. Any tips in this? Half vinegar half water? Then tooth brush, then dry?
 
OK, started prepping the boards. Here I pulled the chips and the sockets off of the board:

IMG_1898.jpg


After that I cut the 40 pin plastic off of the board:

IMG_1900.jpg


Then I desoldered all the pins from the board:

IMG_1901.jpg


Finally I gave the MPU board a 1/2 vinegar and 1/2 water bath and scrubbed it with a tooth brush. This is what it looked like after:

IMG_1905.jpg


I have the 40 pin replacement kit on order, should be arriving some time next week. I also plan on hopefully getting the IC14 EPROM chip from Hans this weekend. At that point I hope the machine will show somes signs of life. Then I can move on to other upgrades and restoration points. I will update when the parts are received and I install them.
 
Well, I replaced the 40 PIN and installed the new chip...and no change. No lights on the board now...every time I start it. So I know the 40 pin replacement did something. I didn't hear the selenoids click or anything, so I am unsure what that means. Tips? Thoughts?
 
When you pulled the old socket bodies off, did you leave the pins sticking out? Should cut them off at the very least, if any of them are touching it will screw with the addressing and data.

When you power it up, watch the two LED's on the CPU board (or also you can press the lower of the two buttons on the CPU board). Do they just turn on? or to they blink once first? And when they are on, is it both or just one?

-Hans
 
OK, I probably should have given more info. When I powered it on, the LED's blinked once, then turned off. I tried the trick of pulling off the driver board to see if the CPU board would boot, and the same thing happened. The LED's blinked once, then stayed off. Either way, nothing showed up on the displays. I did check the voltage going to the main board. Pin 5 was 4.97 volts, and pin 9 was 11.79 volts on the power plu going to the main board. I did not cut the socket pins, however, most were corrodedto the point they fell off. I will de-solder these tomorrow to make sure, but I did not see any area that touches.
 
At this point I would suggest Leon's test ROM. That's going to be the easiest way to test the RAM and PIAs. I would definitely be replacing all of the sockets on the board before even diving in to other repairs. I would start with the ROM sockets at a minimum and then try to boot with Leon's test ROM and test the RAM. From there you can decide if you need to replace the CPU socket (I would anyway).

Whenever you buy a non-working game with an unknown MPU you never know what to expect. Testing the MPU outside of the machine with a test ROM is going to be a LOT easier than testing in the machine with original game code.
 
I would definitely be replacing all of the sockets on the board before even diving in to other repairs.

I can vouch for this... ALL of the sockets on my '82 Bally had green scum on at least a few contacts. They are not too bad to R&R, it just takes some time & the right equipment.
 
You have a great start and as mentioned on the right track.

I restored one that was similar, it just had GI lighting when I got it. Occasionally it would play.

ALL NEW IC sockets, 40 pin females, new 5101 memory chip (I think that was the chip number), new EPROMS, remote battery holder, loads of back box diodes, and a few other things, and brought it back from the dead.

Do not forget this site too if youa veh not already. Follow what clay says about these machines.

http://www.marvin3m.com/fix.htm

Watch the flipper EOS switches, these machines are picky about their adjustments! And do not forget to check the coin door wiring, there's even a mod to do to it. Research and you'll find it, if yours was not done already. It can cause issues but you can unplug it altogether to dianose and narrow the door down as suspect.

If the PF FLASH lights do not work, its probably the resistor on them. In fact, its probably burnt if you look at it now because its always got voltage to it and warm, replace it anyway. These lights are not the typical 1990's and newer controlled flashed lamps. The machine sends low voltage to the lamps, the resistor warms the filiments, which the naked eye cannot see. Then when commanded, they flash.

Great game once all the bugs and updates are done to them!
 
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Should I just replace all the socketed IC's on the main board. I mean of I'm replacing the sockets....does it make sense....is it that much more expensive? How about the bigger socketed IC? should that be replaced? The other stuff I'm good with....not so good on the IC and EPROM stuff. Please excuse spelling as I am posting from my blackberry....work doesn't allow this site, but I can't stay away.
 
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