Picked up a Gorgar for $100 today...

keithsarcade

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 27, 2008
Messages
8,875
Reaction score
160
Location
St Peters, Missouri
This was lurking on CL today, decided to go for it. No legs, no sound and no GI. Also giving me a 1496-1 message on startup, but I can cycle the power switch a few times and the game will play. Very rough backglass, but the cabinet is OK and the playfield is in nice shape.

Haven't decided yet whether it will stay or go. Ill need to address the sound and GI issues first. Any pointers?
 

Attachments

  • gorgar1.jpg
    gorgar1.jpg
    96.4 KB · Views: 98
  • gorgar2.jpg
    gorgar2.jpg
    107.7 KB · Views: 85
  • gorgar3.jpg
    gorgar3.jpg
    96.6 KB · Views: 88
  • gorgar4.jpg
    gorgar4.jpg
    106.2 KB · Views: 88
  • gorgar5.jpg
    gorgar5.jpg
    100.2 KB · Views: 68
Heres the backglass. Anyone got any leads on a cheap replacement?
 

Attachments

  • gorgar6.jpg
    gorgar6.jpg
    105.7 KB · Views: 76
  • gorgar7.jpg
    gorgar7.jpg
    88.1 KB · Views: 92
sound issue I would check the ribbon cable between the speech and sound cards, had alot of probs with one of theses and thats where the problem was. as for the GI there should be 2 yellow wires that go into the powersupply, usually the connector is toast so that should fix that, as for the error code on start up that is just saying that the batteries on the mpu are dead. prob replace the holder while your at it as these are very problematic, also a must replace item is the 40pin connector between the MPU and the SOL driver board. always problematic on these early wms machines. you can get both the male and female parts from greatplaineselectronics.com (dunno if I spelled it right since it's late) as for the backglass I don't know if it has been reproduced, all gorgars suffer from crappy backglasses you can check with mayfair amusements he may have a NOS or replacement. playfield looks good and thats a definate plus for $100 i'd buy it fix it play it for a bit and when i was done with is sell it.
 
Wow that's a great pickup! I was just playing mine after finally buying a digital level to set the angle. It's a fun game.

Your back glass is a lot better than mine...looks good in the photo. Why replace? Anyway I checked with Mayfair a couple of months ago. They have Gorgar backglasses for $250. That aint cheap. But they're new. If I understood correctly, they're NOS replacements from Williams and they don't flake like the first run. I haven't seen them personally, so YMMV.

EDIT:
Oh dear God!! I only looked at the front. I didn't look at the second photo. Replace! Replace! replace!!
 
Last edited:
There was a beautiful Gorgar at TPF that one of my fellow cronies brought...was all excited to play it, and the flippers were really too weak to be enjoyable IMO. How sad. The Williams Collection doesn't really do justice to the art, IMO.
 
I'll say that I'm not a fan of whatever the "Gorgar" theme is supposed to be, but I would take that for $100 anytime. Especially with the good looking playfield, since that is the hardest thing to do anything with if there is wear.

Also would love to find out where this cheap game stockpile you keep drawing from is located....
 
Just finding them on CL. This one was in some guy's carport in Russellville. He said it wasnt working but looked complete minus the legs. At that point, I didn't ask questions, told him I had $100 to spend and hitailed it down there. Didn't even bother to plug it in until I got it home. When I picked it up and saw the elements it had been left exposed to I was acually amazed it's held up this well.

I don't see any yellow wires going to the power supply. None of the connectors look bad. I did try bypassing the volume pot but the sound still isn't working. Where's some good places to check voltages on this thing?
 
I may take you up on that acually. Now the game just quit working alltogether. The displays get a little glow but thats it. I pulled the solenoid driver and it looks toasty in several places, I'm betting it's the culprit going by looks alone. Got any spares laying around?
 
Pardon me while I crack my knuckles and dig into this one.....

GI lighting: On Gorgar, you're not going to find any GI related anything on the power supply, it totally bypasses it. It goes straight from the transformer, through the fuse card, and off to the GI lights in the playfield/backbox. If you have no GI lights, it's either a busted wire or a bad fuse. Under the power supply you'll see a card with three fuses and a pass-thru connector on it. The left-most fuse if for your GI lights, should be a 20A fuse. Check for voltage at the fuse and the pass-thru (yellow wire and yellow/white wire).

Sound: Your sound card runs on a totally independent power supply and CPU chip that are mounted on the sound card. On the top left of the sound card is a momentary push button. This is the self-test for it, and pressing this button should start a loop of various sounds/speech. It only needs to have the speaker, volume and power connectors..... it will run even with the main CPU and driver boards removed from the machine. Also, when you power up the machine it will normally make a buzz/hum noise for about 1-2 seconds. If neither of these work, check both fuses on the sound board (A/C power input).

No-Boot: If you're not booting up at all, first thing is first... check the LED's. There are two LED's on the CPU board. Do they just turn on? Or do they blink once, then turn on? Sounds minor, but it really helps track down a problem. Also, the "1496 01" you were seeing on the displays previously is "audit mode". Means your batteries, or battery holder, are no good. It's reverting back to base settings, and clearing out the settings/audits.

This link has fantastic schematics, which are the same as Gorgar for the boards (wiring is of course different.)
http://www.firepowerpinball.com/

IPDB also has the full Gorgar manuals and schematics available too
(Caution! 73mb download if you click this link)
http://mirror2.ipdb.org/files/1062/Gorgar_Manual.pdf

If you need to get the boards repaired, that's right in my area of speciality. I don't know why, but about 80% of the boardsets I get in are for Gorgar. It's really seeing a lot of interest lately as I'm finding out. Personally I find the theme a bit confusing, but love the gameplay. The theme is that you're the Conan looking dude, and you're fighting against Gorgar.

I can vouch for the guy at Mayfair, visited the place in person to pick up a backglass for Black Knight. Really nice guy, spent a while talking to him about stuff. Apparently Williams re-ran a number of 80's era backglasses around 1991/1992 or so due to the terrible flaking problems. They used higher quality inks, thicker inks, and also clear-coated them too. The one I picked up looked phenomenal. Shipping is spendy, but he does pack them up properly.

-Hans
 
What would it run me to have you rebuild the solenoid driver and power supply? It's my understanding that the 40-pin connector and the ceramic resistors are common culprits, and I know of at least one bad transistor. Either way I'd like to see if all the sound and speech is working somehow before I get too far into this.

Haven't done any voltage testing yet, but all the fuses are checking out and I don't see any flaky connectors. I did try the test button on the sound PCB with no success. The game is on the floor right now so I can't hear anything from the main speaker, but I can hook up a satellite to it and hear the normal background hum, so I know the amp is good.
 
What would it run me to have you rebuild the solenoid driver and power supply? It's my understanding that the 40-pin connector and the ceramic resistors are common culprits, and I know of at least one bad transistor. Either way I'd like to see if all the sound and speech is working somehow before I get too far into this.

Haven't done any voltage testing yet, but all the fuses are checking out and I don't see any flaky connectors. I did try the test button on the sound PCB with no success. The game is on the floor right now so I can't hear anything from the main speaker, but I can hook up a satellite to it and hear the normal background hum, so I know the amp is good.

Do you also have the speech card in there, with the sound card? They're right next to each other, connected by a ribbon cable.

I find it bad form to discuss repair prices via forums, but if you shoot me an e-mail I can give you the pricing info.

-Hans
 
Hans, the reason you get so many Gorgar boards is that not many people know that I posted the complete manual on IPDB last year. So their thought is that there are no good scats out there to work from and that being said it is just easier to send the boards out for repair.

Nice score Keith.
 
OK got it going again. All the fuses were incorrect and, on second check, at least one was bad. So now the game works, GI is also working now. Still no sound. There are 3 chips on the speech board, one looks really bad, missing one leg and has a couple more that are "hacked". Could this really kill all the sound? Where should I measure the sound board at?
 
OK got it going again. All the fuses were incorrect and, on second check, at least one was bad. So now the game works, GI is also working now. Still no sound. There are 3 chips on the speech board, one looks really bad, missing one leg and has a couple more that are "hacked". Could this really kill all the sound? Where should I measure the sound board at?

Depending on the fault on the speech board, yes. When configured for speech, the op-amp /decoder section needs to be functional, or it kills the whole sound card.

If you put a jumper into W1 on the sound card, disconnect the speech card, it should work without speech.

-Hans
 
Depending on the fault on the speech board, yes. When configured for speech, the op-amp /decoder section needs to be functional, or it kills the whole sound card.

If you put a jumper into W1 on the sound card, disconnect the speech card, it should work without speech.

-Hans

To add onto what Hans has said... The ROM is probably the chip with the rotted leg. The ROMs are notorious for failing, before the 6810 RAM to the left of it. The 6808 CPU or the 6821 PIA could also be bad.
Dok
 
If you put a jumper into W1 on the sound card, disconnect the speech card, it should work without speech.

Tried this, all that happens is the game locks up when I add a credit. Removed the jumper and reconnected the speech board and now the game works again, still with no sound.

I'm calling it a night. Maybe over the weekend Ill look at it further and see if I can measure voltage on the sound board. In the meantime, anyone know where I can find replacement chips for the speech?
 
Back
Top Bottom