William System 8

Pinball Wizard

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I am about to traverse into repairing a unique board set, system 8. Used only for 1 game, a pitch and bat, Pennant Fever. I ended up with a prototype machine about a year ago, and finally and itching to play it. I have schematics for it so I should be set there, but how close is this board set to system 9? I mean can I refer to system 9 repair info to fix this board?
 
I think its closer to a system 7 with the cpu and driver boards crammed together than a system 9. I have one I need to tend to... the PS main regulator transistor shorted and sent +13V through the 5V rail :(

cheers
/Tim
 
If you have specific questions about the boards I can probably help. I haven't looked closely at the schematics to say how close it is to system 9 but it's a Motorola 680x based pinball system. Same crap :)
 
I need to get a new voltage regulator for the power board as I stole it for another game in an emergency. Currently the CPU board does nothing when powered. It does seem to randomly drive lights, and constantly "pitches" the ball, but with no logic going on, who knows why. My first thought was power it up and check for clock.

Would Leon's test ROM work with this?
 
I need to get a new voltage regulator for the power board as I stole it for another game in an emergency. Currently the CPU board does nothing when powered. It does seem to randomly drive lights, and constantly "pitches" the ball, but with no logic going on, who knows why.

Sounds like it might be booting, but with bad ROM or RAM.

My first thought was power it up and check for clock.

That's what I would do. Check the reset first, then the clock.

Would Leon's test ROM work with this?

Not sure. You could look at the pinmame source and see if the PIAs on system 8 are at the same addresses as system 7. If so, then it will work to test the PIAs. Same thing with the RAM.

As a guess I would say that it won't work out of the box but it's worth looking at.

EDIT: I'm not seeing system 8 emulated in pinmame. If someone wants to send me the schematics I can take a look at it. Can't seem to find them right now.
 
Would Leon's test ROM work with this?

I don't think it will, although I have a vague recollection of talking with leon about it. I don't see any emails though, so I might be dreaming. I'm 90% certain that I tried the system 7 test ROM in the board to no avail.
If I find anything out I'll post it here.
cheers
/Tim
 
The 7 segment display also doesn't light up for troubleshooting. I am thinking about buying a rom burner so I might check the roms and see if they are good.
 
Finally getting around to this... My U20 was blank! It still has the factory label on it. I never did buy that voltage regulator, but if my u20 was blank that would cause these issues according to some williams manual. How the heck did I end up with a rom out of the factory being blank???

EDIT: Appears the rom is bad. I can't get it to take any code.
 
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Finally getting around to this... My U20 was blank! It still has the factory label on it. I never did buy that voltage regulator, but if my u20 was blank that would cause these issues according to some williams manual. How the heck did I end up with a rom out of the factory being blank???

EDIT: Appears the rom is bad. I can't get it to take any code.

Probably was installed backwards at some point and blew out the power circuit inside the ROM.

-Hans
 
Recently acquired a Pennant Fever. Have the original "Instruction Manual" dated May 16, 1984.

I would like to acquire the schematics if possible.

Also, all the light diverters on the back box light board have deteriorated completely. Can someone upload a photo of their back box light assembly so I can know how to make some new diverters?

Thanks in advance!

Rusty
 
PM sent.

I am having a small problem with this one. It seems at random times it will start the sound test during a game. The game will continue to play minus the correct sounds. Any one else
have this issue?
 
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