Stern Sharkey’s shootout

This machine isn’t ready yet. I have cleaned the CPU board from the battery residues. To be able to get it clean I had to remove U202 and U216 and I put new IC’s back in sockets. Also the socket for the U213 PAL IC was damaged and exchanged, even the pins of the PAL was green. But the main cause for the board no to boot was probably the reset button. Now the CPU boots and it is possible to play the game, except for some solenoids that does not work. But the display is completely black. The Display driver board had got some dripping from the battery as well, but just in the corner round U20. I removed the U20, cleaned and put back a new IC in a socket, but it didn’t change anything.

 

I talked to the owner and the cause for the game to be put in storage a couple of years ago (with the batteries still in the holder) was that it smelt burnt and solenoids stopped working. At that time the display worked as it should and because of that I’m quite sure the display and driver are OK and the problem are still at the CPU board. Both the PAL and U202 are involved in driving the display, so the problem is most likely at the CPU board. Yesterday I found a broken trace between U213 pin 11 and U202 pin 13 but repairing it did not solve the problem. One thing that’s makes the fault finding a bit troublesome is that there are no documentation available about the PAL, it’s just a black box and I do not know anything about the logic inside. 

The burnt smell and non-working solenoids was caused by a transistor at the solenoid expander board. It was once an easy fix to get the game going again but now… Do always remove the batteries when storing a game, and do always move the batteries to an external battery holder when working with a game. It’s the single most important thing to do to keep a game alive for the future.

Sega Baywatch

The Baywatch was ready and delivered quite a long time ago, I just haven’t had time to update the blog. The switch I ordered for the ball through solved the two problems of ejecting two balls and not detecting a drained ball. Besides that it was more or less just to tightening some loose nuts, adjusting the left in lane switch and cleaning and a polish of the playfield. I played the game for a long time and all worked fine, until I noticed that the upper right ball gate sometime didn’t open as it should. The cause turned out to be loose screws at the actuator arm. The only problem is that almost the whole playfield have to be disassembled to reach in to the gate, it took almost three hours disassembling, tightening the screws and assemble the lot again.

Two new projects

I have two new projects to work with, a Stern Sharkey’s shootout with battery corrosion at the CPU board and a Sega Baywatch with a few faults. The trickiest one is that it sometimes ejects two balls in to the shooter lane. I think that I am on the track of the cause of the fault and the problem seems to be the switch for the fifth ball in the ball trough assembly. If I keep the switch closed with while the CPU are ejecting a ball to the shooter lane then it also ejects a second ball. So it seems like this switch sometimes does not open up as it should when the ball rolls off. There is also another problem with the same switch, sometimes when the ball drains it’s not detected by the switch and after a while the CPU starts a ball search and the vibrations from the solenoids make the switch to close and the ball is detected. A new switch has been ordered and are on its way by post.   

Fish tales

Finally ready for delivery. The last problem I found was the microswitch in the start button. Sometimes it didn’t make contact, even if it sounded and felt like it worked as I should.

Fish tales

The last parts arrived during the week and I have continued the assembly. I saw a picture on the net where they had used light blue rubbers at the entrance of the boat, and I thought it looked good, so I tested it at this game. I’m not sure of what the owner thinks about it… I also saw a picture of a Fish tales with green flipper rubbers. This looked really good together with the yellow flipper bats and the yellow/green plastics to the left and right of the flippers. Unfortunately I haven’t found anywhere to buy green flipper rubbers, except on Ebay, but they got extremely expensive with the freight from the states.

Fish tales

The disassembly and cleaning of the playfield are ready. It got a first coat of wax while disassembled, while it is easy to access all areas and it will have a second coat later on. I have also started the assembly but stopped at the point at the picture. I do still need the drive belt of the fishing reel and a lamp holder for the center bumper. I’ll wait with the installation of the boat until the lamp holder has been changed. It’s much easier to work with the bumper while having a hole in the playfield to stick the hand through.

All parts that have been taken out of the playfield have been cleaned and polished before putting them back.

 

 

The boat was disassembled and cleaned

 

The Stretch the truth meter has got five new lamp rubbers. The middle one was of another shade than the other four and to make sure they all look the same I changed all five. I also changed the flasher to a yellow one. I’m not sure what it will look like when playing, but it is easy to change it back to a clear one if it doesn’t look good.

 

The button at the fishing rod handle was lose so I took the handle apart to fasten it. At the same time I polished the handle.  The screws holding the two parts together were quite rusty so I repainted them satin black.

 

The plastic ramp is cleaned and polished. It is cracked by one of the screw holes, the right side of the upper left entrance. It was mounted using a pair of washers clamping the ramp in place. I will put it back I the same way since a new ramp is quite expensive.

 

 

 

Fish tales

I’m now almost ready with the disassembly of the playfield and there are a lot of parts to clean and polish at the workbench.

I found some new surprises today, the eject hole base are cracked and must be changed. Also the fish reel drive belt is a bit suspicious. The rubber material is quite thin at a little bit, to the left at the picture. I will change the belt to make sure not having to disassemble the reel unit once again in the near future.