The Best Pinball Tech?

[Rascal]

There is no way I have the time, parts available, or knowledge without massive amounts of study, to repair my MPU and driver boards in my Williams Blackout. I would love to learn the deep electronics of Sys 6 and do the repair myself, but time wise is not feasible and nothing beats experienced work. What I am after is to find out who might be interested in repairing these boards and approx how much $$, based on average component failure. Finding working replacements is near impossible. Buying a new MPU/driver combo board is an option, but I think the original boards are made tougher and worthy of repair.
I would send 3 main boards, MPU, drver, and power supply also for testing and refurbishing/repair.

I would really like to see the old girl run again.

 

[mwong168]

Too bad you are not local otherwise Menace aka Doug is the best pinball tech.

 

[DRANO]

I would normally have suggested Bruno (mindstorm) but he seems to have taken a sabbatical from board work for a while.

Bruno has been the go-to guy for remote board repair for many Canadian collectors for years. I know Sylvain is also a great tech.. but no idea if he accepts mail-in board work. I'm sure Doug would look at your boards also if you're just looking to mail them out and have them gone over.
I left him one of my WPC boards the last time I saw him. It's been having the dreaded "reset blues".

That should give you some decent options to start with. There are many others you could send stuff to, but these guys I would trust above most. Cooke out in London is another you could try.

Good luck. I know the pain of feeling lost with electronic issues. I've come a long way since I started, but there's so much I don't know. These guys are a great asset to the hobby.

 

[Rascal]

Too bad you are not local otherwise Menace aka Doug is the best pinball tech.

I don't mind shipping to ontario

 

[BMHouze]

I prefer my tech that works for a few beers and tries to teach me as we go.
I do occasionally buy a new board so they don't look so hacked when I sell a machine later.
Board repair ain't cheap. Sockets are the way to go (imo).

 

[mwong168]

I'm sure Doug would look at your boards also if you're just looking to mail them out and have them gone over.

I think this would depend if he has easy access to a Sys6 machine to test the boards in after his repair. I know he is a bit reluctant to do remote board work because sometimes there might be an issue in the game that caused the boards to fail or blow up in the first place. Unfortunately some clients don't understand a scenario like this and when they reinstall the boards and game still doesn't work they just think the boards were not repaired properly. I've let him know about this thread so see what happens when he chimes in later.

 

[mwong168]

I also wanted to mention that Borygard from the US also does board repairs and I read good things about him over the years on RGP and pinside.

http://lockwhenlit.com

 

[Menace]

Thanks for the kind words guys. Yes, I do board repair and I have done remote repairs in the past but as Mike has pointed out I'm a little reluctant for the reasons he's mentioned. I also currently don't have access to any sys6 games so I would have to source one to test any repaired boards in. The other issue right now is time... with switching careers last month I have been insanely busy and the time I have had to devote to pin repair has taken a bit of a hit. I'm still doing house calls, but my shop schedule has slowed down significantly. Now that I'm almost 2 months in at my new job things are starting to level out a bit and I'm looking forward to ramping my shop time back up but the backlog must get cleared before I focus on taking in any more work.

If you're looking for someone to repair your PCB's rather quickly, I'd contact Sylvain in Ottawa and if he's too busy definitely take Drano's recommendation and send them down to Borygard in the US. He's very good.

D

 

[Rascal]

Has anyone had any experience with these - http://www.theplaydiumstore.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=MPU327+&Submit=
It might be the quickest solution. And I have already started diode replacement under the PF after I noticed one blown and several burnt.

 

[mwong168]

Has anyone had any experience with these - http://www.theplaydiumstore.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=MPU327 &Submit=
It might be the quickest solution. And I have already started diode replacement under the PF after I noticed one blown and several burnt.

Doug should get a laugh out of this... Rottendog ftw

I think too many quickly pull the trigger on Rottendog replacement boards meanwhile their original ones should still be repairable and work for many more years to come. Sometimes new replacement boards can have their share of problem out of the box and I think Drano had some issues with his Rottendog WPC power driver board that Doug had to troubleshoot and repair.

Rascal why don't you post up some pics of your board so someone can assess if it is worth going the repair route or just replace.

 

[DRANO]

It's never bad to have back-up replacements... but usually that makes more sense when you have several games of the same system/type. I keep some Altek and Rottendog products in my stash for a rainy day as they cover a good chunk of my collection. I recently had reset issues on my Shadow and swapped in a Rottendog to get the machine up and running while I pulled the original for repair. But Mike is right, we have found that some of these new boards are not without their own issues. The RD board had very poor heat dissipation properties on the 5V regulator due to improper application of compound to the heat sink... so, even the repro board eventually failed and had to be redone properly.

 

[Rascal]

I had read that there are weakness in the Altek and Rottendog and they are not as tough as the original boards, which is why I seek repair over simply buying new.
So any takers in doing some board repair???

 

[Rascal]

There appears to be burnt area near a couple large resistors on the driver board. Zoom quality is not bad for closer look.

 

[sylvain]

Thanks all for the kudos and referral, appreciated.

I do fix pinball boards, but typically only with the complete machine here, because there are often issues with connectors, wiring, coils. etc.
in the machine itself, that boards replacement would not address at all. I also do not have a pinball test jig to test boards alone, although I find that Bally MPUs, Solenoid Drivers, and power supply components can be tested to a point easily on a bench outside the machine (same for resistors, transistors & diodes on a Williams Driver board).

As mentioned above, I am also not impressed with some of the replacement boards' design quality and heat dissipation capability.
I recommend getting the original boards fixed if you can.

Issues are often with the power supply high-voltage section for the displays, often bad EPROM chip sockets on the MPU (game freezing upon vibration), sometimes a bad chip on the MPU or driver (especially if someone tried to adjust a playfield switch with the machine ON), and sometimes bad 40-pin MPU-Driver interconnect - in my experience.

if only we were closer...

Good luck & Cheers,
- Sylvain.

 

[Playboy1]

John Juke in Vancouver B.C. old school best repair. Very knowledgeable. Been at it for year's.
Www.flippers.com

 

[Rascal]

Update. I did several transistor changes to fix several issues, but I still have a whole row in the switch matrix not working. Row one consists of tilt, outhole, and one drop target on both banks of drops. Still having a learning experience. Looking at a simple logic probe after I had weird readings on my lab scope. And still trying to figure out how this old electronics work.