When I put the yellow eyelets on my ground wires I heated them and solder the wires into the eyelets after crimping them. Not necessary but easy to do.
When I test the connector that goes into the control board, I should get 5V. I seem to get only 0.8V when the connector is connected to the board, and 1V when it is not.
Yesterday I decided that I'd start the part of the job that I was looking forward to the most; stripping the playfield and replacing all the parts. I figure I'll worry about getting the game up and running after it's all back together. Plus this way I feel like I'm actually making progress.
After learning a few lessons from tearing down Rollergames, I've got a few new techniques to try out. One of them is separating the playfield into sections, and putting all the original parts into labeled bags. So far it looks like I might be able to avoid removing the PF from the cabinet, but we'll see if that changes further into the process.
I'll try to post some pics and/or vids over the next couple of days.
So after several months of using my ROCK as a workbench, I've decided it was time to work on it again.
This is where I am at at the playfield clean up.
Unfortunately, there are some very bad wear spots on the PF:
Apparently Mike Hanley has a better looking PF in his collection, so there may be a swap in my future. I'm really only interested in making this a players game (like all my projects) so it's not super-important to get this game looking super-pretty. (well, as pretty as a ROCK can be, anyway)
Speaking of pretty... I really wish they used the backglass characters for the PF. The ones on the PF are crazy-ugly. I like the backglass ones. They remind me of a Glam Rock version of Dethcloc. All it needs is a Nathan Explosion character. (unless we turn Nathan into a sexy lady singer)
So I've got the upper side of the PF back together (for the most part).
Among other things, I still have to replace the lower/main flippers, change all the drop targets and make the plastic for the ADD A LETTER standups.
I ran out of 5/16 rubber rings, so I'll have to replace 2 or three of them when I can grab some more.
After all that, my next step will be to fix the MPU. Once that's taken care of the game should be playable.
I've replaced all of my drop targets in both the centre and upper location. One of the red ones were missing the spring that keeps the target in the up position. So I brought home a throttle return spring from work. It's not quite as robust as the original springs, but it seems to do the job just fine. I'm sure one day I'll buy replacements for all of them,
Here are a few 'before' pics:
My favorite was the old broken switch that was used to 'fix' a drop target:
This one shows the throttle return spring in place:
Here's the 5-bank of of new targets before putting it back together:
When I bought the game, Tom was nice enough to include the targets, flipper bats and rubbers (among other stuff). But unfortunately, the rubbers he had bought for the main flippers are too big. Gottlieb needs much thinner bands. I thought I might have some left over from the R911 days, but it looks like I don't. Not that there's a big rush on getting them, however. I still need to get my board repaired, and I don't see that happening in less than month, anyway.
I had a problem with my MPU. I wasn't able to diagnose it myself, so I sent it out to Bruno (aka Mindstorm88) in Quebec. Apparently he's the guy to send Sys80 boards to. He messaged me last night that it was ready, so now I just wait for it to make it's way back to me. Then Rock will finally be playable!
Tonight I am headed over to 'the Church' to take a look at (and most likely buy) Mr. Hanley's Rock playfield. It doesn't look as blown out as mine does, so there will likely be a playfield swap in my near future. However, that won't start after at least a couple of weeks of playing the crap out of Rock. : )
I picked up the playfield from Mike last night, and I have to say, I am very happy with the condition of it. It'll make for a fantastic PF swap.
I got most of the upper part stripped so far. Hopefully it'll be completely stripped by the end of the weekend.
It's very dirty, but has very little missing paint. The few spots that are damaged should prove to be easy-ish to repair.
Also, I hope to have the MPU back before the weekend, so if I'm lucky, I'll be playing the game by Friday night.
LoL, I forgot to mention... I'm not doing the swap for quite a while.
I'm only stripping the 'new' PF this weekend. Once it's clean, I'm going to remove the mylar, and start repairs before clear coating.
I'm figuring it'll be at least a month or two before I consider transfering the stuff over from the game.
I'm gonna play the game with the PF that's already in it!
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