Tim's SKYLAB thread

[DRANO]

I'm battling my own Williams EM demons lately too Tim. Seems like the contacts and relays just were not up to the same standard as Gottlieb for this era. Your relay may certainly be firing but the contacts are likely not making. A neat little trick someone showed me is simply to short each set of switch leaves together with a small flathead screwdriver. Manually pressing in bonus relay should illustrate which switch leaves should be making... Afterwards just go in one by one and test with the scredrivier. If the bonus advances then you just need to clean and adjust. Make sure you close up the out hole switch when testing just in case that has a bearing on the bonus relay.

If you can actually hear/see the bonus count unit moving after each ball then you probably don't need to clean and grease the stepper unit... but it never hurts either.

And yeah... Score wheels do t like to be cleaned. Same with those hot stamped old pop bumper caps. That ink comes off so easily. Best to just lightly wipe them with a microfibre cloth. Seems a previous owner didn't know that
Nice decal though!

I'm still relatively new to EM repair so this advice is worth about what you paid for it

Good luck

 

[bstock]

Drano's advice sounds like the best place to start. If you can hear the bonus relay working when the ball drains, then you likely have switches that aren't making good contact.

You can turn the game off and activate the bonus relay by hand, inspecting each switch as you do this a make sure that they are making good contact and "overwiping". Also make sure each switch actually has contacts and get haven't been broken off. Also take a look and pull on the wires connected to the switches and make sure they have good solder joints.


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[tim.sanderson]

I figured it would be something like the switches. They unit itself seems to run perfectly.

I just wasn't sure if it was wise to trigger the switches out of sequence. But it sounds like it's fine, so time to break out the ol' flat head.

 

[bstock]

I figured it would be something like the switches. They unit itself seems to run perfectly.

I just wasn't sure if it was wise to trigger the switches out of sequence. But it sounds like it's fine, so time to break out the ol' flat head.

Are you sure that score motor is what handles the bonus? I haven't looked at a schematic or anything but I would guess it would be a stepper unit.

 

[tim.sanderson]

Haha yeah, I've just been poking around the machine, and was just about to post that I think I was wrong.
I feel like it's the first time I've looked into a pinball machine.

 

[luch]

didn't this game come with a warranty?

 

[tim.sanderson]

didn't this game come with a warranty?

Here's part of it!

 

[bstock]

This is the bonus stepper unit on Wizard.

As you can see it is a step up/step down type unit. As you accumulate bonus it will advance, and once the ball drains it will step down and score your bonus each time it does.

The relays themselves might be labeled like these ones.

You can manually check the relays to make sure the switches are all making good contact like this.

I would inspect all of the relays like this. Don't mess with them unless they are clearly not making/breaking contact the way they should. They don't need to be perfect, if they look like they're working, leave them be.



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[tim.sanderson]

Here are a couple of other photos:

 

[bstock]

I would guess that advance unit under the playfield handles the bonus, and the actual bonus relay is likely in the bottom of the cab.

 

[bstock]

Actually I looked closer at your pictures. Looks like the bonus and double bonus relays are in your second picture. You can check those relays and make sure the switches and wires are all in good shape/making good contact

 

[tim.sanderson]

Hmm, things have gotten worse since the morning. Out of the 6 S-K-Y-L-A-B 'shots', only B's switch reacts when they are triggered.
Good thing I printed off the schematic today.

 

[tim.sanderson]

So, I think I've got the scoring/bonus problem tracked down. In the back are what I believe to be the scoring relays: (when I trigger tham manually, the points increase as noted)

The scoring for the first three relays goes as marked, 10's, 100's, 1000's.
The one marked 1000 was stuck, making the bonus not add up at the end of a ball. Once I freed it, it seems to be registering all the bonuses again.

The bigger issue is now seems to be those pesky sling switches. I'm not sure why I've lost 5 out of 6. Maybe I fudged something up in the SKYLAB relays. I guess that's as good a place as any to start.

 

[tim.sanderson]

Oops. Now all 6 SKYLAB switches don't do anything. I'm still fairly confident I am working in the right spot, though. There won't be much more work done on it tonight. Off to another TOPL installment.

 

[DRANO]

Tim,
It's very easy to assume that you're in the right place on these machines and be very wrong

The scoring relays are certainly in the head and seems like they're scoring fine when pressed manually. The next question is, what sends the signal to the 1000's unit in the first place and why isn't it getting through?

It could be as simple as a dirty connection at the Jones plugs. Or, whatever switch on the score motor that is supposed to send a signal to the 1000's relay needs to be cleaned.

The schematic will help you determine where this is located.

Does the 1000's relay ever fire and score during regular game play or is it just on the bonus collect that it doesn't work?

There is a lot of sleuthing when it comes to EM repair. Once found, the actual repair itself usually involves 10 seconds of cleaning and asjustment.

 

[tim.sanderson]

It's very easy to assume that you're in the right place on these machines and be very wrong

Very true. It's super-easy to point yourself in the wrong direction.

Does the 1000's relay ever fire and score during regular game play or is it just on the bonus collect that it doesn't work?

The only time the 1000's roll over without the help of the 10's or 100's is during the bonus. So far it seems like the stuck 1000 relay was causing the bonus not to roll over. The relay was stuck wide open, it took quite a bit of prodding with a screw driver to get it to release. It seems OK now, but I'd still like to find the cause of the relay's sticking.

The bigger of the two problems is definitely the lack of action when the ball bounces off of any of the S-K-Y-L-A-B slings. I'll dig into it a bit deeper tomorrow after work.

 

[DRANO]

Those features are obviously controlled via the 6 bank of relays called out with each letter.
I'm assuming there's some sort of roller that closes over each one in sequence? At least that's how Gottlieb's work.

Something is likely preventing them from re-setting.
Anyway, without seeing the machine first hand or having schems, it's hard to say for sure,

 

[tim.sanderson]

Well, after a visit from Drano, Skylab is up and running again!
The problem with the S-K-Y-L-A-B relays may have been caused by me accidentally. I think I have unintentionally widened the gap on all the switches in the S-K-Y-L-A-B relay assembly when I was doing something else. Lesson learned! Many other switches were gapped and cleaned, too. He was only here for an hour or two, but I sure learned quite a bit in that time.
Drano says he's just learning how to read schematics, but it sure seemed to me that he knew his way around them pretty well.

As always, there's still much work to do on this machine, but at least it's playable as I go about it.
Here is a little bit of gameplay from this morning:

Thanks again, Drano!

 

[DRANO]

Thanks for the props Tim.
I went into it hoping I could help and glad that I could. Luckily it was similar to another problem I had on one of my machines a while back.
I've also been on the receiving end of a lot of help with my own EMs and have gotten a lot of good advice on reading schems and troubleshooting. Hopefully you'll feel comfortable tackling another one. I was just happy to see it running.

I've only played the game twice but it's a neat little EM. Enjoy!

Dr.@NO

 

[tim.sanderson]

Recently, I've noticed that the game doesn't actually score the bonuses that the playfield inserts indicate. On top of that, the scoring seems to be quite random. At the start of each ball, both the S and P are lit up. (I think I read that there is a 'liberal' and 'conservative' setting. It is likely set to 'liberal' at the moment)

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Logically, that should mean if the ball were to drain, I'd get 6,000 points. So I took the glass off, and let the ball drain without letting it touch any other switches. I 'played' through all 5 balls, for 5 'games'. The first 4 balls should score 6K points, with the final ball scoring double, at 12K. 5 perfect drains should total 36K points.

I didn't get even close to that on any of them. In fact, two of the drains didn't register a loss of ball, but still recorded an incorrect amount of points. Here's the chart I scribbled out. (it's might be hard to make sense of)

You can see the drains scored either 3K or 4K points, with the final balls always scoring 6K, instead of 12K. The total points for each round of 5 balls (6 balls for the two that erroneously added an extra ball) is totaled at the top of each row

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It would seem another mystery is afoot!