TheShanMan's Defender restoration - New repro wiring harnesses!!!

[TheShanMan]

In the interim while you're waiting for that adapter to arrive, you can pull the wires not used out of the harness and wrap them with electrical tape.  Easy to pull out, you just need a tiny flat bladed jewelers screwdriver.

Do you mean since they're no longer used, disconnect them to avoid the possibility of frying my 4164's if the harness gets plugged in without the adapter? Sounds like a good idea, though I'll wait until I get the adapter so it's clear which wires I no longer need. And actually, why not just totally remove the wires from the cab, rather than just wrapping the one end with electrical tape?

So for some insane reason I decided to also take on the lower particle board panel that is so moisture damaged. I figured I'd take it out and slap in a new board, but that is not an easy board to get out! I ended up deciding to just sand the darn thing until smooth, and I'm happy with the result, although it made a huge paint dust mess that I now need to clean up!

I still need to pick up some paint and paint it. I plan to use a foam roller (any reason not to? seems like the best approach to me).

Here's the before and after. Well, kind of. I didn't remember to take the before until mid way through. But it shows you what it was like before.

[RetroACTIVE]

Yeah.. I took mine apart.  Those panels are rabbeted, glued and stapled.  The only way to remove the front is to take the bottom rear, bottom, front coin door panel and coin box shelf.... so keeping it in place was a good move  Mine had lots of water damage and mildew so I had no choice.

[RayB]

OH so its supposed to be mounted on the side... good to know!

[TheShanMan]

Well, time for an update. I've been reluctant to update because I'm still having problems, and I don't want anyone thinking that RetroACTIVE has done anything less than an awesome job! I think my boards are possessed, and I think RA would probably agree. He had problem after problem after problem after problem. Now, RA has made me several proposals, each of which would get my boards fixed for good, at NO cost to me! And he has been quite insistent about it. So not only do I admire his skills, but he's surely one of the most generous, if not THE most generous members of this community in my book. The only reason I haven't taken him up on his offer is because I want to have some of the fun - I need to learn these skills, and I want to know my defender boards better! So for the time being I'm hanging on to them and we'll see how far I can get, with continual communication with RA for assistance (thanks RA!).

End disclaimer.

So I have 2 problems. The most serious is that red doesn't work. I did a bunch of testing around that assumption and seemed to be confirming it, and the signs pointed to possibly a bad transistor for the red channel. Swapped it with the green transistor and no luck. Then I swapped the wires running to the monitor (red and blue). That's where things get strange and confusing for me. Before, the red test page would be black, green green, and blue blue (i.e. only red was failing). This time red and blue were both black. I was expecting the blue page to be red since I swapped the wires! What the?!

So that got me to pay a little more attention to the other color test pages (after putting the wires back to normal), and guess what? I can see white and black (and of course blue and green). How would I see white if it's comprised of red, blue, and green???

So I have no idea what to think, beyond the guess that it's a logic problem rather than a problem in the color output circuitry or monitor circuitry. I am eagerly waiting for RA's input. Anyone else feel free to chime in.

The other problem: rom failure on boot (rom 9). However, this problem goes away after warming up. RA is convinced it has something to do with the ribbon cable, especially since it gave him such fits. But no matter how I press or pull on it during boot, no change. So unless someone has some ideas here, I will ultimately take RA up on his offer to send it back for more fixing. However, if I can just get the red to work, I'll live with the warm up problem for now just so I can finally play it for a while!

[TheShanMan]

After a little discussion with RA, decided it was best to ship it back to him, and being the great guy that he is, he was more than willing to do that (heck, he wanted to pay my shipping, but no way - I don't want him eating extra cost when he's doing me a favor in the first place!). Sent it yesterday, should be there Saturday. Hopefully the fix is easy for him and he can turn it around quickly to get it out of his hair once and for all!

Now that I don't have to deal with the board problems, I can get back to painting the straight black panels and touching up the artwork panels where needed, and need to work on the coin door too.

Got a coin bucket off of ebay. Dirty as heck, but otherwise nice.

[RetroACTIVE]

I have a brand spanky new green button, rectifier and ribbon cable assembly with your name on it

[TheShanMan]

I have a brand spanky new green button, rectifier and ribbon cable assembly with your name on it

Ha ha. Cool. The equivalent rectifier at Fry's was like 8.40. Probably over priced, but I'm sure it's more than just spare change for you. So be sure to tell me how much more for the parts (and anything else you decide you need).

When I got the notification that you posted I thought "did the boards arrive already?". Wishful thinking though. Should be 2 or 3 more days.

[TheShanMan]

Finished painting the lower front panel. Certainly no mirror finish, and with glossy paint the flash certainly draws attention to it's lack of mirror-ness, but it is good enough for me. Looks much better than before. I'm painting the top and back too right now, and when I get done with that I'll work on touch ups of the artwork panels.

Also cleaned up my coin box and took pictures. I notice that the box has 2 little slots in the front and back. Looks like this was to divide the coins from the 3 mechs? Dollars isolated in the middle and quarters on the 2 sides? Anyone actually have these dividers? Not that I need them, but I'm just curious after noticing the slots.

[RetroACTIVE]

I had a chance to test the CPU board... both color RAMs were bad... 2C (RED/GRN) was dead dead. RAM 1C (GRN/BLUE) was also faulty, but not completely out as the color was good but faint black stripes on the color test screens were visible.  When I sent the board off to you originally it did not have these obvious faults (I would have caught it... I would have had to had my eyes closed to miss this)...this was just a case of bad luck.

Gotta love 28+ yr old electronics that sit in a barn for a few years... never know whats going to turn up next.

 

[TheShanMan]

Got the boards back from RA today (that guy is awesome). It works!!!!!!!!!! Now to adjust the leaf switches, hook the florescent light up to switched power, get the linear PS rebuilt so I can move the new switcher to my cyberball (it has a flakey switcher), and get the coin slots working.

[Level42]

Nice work !

[TheShanMan]

I was working on the coin door last night... it has a LOT of rust. Took it apart and cleaned the coin return door and "cup", which looked horrible. The door was completely rusted, but I got all the rust off and it looks quite nice now. Cleaned up the inside area too, but to a lesser degree. I didn't want it to feel quite so gross to the touch, but didn't care quite as much about how it looks since it's all "behind closed doors".

Right now the coin lights don't work because I don't have translucent 25¢ squares in there - they're just filled with black plastic. And the center SBA slot is blocked entirely. I'd like to put whatever is supposed to be in those squares so I can get the lights working again, and also make the center slot work on tokens too. So where can I find the art for those squares, and any suggestions on how to get or make the plastic chute that goes right behind the coin slot? I don't even know what the squares should look like, so if anyone is willing to post some close up pics, or point me to some, that would be nice.

EDIT: Added pics. See the missing plastic part in the red circle, vs. the plastic parts that are there in the green circles?

[RetroACTIVE]

Saaaay cheese 

[RetroACTIVE]

I also found the metal entry slot... not shown in pic... I'll send it too.

[TheShanMan]

Awesome! Thanks Jim! I can get the quarter inserts from pinball resource, so it looks like I'm going to be all set!

[TheShanMan]

I got my joystick working reliably tonight. It has a rebuild kit, which includes new leaf switches. Surprisingly the "down" contacts weren't working reliably. I went into the switch test screen, and found that with the joystick pressed down, I could jiggle the joystick left and right and the electrical connection was flaky. I tried cleaning the contacts with paper - no luck. I tried cleaning them with fine sandpaper - fixed! I also adjusted the leaves to have a slightly bigger gap. The joystick is now working great.

On another note, I haven't really mentioned it here yet but I am still mostly getting a rom error on boot up (rom 9). Retro and I believe it's related to my power supply since he was never getting the error with my boards when he sent them back. The only real difference between my setup and his is the power supply. I'm still running a switcher, but I've rebuilt the stock linear supply and am only awaiting connectors from BR and the big 18,000 uF cap that BR's cap kit doesn't include, and hopefully the right power supply will eliminate my boot up problems.

The other nice thing about getting my stock PS installed soon is I'll be able to get the coin lights working again, as well as the coin lockout solenoid (yeah, who cares about that in a home environment, but I'm kind of anal about stuff like that).

[RetroACTIVE]

It's probably that @$#!&@ 40 pin header I neglected to replace!

[TheShanMan]

I can't tell if you're serious or joking, especially since you previously agreed that it must be the PS. You did replace the cable, but you're talking about the header that the cable plugs onto? If you're serious, should I re-solder all the pins? I just placed a mouser order yesterday so it's bad timing if I really should replace it. But if it's the same as a computer style header then I can pick one up close to my house for cheap (an 80 pin one that I can just cut in half).

Now that I have my joystick working properly and I’m playing the game more, I noticed that if I get the rom failure on start up, it’s not something I can just ignore. The system will reset sometimes while I’m in the middle of a game, and one time one of the buttons (fire or thrust, don’t remember which) didn’t work at all.

I should be getting the connectors I need for the PS board from BR tomorrow or Saturday (according to him) so I really hope that getting the original board installed takes care of it. I saw someone say that some people like to set their defender up with 5.1V. Maybe I'll try that in the meantime to see if that helps at all.

Right now I'm waiting for the game to warm up enough to not have a rom failure on boot so I can get some practice in.

[RetroACTIVE]

I'm serious..... with all of the issues you've had I wouldn't be surprised.  I did not see ROM errors here.. and I still stand by our initial diagnosis the only diff is the PS at this point.   But those pesky headers are known for these types of symptoms.

Go ahead and reflow the pins first...add a bit of fresh solder/flux to make things flow well....just to eliminate the possibility 

[TheShanMan]

OK, thanks for the suggestion. After the linear PS is in I'll give that a try if I'm still having the problem.

[TheShanMan]

I got the linear PS installed and unfortunately the -5V supply isn't regulated properly, but fortunately since I'm using 4164 ram that isn't critical (though I plan to replace the regulator anyway). This has allowed me to move the switcher (which is brand new) to my cyberball, which had a flaky switcher, causing random resets (now it resets half a dozen times when first turned on, then is rock solid thereafter).

So the externally noticeable improvement by reinstalling a stock PS is that I could hook back up the coin door lights, and the coin lockout (though it's not working). Thanks to parts from RetroACTIVE and Pinball Resource, I now have 3 fully working coin slots, including the lighted coin inserts (middle one says DOLLARS as it did originally, though all slots actually take tokens). There was quite a bit of effort that went into the coin door. As bad as my CPU board was, the coin door was probably a close second in condition. So it's quite satisfying to see it fully functional and looking good!

My ROM 9 failure on start up still is present - it seems to happen most of the time whether warm or cold. Current thinking is that I need to replace the 40 pin header that connects the cpu and rom boards because that's one of the few things RA didn't do.

I've also been dealing with spontaneous resetting which I previously believed was tied to the rom startup failure, but now I'm thinking they may be distinct problems. Hopefully the linear PS will give me a steady, noise free supply of voltage and thereby prevent the random resets. I'm doing a test right now by pulling the battery and adding a credit. I'll watch it over several hours to see if that credit goes away. Fingers crossed.

Here are some pics of the coin door and the linear PS (taken by reaching my arm in the coin door ).

[TheShanMan]

Fingers crossed... My Defender is currently working 100%. No rom failures on start up, and no spontaneous resets. It appeared to be a faulty connection of the ROM board power connector (though I couldn't reproduce the failures with more jiggling of the harness) and possibly also not enough voltage from the linear PS. I replaced the really big cap on the PS board, and replaced R2 with a pot so I can adjust the +5V supply.

It was kind of a "duh" moment for me and Retro afterward - we had been saying "what's different between our 2 set ups" since my boards were working fine for him. The answer previously was "the power supply". We should have also said "the wiring".

I will be replacing the pins on the connectors after my next mouser order! I'm also seeing about a 0.07V drop from the PS board to chips on the CPU board, which may be attributed to those pins. Heck, I might not even need that pot after replacing the pins!

[TheShanMan]

On another note, I now have the coin lockout working on the coin door. I needed a spring to engage the lockout when the power is off. Some might say "who cares for a home machine" but little things like that bug me.

[Spyridon]

I love this shot:

[TheShanMan]

Thanks!!! The cab looks SOOOO much better now that the coin slots are right (compare to my original pic of the coin door in my first post), not to mention the rust being gone!

[SirPeale]

I will be replacing the pins on the connectors after my next mouser order! I'm also seeing about a 0.07V drop from the PS board to chips on the CPU board, which may be attributed to those pins. Heck, I might not even need that pot after replacing the pins!

That's an acceptable drop.  You'll always have some.

[jilted]

Thanks!!! The cab looks SOOOO much better now that the coin slots are right (compare to my original pic of the coin door in my first post), not to mention the rust being gone!

nice restore you got going on.  i can't praise RA enough myself. 

i was out in the garage today working on the last cosmetic job (speaker grille) that RA made for me.  another lil glitch is the marquee light fixture decided to die so i picked up another from lowes.

[TheShanMan]

I replaced the wiring with repro main and AC harnesses made by Dokert at klov (he's repro-ing many Williams harnesses). I posted my review over there and thought I should do likewise here. Here's what I posted there...

Recently installed the main and AC harnesses I bought from Dokert because my Defender was a major basket case when I bought it. The boards themselves needed major work (retroactive did an awesome job fixing them) but even when they were fixed, I had trouble keeping Defender happy. Every time I did anything as little as moving the cab, I'd get rom errors on power up and I'd have to jiggle the wires to get the problem to go away. In fact, when I pulled the cab in order to do the harness install, sure as the sun rising I got a rom error on power up.

I was extremely impressed with how nice the harnesses looked, and how easy it was to install. They were as plug-n-play as you could possibly hope. The connectors are a huge improvement over my originals. Ever since I have had zero occurrences of rom errors even with moving the cab around a handful of times since then.

I appreciate a beautiful interior almost as much as a beautiful exterior, so the new wiring is also much appreciated from an aesthetic standpoint.

So in summary, it's a quality product that installed trouble-free and was well worth the money. I couldn't be happier with the results. So if you've been thinking of ordering harnesses from Dokert, get off the fence and do it!!!