Black Knight

[ChadTower]

Got a bit tired of fighting the Berzerk monitor so I was finally motivated to get this one up and going... this one is getting the full screws up restoration.  First, pics.









I don't have any of the backglass yet but I'll get some soon.  Let's just say that needs attention too.

[akoz]

nice hope it goes well. how are you going to fix the pealing paint on the playing field ?

[ChadTower]

With one of these:



 

nice hope it goes well. how are you going to fix the pealing paint on the playing field ?

We don't stand for no Pealin' round these parts.

[pinballjim]

Fun game, Steve Ritchie's only truly great one.  A touch easy, though.

[akoz]

sorry to change topics in your post. but is there any other companies that make playing fields since that company only had a few products

[Zero_Hour]

Looking forward to seeing the progress.

Touchup on the cab or full repaint?

[ChadTower]

Looking forward to seeing the progress.

Touchup on the cab or full repaint?

I was planning on a full repaint but when I set it up it's better than I remembered.  I'm undecided now.  I have been working on the boardset so far and will fill in those details later today.

[ChadTower]

Okay, here's the board work so far:

1)  checked all fuses to make sure they're proper values

2)  Game boots into audit mode.  Common issue with the sys3-7 games when there is an issue with the memory (game settings) circuit.  Put in fresh batteries, no change.  Check the diode to the batteries that stops the circuit from trying to charge batteries while powered and stops the batteries from trying to power the board while off.  Diode is good.  Pull batteries and put them in a flashlight to be sure - good.  Put batteries back in, now it boots to attract mode.  Conclusion:  battery holder probably needs to be resoldered as it looks good.  I'm going to remove it and run a two pin connector to a remote holder anyway to avoid leaky batteries ever killing the game again.

3)  Game credits but won't start.  Check the leaf on the start button - good.  Check the diode on the start switch - good.  Check the wires on the switch back to the connector - good.  Shrug and put 3 balls in the trough.  Now it starts.  Guess the Williams games need balls in the trough or the start switch does nothing.  Didn't know that.

4)  Lots of sounds missing including all speech.  Sound test switch only plays one sound.  Pull sound board and replace all header pins with new square pins.  Don't expect this to fix the issue but I'm going to do it all around for reliability reasons.  Doesn't fix the problem.  Pull the sound select connector and ground each pin manually.  All that should play a sound work so the nonspeech game sound problem at least is not the sound board.  Waiting on a supplies order so I can recap the sound board - it's also possible the pot on the speech board is bad as I couldn't get any range out of it on the DMM.  Clay's guide says that the sound select on Sys7 is done by a PIA on the driver board - I'm going to redo the driver/mpu interboard connector anyway so maybe that will clear it up.  If not I check the PIA.

5)  Game won't advance to ball 2 when ball one drains. 


Supplies in the mail right now:  header pins for all boards including interconnect, terminal pins, connector housings, female interconnect terminals, polarity pins for new connectors, cap kit for sound board.

[Ginsu Victim]

Man.....they'll make a pinball machine out of anything. 



Glad to see all the times I told you to get to work on it weren't just a waste of my time.

 

[ChadTower]

The backglass is not very good... I'm half tempted to have a translited printed with something like this until I find a replacement for a decent price:





EDIT:  I just reread that... I should clarify:  my backglass is in poor condition.  I wasn't suggesting the original backglass art is so bad it needs to be replaced with a translite.   

[shardian]

Black Knight would be 10x better if the audio and BG was rethemed to the Holy Grail black knight.

[Jeff AMN]

Fun game, Steve Ritchie's only truly great one.  A touch easy, though.

Only? Really?

[ChadTower]

He has a few good ones but the only other one I would call truly great is High Speed.

[pinballjim]

He has a few good ones but the only other one I would call truly great is High Speed.

I need to put some more time on that one, but people I trust (not you) like it.

I have heard that the Firepower custom ROMs fix the fatal flaw on that title - no point to multiball.  If those custom ROMs are fun, that machine has a chance.

[ChadTower]

Recapped the sound board... ran into a little confusion as recapped here... then put that main filter cap in backwards and blew my only two 4A fuses... possibly toasted the cap...

 

That's what I get for working barely awake.

[ChadTower]

Replaced the 40 pin female connector on the driver board.  There was some corrosion underneath it, and a little bit in the row of resistors below, so I gave that the usual light sanding/vinegar wash and it's all better now.

Pics will be coming, just haven't had time to get them cropped and shrunken yet.

[ChadTower]

Replaced the solder on all connector pins on the driver board... replaced both sockets on the sound board... popped them back in, no change, which is good in this case since I didn't expect any.  Still plays mostly but most sound and all speech is gone.  At least I know I probably didn't make anything worse.

Next is to pull the CPU, replace the critical headers and any others that look crappy, and all sockets.  Maybe the 5101 ram since it boots into audit mode half the time.  Pull the speech board, replace those sockets and maybe the volume pot, and then the power board to cap it and replace all connectors on that one.  Then I start shopping out the switches under the playfield - hoping those things will clear up all the oddities in play.

[ChadTower]

Every .156 header on the power board replaced, all of marvin3m's recommended power board upgrades done, board recapped.  Came up one 100uf 150v cap short so that's still there.  Also found a disc cap that had one leg broken off, wonder which issue that has been causing.  Don't have a replacement on that either so it goes on the list of things I still need to pick up.

[ChadTower]

Popped the power board back in minus that missing disc cap... figured it was broken before, can't hurt anything now.  Everything seems about the same, which again is good, since I wasn't fixing something I was upgrading/refreshing it.

The playfield lights DO look brighter but that could easily be my imagination.     It's still really dirty under the playfield as I haven't gone under there at all yet.

[ChadTower]

Four new sockets on the speech board - still no speech.

[pinballjim]

You did check the pot on that board, didn't you?   

Steve Ritchie is currently autographing anything that will take ink and selling it on RGP, someone told me his house was in or close to foreclosure, too.  Kinda sad, he was a rich man in the 90s (though I've heard it was primarily from MK2 of all things)

[ChadTower]

You did check the pot on that board, didn't you?   

Yep, but those sockets had to go anyway.  I haven't found yet what the actual resistance range should be on that pot so I'm not 100% sure it's good but I do know it's not open.

EDIT:  I should note I'm also only getting one sound from the sound test too so I'm not even 100% sure the problem is the speech board yet.  Individually grounding the select pins do get all sounds but the sound test only plays one of them.

Steve Ritchie is currently autographing anything that will take ink and selling it on RGP, someone told me his house was in or close to foreclosure, too.  Kinda sad, he was a rich man in the 90s (though I've heard it was primarily from MK2 of all things)

Yeah, been listening to the old topcasts in my car while commuting, and apparently a number of those Williams guys ended up at Midway across the street.

[ChadTower]

With some guidance I have traced the sound problem to the CPU board.  Haven't tracked it down to the direct cause yet but I'm getting closer.

Synopsis:

Grounding sound select pins individually on the sound board, with the CPU connector removed, generates sounds.  Doing the same with the CPU connector on generates nothing.  Should be 5v on each of the sound select pins (with CPU connected) but two of them are almost at ground, likely meaning they are shorted somewhere.  Since it is only a problem with the CPU connected it's likely on the CPU.  The harness from the CPU to the sound board tests good.  Next step is to pull the CPU, replace all sockets and critical headers anyway, plus the male side of the 40 pin interconnect.  In the process I'll socket the sound PIA so I can swap it.

[ChadTower]

CPU board with all new sockets except the ram which already had replacement sockets, a new male 40 pin interconnect, new sound header since I'm having issues there, and the battery holder moved off board.

I tried to pull the sound PIA to socket it but couldn't get it out without damaging it so I just resoldered the whole thing.  It's worth a shot as I don't have any spares.

[ChadTower]

Popped the power board back in minus that missing disc cap... figured it was broken before, can't hurt anything now. 

Put a new disc cap in and the one electrolytic that I didn't have at the time... one of the 100uf 150v caps.

I'm holding out mild hope that when I put all these back in the sound will work properly.  Mild hope.

[Jeff AMN]

Good to see that you're keeping on track with this, Chad. Keep the pics and info coming.

[ChadTower]

Put the boards all back in... nothing fried.  That's good.  Now it only boots into audit mode.  It did that intermittently before.  This is probably either an error in the battery holder hack I did or the 5101 RAM crapped out.  I think that's one of the socketed chips so I'll just have to order a couple and see if that works. 

Sound test still fails exactly the same way.

[ChadTower]

Booting to attract now... had to go into audit mode and cycle through the settings and force it to write to memory.  I couldn't do that earlier because my son took the key out of the coin door and put it someplace random.  Had to wait for him to get home.

For a change of pace I'm going to start on the top of the playfield now.  I'm a bit burned out on these boards.

[ChadTower]

The topside of the flipper area is now stripped... metal parts are all in a parts tumbler with corn cob and some polish.  This is my first time trying that so I'm interested to see how it turns out.  I recently saw a Fathom that was done this way and every flippin' part was gorgeous.  Had to try it myself.

Pics coming.

[shardian]

I wasn't all that impressed with the tumbler results I got. I ended up hand polishing everything with Eagle One wadding. Now THAT worked great.

[ChadTower]

How long did you tumble it for, media, polish?  Just curious.  I have 4 caps of Berry Brash Polish in there right now.

[shardian]

I'm pretty sure it was corn media, with some 'media reactivator' crap added in. It cleaned the parts, and made slight dull areas shiny. Everything was nice and smooth too. For the effort though, it really wasn't worth it. I got 10x the results with Novus and wadding. I just grabbed a handful of parts and polished them while watching a show or movie with the wife.

Oh, and I ran the machine overnight usually for near 24 hours.

[ChadTower]

Cool, thanks for the info.  I'm not quite done yet with mine but it's been 23 hours and the stuff looks pretty damn good.  A couple really bad pieces need to stay in but I'm quite happy with the ball trough and the metal "plastics".  I'll get some pics up to show.

[shardian]

Cool, thanks for the info.  I'm not quite done yet with mine but it's been 23 hours and the stuff looks pretty damn good.  A couple really bad pieces need to stay in but I'm quite happy with the ball trough and the metal "plastics".  I'll get some pics up to show.

Ball trough in tumbler: smooth and glinty in light, but a mostly hammered style finish.
Ball trough after polishing by hand: Mirror finish so good my wife could do her makeup using it.

Just sayin'...

[ChadTower]

Ball trough in tumbler: smooth and glinty in light, but a mostly hammered style finish.
Ball trough after polishing by hand: Mirror finish so good my wife could do her makeup using it.

Just sayin'...

Yeah, but it's not going to stay that way.  It's going to get hammered.  Plus from what I've read the shiny finish is just going to oxidize itself away anyway.

EDIT:  maybe the best path is tumble the parts that really need abrasion, hand polish the parts after? 

[ChadTower]

On the way home I picked up some Nevr-Dull as shardian suggested.  Gave it a shot on one of the trough pieces I just took out of the tumbler - I have some pics of all three stages but not sure they will show the real difference.  The polish did improve it after the tumbling was done.  It took a lot of buffing to get the oil off of it.  No mirror shine but it looks nicer.  It concerns me a bit that the can says "do not use on lacquered surfaces" as I don't know how that would react with a playfield automotive cleared. 

Still, it's good, and I might use it on some parts later.

[pinballjim]

Dude, how long have you been collecting and you just bought your first can of Nevr-Dull?  Sheesh.

Stop wasting time on metal parts that nobody every sees.  Seriously.

[shardian]

On the way home I picked up some Nevr-Dull as shardian suggested.  Gave it a shot on one of the trough pieces I just took out of the tumbler - I have some pics of all three stages but not sure they will show the real difference.  The polish did improve it after the tumbling was done.  It took a lot of buffing to get the oil off of it.  No mirror shine but it looks nicer.  It concerns me a bit that the can says "do not use on lacquered surfaces" as I don't know how that would react with a playfield automotive cleared. 

Still, it's good, and I might use it on some parts later.

I washed the parts in the sink - no soap, just water. Rubbed it with my hands and all the residue came off. Then I just buffed it lightly with a clean microfiber rag. Zero oilly residue and a perfect shine.

[ChadTower]

I thought I had all the residue off too.  Then I picked it up an hour later and could see I was wrong so I buffed it again.  Washed my hands, picked it up again... oily.  Mostly, though, it's the warning about lacquered surfaces that concerns me.

And Jim, no I'm not going to nevr-dull flipper brackets.  Duh.  I'm testing out methods for when I get to the stainless ramps.  I used the trough piece as a test because I already had it off the game.

[Pinball Wizard]

Fun game, Steve Ritchie's only truly great one.  A touch easy, though.

I beg to differ. High Speed was a true great one from Steve Ritchie. The amount of money that used to pull in for me when it used to be on location. Now it sits in my collection and people still love it. Black Knight was always second for me.