Defender brought back to life - now to restore

[Crayola]

I picked up a defender this weekend. It had be owned by the guy since 97 and had just
recently stopped working. The monitor lit up and it displayed the rug patten but I couldn't
get into diagnostics. Thankfully along with the game he gave me a supposed working board
set. I got home and immediately went with a board swap.. Nada.. good board set my
butt. It wouldn't boot either.

So I put the old board set back in and started swapping with the ram chips between boards
bank by bank and checking if anything changed. The rug pattern got better.. The one screen
on the cycling pattern with alternating blue and pink lines became a solid blue.
Evidently stripes during a test are bad and indicate a ram problem.

However swapping all the ram didn't fix the problem. Next up the CPU. I swaped it. Nothing.
Then all the ROM chips one by one.. Sigh..as I was replacing the very last chip and looking up
a board repair service.. Blammo! the game came back to life.

I played for a few seconds and noticed the down joystick wasn't registering. I checked the input
board and the control panel. The leaf switches weren't making good contact and one of the wires
wasn't hooked up to the board connector. Hooked it up and every thing is good.

The only issue left is the game is coming up in house keeping mode. I can get to game mode
but its irritating. I assume this is because that board doesn't have any batteries or a place to
put them:) I need to get a battery holder wired in.

The CPO is decent. Previous owner replaced it a few years ago.
The leaf switches are really soft. I'll replace all the leaf
switches.

I just have a plain piece of plexi in place of the bezel.
The marquee is in great shape and can be reused.

Did defender have plastic marquee/bezel retainers? Seems cheap..
I'll need to find replacements for those. The current ones are
okay but not perfect.

The side art is okay but the sides need so much work I am
going to strip/sand and repaint. Then use a stencil I found
to redo the side and front artwork.

The bottom is okay.. no water damage but its been dragged around
a lot. Some of the plywood at on the bottom sides is coming apart.
Like I said.. lots of bondo love.

Since its an older williams defender it came with a black coin door.
I'd love to replace with a chrome one. Anyone have a source for these?

Crayola

[Crayola]

More pictures...

[TheShanMan]

Yeah, battery will solve the bootup issue.

Black door is the newer door. Silver door is the older pinball style door. It's not the same size though so if it's important to you to get the silver then you'll have to somehow correct for that (IIRC one dimension is shorter on the silver door). Probably not worth it IMO unless you're going to restencil.

[Crayola]

I am planning on restenciling so I could easily adjust the dimensions.

Crayola

[CheffoJeffo]

  on getting her running again.

[Crayola]

Thanks CheffoJeffo! I am pretty happy with myself right now:) Admiditly
it was an easy one however given I had a spare board set. My asteroids is
much more of a challenge. Need a monitor recap and I've never done any
monitor work before..or soldered for the past 5 years. Gonna practice first
on some throwaway boards:)

Crayola