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Main => Project Announcements => Topic started by: PetitMorte on February 24, 2006, 01:45:04 pm

Title: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on February 24, 2006, 01:45:04 pm: Howdy folks!

This week I became the proud new owner of a Williams Barracora (http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=177) pinball machine!

Having gotten the thing home, and examined it under good light, I can say that this thing needs love, and lots of it. But it's still an absolutely beautiful machine. The art was done by Doug Watson, and just about all of it is intact.

The machine needs to be cleaned, have a few places on the cabinet repaired, to have a few playfield pieces replaced, and some fairly serious playfield wear touched up.

I'd say that this playfield hasn't had any wax on it ever, but in some places, you can see that some sort of clear stuff was put on it and allowed to run before it hardened. You can also tell that whoever did that didn't bother to take any of the playfield pieces off before they did that. I'm hoping that either the cleaning, or the waxing will smooth that stuff out.

It's got mylars around the bumpers, and next to the slingshots, but they've gotten discolored and look pretty bad.

The inside need cleaned out, and some of the structural metal bits inside are starting to sprout white dust. (How do you get butterfly wings inside the machine???)

The backglass is almost completely perfect, but there's a couple of places where the paint is delaminating. I've already got the Krylon triple-thick crystal coat to deal with that though.

As far as the electronics go, the machine is missing the power board, so I can't power it up, but thanks to the folks at rec.games.pinball, a replacement is on it's way right now.

This pin is definitely going to be a big, involved project, but I think I'd rather have that then get a pin that works perfectly and already looks beautiful.

I'll take and post pics as soon as my wife gets back from her vacation, and finds out that while she was gone I bought a pinball machine. ;D

Huge thanks to Chad for advising me up to this point, and pointing out great pin sites like Marvin3m's (http://www.marvin3m.com/fix.htm).

(http://www.xmission.com/~daina/images/jp/barra_bg.jpg)
(http://www.xmission.com/~daina/images/jp/barra_pf.jpg)
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ChadTower on February 24, 2006, 01:59:39 pm: You're welcome for the help. Glad to do it.

A Sys7 is a good first pin. Traditional playfield (no ramps or toys or mini playfields), fully mature solid state, and advanced enough game modes to be a keeper. I suspect this will lead you to more pins. My advice at this point is to get the thing shopped and fully working and then leave it that way for a few months. Don't do a ton of restoration on it initially, just make sure it is clean and well maintained and no further damage can come to it. That will give you time to see if pinball is really your thing, and if it is, time to get more machines. Once you have a playable pin in your house you are not going to want to go without one for the sake of optional restoration work.

Definitely seal that backglass soon. Try to clean it first if you dare but if it's not that bad just seal the dirt in rather than do any further damage trying to clean it.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ChadTower on February 24, 2006, 03:00:18 pm: What is with the reverse writing on the top corner of the BG?

EDIT: Oh. The pics aren't yours. NM.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: F1r3f1ght3r on February 24, 2006, 03:16:37 pm: Quote from: ChadTower on February 24, 2006, 03:00:18 pm
What is with the reverse writing on the top corner of the BG?

EDIT: Oh. The pics aren't yours. NM.

Beer sign :D
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ChadTower on February 24, 2006, 03:17:33 pm: Oh yeah, that's half of the Miller logo too... didn't know Miller HAD a special reserve.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: PetitMorte on February 24, 2006, 04:56:16 pm: yeah, I wish my playfield looked that good.

...

well, it does kinda look that good... but it's got spots where the paint has been worn off.

So what I'll start on this weekend is:

- Taking all sorts of pics of everything

#1 Dealing with the backglass and the peeling paint

? building a rotisserie for the playfield ?

If I can, then I'll probably start removing the playfield elements too.

(I can't find Novus anywhere locally, so I'll drop in an order for that asap.)
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: F1r3f1ght3r on February 24, 2006, 05:35:47 pm: Quote from: PetitMorte on February 24, 2006, 04:56:16 pm
(I can't find Novus anywhere locally, so I'll drop in an order for that asap.)

did you check motorcycle shops?
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ChadTower on February 24, 2006, 05:50:36 pm: You don't need a rotisserie for the playfield. One step at a time. When you order the Novus, get 1, 2, and 3. You're also going to want to order some bulbs and a new rubber kit. And some caranuba wax, you can get that lots of places, I use regular Turtle Wax I got at Target.

When you start removing stuff, take pics. Tons of pics. Halfway through each disassembly take more pics. You cannot have too many pics. They will be your guide in putting the stuff back together.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: PetitMorte on February 26, 2006, 04:05:49 pm: Whew!

There's a LOT of teeny littly pieces all cobbled together to make up playfield items!

At this point, I have the backglass sealed, with all the curled paint nicely flattened down and sealed in! I didn't know how it would come out, but it looks very good!

I've also got the playfield almost entirely stripped. I'm still working out how to remove the bumpers, as they're not really intuitive on how to take them apart. Any hints?

now that all of the plastics and posts and stuff are off, I can definietely tell that the only wax this machine has ever gotten was applied without removing any of the playfield elements. blah... and it's lumpy too!

I've got a new rubber set, the novis, new balls, and new lightbulbs on the way. I ordered #47 lights instead of #44 lights... They're supposed to burn less hotly and last longer. Some of the playfiels plastics are a bit warped... presumably because of the heat of the lights underneath them, so I want to avoid that in the future.

On the positive side, my wife came home, I broke the news, and I am still alive to talk about it! She's not really happy, but I can tell that she's intrigued!
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ChadTower on February 26, 2006, 04:50:55 pm: I hope you took a LOT of pics taking that apart. Sometimes that's the only way to remember small things like which star posts went in with a through bolt and which with a wood screw... and I usually dismantle each logical part (i.e. one bumper) and put all the pieces in a baggie with a little label... a bag for each part of the playfield.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: PetitMorte on February 26, 2006, 05:50:12 pm: Quote from: ChadTower on February 26, 2006, 04:50:55 pm
I hope you took a LOT of pics taking that apart. Sometimes that's the only way to remember small things like which star posts went in with a through bolt and which with a wood screw... and I usually dismantle each logical part (i.e. one bumper) and put all the pieces in a baggie with a little label... a bag for each part of the playfield.

Heh. yeah, I took tons of pics, and all of the parts *are* in baggies, labeled with where they came from.

I'll post some of them asap
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: PetitMorte on February 27, 2006, 12:31:26 pm: Good god those bumbers are complex to take apart!

1) remove screws, take off top cap
2) remove bulb
3) under playfield, unsolder coil, label wires (remember that the 2 red wires go to the same lug as the stripe on the diode)
4) under playfield, unbolt metal bumper thumper
5) remove metal bumper part from above
6) under playfield, unbolt, remove coil and mech.
7) under playfield, unsolder the lamp socket
8) remove lamp socket from bumper body
9) unscrew bumper body, remove it
10) remove skirt, try not to drop the little spring that goes with it.
11) under playfield, push out bumper "holder"

I don't know how I'm going to re-solder those lamp holders without flipping the playfield upside-down.

Ta-Dah. One playfield, completely stripped and ready to be cleaned.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: PetitMorte on February 27, 2006, 12:46:21 pm: Ya know, here's a question. Since I've got the playfield all stripped, why not touch up the places where the paint has been worn off? 90% of the wear is on black paint, so color matching shouldn't be a problem. I can't see doing it later, as I'd have to re-remove everything, strip the wax that I'm going to put on it, and then rewax and reassemble it. Lots of extra work for a guy as lazy as me.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ChadTower on February 27, 2006, 01:38:24 pm: Because the restored parts will stand out just as surely as the wear spots do if you don't get it right. Better to come back to it later when you are more experienced.

And you don't have to strip EVERYTHING to clean the PF. I didn't take the bumpers off the Laser Cue, I just cleaned around them and cleaned up the exposed parts with Q tips.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: PetitMorte on February 27, 2006, 02:31:13 pm: Well, I definitely wanted to get the bumpers up. The mylar under/around them is all yellow-milky, bubbled up, and torn in spots. I don't know if I'm going to replace them or not, but I definitely want them removed.

Without all of the stuff on the playfield, you can really see how it was treated in the past. I tried to get some pics of this, but can't get the lighting right to show it. Somebody put some sort of thick, clear goop on the playfield, without taking off any of the parts. And once they put it on, it flowed down a bit before it hardened, so there's lumps and valleys and stuff. There's no way a ball would roll straight over those. That'll have to be addresses as well.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ChadTower on February 27, 2006, 02:34:51 pm: Bad clearcoat attempt?
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: PetitMorte on February 27, 2006, 05:13:16 pm: Ewww, I hope not.

What would you use to remove that? Without endangering the paint, I mean... I'll try a few things and see what works. Hopefully it's just poorly applied liquid wax.

Either way, it's going to be a lot of elbow grease and careful attention. :D
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ChadTower on February 28, 2006, 08:44:28 am: If it's wax then you can just use Novus 2 to get it off. If not, who knows what it may actually be.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: ClubNinja on February 28, 2006, 02:30:03 pm: Just noticed this one. Barracora is sweet - congrats and good luck with the shop job. At least Chad and I are awaiting your results.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration
Post by: CheffoJeffo on February 28, 2006, 06:45:55 pm: Quote from: ClubNinja on February 28, 2006, 02:30:03 pm
Just noticed this one. Barracora is sweet - congrats and good luck with the shop job. At least Chad and I are awaiting your results.

So am I ... I've been watching Buddabing's thread and this one with anticipation ...

Cheers.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 02, 2006, 09:59:45 am: Ok. I finally got the camera downloaded, the pictures hosted and here comes the Pic-y goodness.

Starting out, got the legs attached, before all work started. And the head, with backglass up on the workbench.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 02, 2006, 10:04:50 am: You can see the paint coming off on the bottom of the backglass.

This needed to be sealed as soon as possible, before it got any worse. There was also some minor peeling up in the upper right corner, but that section is all black, and the peeling isn't visible much at all.

It struck me that the only spots where the paint is peeling are in the spots where your hands would naturally be when you take out the backglass.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 02, 2006, 10:33:53 am: So I dropped by the local hardware store and got me some of that sweet sweet Krylon Triple-Thick Cyrstal Clear sealant. (check here for some great information on saving and restoring pins (http://www.marvin3m.com/restore/index1.htm#bg))

I had to wait for a while for my garage to warm up enough to spray the triple-thick. It was bitter cold outside, and I just had a tiny little heater in there struggling to keep the place warm.

After spraying the whole backglass with a nice wet coat, I put down some saran-wrap over the curled paint areas and smoothed them down. The paint was very curly and refused to lay flat by itself, so I put a few small items on the peeling areas to keep them flat. I did the same for the black ares in the upper right, but didn't need weight to get it to behave.

I left it out in the garage for about a half an hour, until the clear coat was mostly dry to the touch, then brought it inside to dry in one of the back bedrooms. I gave it about a day and a half to dry, then peeled the seran off. Just like the article said, it peeled off very happily and the paint had laid down nice and smooth.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 02, 2006, 10:49:06 am: That done, I looked into the head and was happily surprized. The ad had said that the pin was missing both the power supply board, and the audio board. Evidently the guy who had it didn't quite know what boards were what, because the sound board was right there where it ought to be. There is, however, an obviously empty space with an empty mounting bracket right next to the audio board. It's where the Speech board would go if this was a Black Knight, or Gorgar, or any of the other System 7s that had speech. Maybe that's what confused him.

All of the other boards look like they're in pretty good condition. There's a bit of discoloration near the big bank of large resistors on the driver board, but it doesn't look like anything has been burnt or cooked off badly.

I *did* find a little problem in the transistor bank that controls the solenoids... One of the components looks like the magic smoke is all gone. I'm betting this needs to be replaced before I power up.

Fortunately for me, I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron, and big circuit boards like this don't scare me.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 02, 2006, 10:49:22 am: I don't see any pics... must be the corporate firewall filtering them out. I'll check when I get home.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 02, 2006, 10:54:19 am: darn it!

I'm posting them up from yahoo pictures. Can you see anything here?

http://photos.yahoo.com/alakazam_oh (http://photos.yahoo.com/alakazam_oh)

I'm trying to avoid something like flickr or photobucket.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 02, 2006, 11:04:40 am: Damn it! Now I can't see them either! Crap!
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 02, 2006, 11:05:18 am: Attach them to your posts rather than hotlinking.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 02, 2006, 11:08:20 am: doh.

;D

All right... editing...

Ok. done.

That should be ok so far.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 02, 2006, 01:23:14 pm: Tell me you didn't use an old battery holder (complete with rust and acid) to hold down the plastic wrap on that BG...

Those parts of the BG that you think didn't show much, that is the black parts that have cracks/chips, are really going to show once it is backlit. Keep that in mind.

That one resistor is definitely toast, but there's probably a few more. I wouldn't be surprised if you have to replace at least one or two of those IDC connectors and have to reflow the interboard (MPU-Driver) connector. Those board level interboard connectors are a pain in the ass.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 02, 2006, 02:18:18 pm: Don't worry. It's actually a rechargable battery from an RC boat. ;D It looks a little rusty, but the plastic coating on teh outside is quite clean.

Yeah, I'm hoping I don't have to do a lot of repair/replacement, but I know I probably will. :P
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 02, 2006, 02:35:35 pm: Even if you don't HAVE to do some of the touchup fixes, you probably should, since who knows how much life some of the common failure points have left in them right now.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 05, 2006, 03:54:18 pm: Hey there.

Well, I got a can of air, and peeled off the mylars from the playing field... one from each of the three bumpers, and one from in front of each of the two slingshots. With the freezing air treatment, they came off beautifully, with no paint loss! A little orange powered Goo-Gone, and they're the best looking patches on the whole playfield!

I made a couple of passes over the playfield with novus, and it's really looking nice and shiny. Much more clean than it was. There's a couple of spots that seem to need cleaning more than others, but in some of them, I'm running into a problem.

Evidently the "gloopy stuff" on the playfield is some sort of shellac. In a couple of places, it's thick enough to see that it's orangish-yellow, and where it's actually come up, it definitely looks like dried shellac. Whoever put it on didn't really clean the machine well before they slapped it on, so there's dirt trapped, and didn't make things level, so as it dried, it flowed a bit here and there.

They even put the shellac over the slingshot mylars, so after peeling them up, there's a visible edge. The novus has been doing pretty well to smooth out the edgeline, but it's taking a lot of time, and my arms are starting to get tired. I ordered that 2" buffing kit yesterday, and I'll be much happier once it arrives.

What I'm wondering, is when I get to waxing it, will the wax be thick enough to be able to smooth out the lumps/lines?
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 05, 2006, 04:03:08 pm: Hard to tell without pics... this is probably a good "get some closeup pics and post on RGP" issue.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 05, 2006, 06:32:05 pm: Is there *nothing* RPG can't do???

;D
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 05, 2006, 07:45:11 pm: When it comes to pinballs, probably not.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 07, 2006, 12:03:21 pm: Well Chad, you said that novus would take off wax, yes?

On the one hand, there's so much I want to do to fix this thing up! I don't want to leave it all chipped up and lumpy!!! On the other hand, there's all of the electronic stuff that's waiting to be done, seeing if I can actually get it playing... and that can't be done with the playfield all apart like I have it!

So I'm torn... conflicted, as it were, on what, I say, What I must do next for this poor machine.

So what I can do is just wax the darn thing, put the playfield back together, and work on getting the game *working*... THEN go back, restrip the playfield and get it beautiful. Hmmm... That advice sounds strangely familliar. ;D

That is, if I can't pick up the NOS Barracora playfield that just became available on Mr. Pinball's Classifieds. (grin)

Hmmm... must stop at Radio Shack on the way home today and buy fuses...
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 07, 2006, 12:15:14 pm: Yeah, get it working, then worry about making it pretty. Once it is working you'll be surprised at the motivation you have to get it shopped out in 8 hours vs the two weeks it will take when it's not ready to play.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 07, 2006, 12:19:30 pm: ;D

I hate it when people give me advice, I disregard it, and then it turns out that they were right in the first place.

I may pick up a nice soldering-station while I'm there too.

and a couple of replacement transistors, and resistors... I found another set on the driver board thatappear normal from the front, are all burnt and toasty from the back.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 07, 2006, 12:28:34 pm: Can't hurt if you are a good enough solderer. A spare boardset may be a good eventual investment, too, if for nothing other than diagnostics when it fails later.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 08, 2006, 11:13:32 pm: Blah. The only soldering "station" that they had was a Variable power unit that had 2 settings, 25 watts and 40 watts. No temperature control at all. Blah again.

Anyhoo, I gave the playfield one more good novusing, and then put on my very first coat of wax. That thing is teh shiny!

I do notice that after waxing, some of the crazing in the paint isn't as visible as before. We'll see how it looks after many more coats.

I picked up most all of the fuses that I need... all except the .25 one. Fortunately the power supply I got came with a new set of fuses, so that won't start out being a problem.

I tested all of the coils for shorts, but I didn't find any. I'll find out which coils those 2 burnt transistors control, and triple-check those coils.

In the meantime, I should probably sit down and clean all of the little playfield bits that I removed earlier.

Oh, my new rubber set arrived, from Marco, and it had some mistakes in it. I ordered the Barracora kit, but it came with too many of some rings, not enough of others, and had the tapered-cone post guards instead of the cylindar ones. I gave Marco a call, and their customer service person transferred me right to "the owner". She and I went over my manual, and the IPBD pictures, and came up with what should be in the "correct" set. And then she dropped one of those in the mail that same day, gratis! Now *that*'s customer service! w00t!

So tomorrow, playfield waxing, cleaning playfield bits, and more waxing.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 09, 2006, 10:04:32 am: I use this (http://www.topoftheline.com/micro-buffing-pads.html)with a cheap (i.e. low RPM) cordless drill for cleaning and waxing... makes it very fast and effective. Just be careful on spots with excessive wear that you don't make it worse by pressing too hard.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 09, 2006, 01:32:54 pm: Amazing! That's exactly the same set that showed up the the mail yesterday. ;D

And, as a bonus, one of the RGP folks emailed me some very nice PDFs of the Barracora Instruction cards for the skirt! w00t!
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 09, 2006, 02:50:44 pm: Nice... I may make up some custom cards for the Laser Cue, shouldn't be hard.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 09, 2006, 03:04:05 pm: Check out Ken's instruction card (http://www.pinballrebel.com/game/pins/instruction/index.htm) site. He's got scans of the origional Laser Que cards there.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 09, 2006, 03:09:36 pm: Thanks... better than the ones I have but still not that pretty.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ClubNinja on March 10, 2006, 09:50:57 am: Bummer - no Time Fantasy card on there. Need that one.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 10, 2006, 10:08:16 am: Well, if you look at the Laser Cue card, you'll see it would take about 10 minutes to create a similar one for Time Fantasy, and that includes a trip to the fridge for a beer.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ClubNinja on March 10, 2006, 11:14:56 am: Quote from: ChadTower on March 10, 2006, 10:08:16 am

Well, if you look at the Laser Cue card, you'll see it would take about 10 minutes to create a similar one for Time Fantasy, and that includes a trip to the fridge for a beer.

Yeah. Maybe I should try to find out what's supposed to be written on it.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 12, 2006, 09:20:54 pm: Woohoo!!! It's Alive!!!

It has some issues, but it lives, and it lives enough to be played!

This weekend, I finished The 5th coat of wax, and then cleaned all of the playfield items and plastics. Reinstalled everything, replacing all of the general illumination bulbs (on the playfield, not under) with #47 bulbs instead of #44s. #47s burn slightly dimmer, but also burn cooler and suck less electricity, which makes it easier on the circuits. Put in the new set of rubbers, all clean and spiffy, and replaced all of the lock-nuts on top of the plastics with those little rubber cylinder things.

The machine, it is teh Shiny!!! Even though I didn't touch up the playfield, there's still a huge difference between what I brought home and what's there now. Once the thing was back together, and I slid in the glass and locked down the bottom bar, and stood back to take a good look at it. ...sweet...

Anyhoo, after that, I put the head on the machine for the first time, connected a few of the cables, being VERY CAREFUL TO MATCH THE COLOR OF THE CONNECTORS AND THEIR WIRES TOGETHER. heeheehee. ;D

I replaced several fuses that were missing, turned the machine on, and ... no smoke!!! The power supply's voltages all tested good ( kudos to Keith of K's Arcade (http://www.ksarcade.net/) for the board.) so I connected everything else, turned it back on, and it came right up into Game Over mode, no problem! Lights under the playfield blinking and spinning, it was so cool. No sound, and no general illumination, but still very cool. It's alive!!!

I used the manual to put it through it's self-tests and found some problems right off. First and formost, the credit/ball display doesn't light. That makes some of the other tests, like the switch test useless 'cause I can't see the results. Still, all of the other displays work fine. I temporarily plugged one of the other displays into the credit/ball slot on the display board, and it did show a changing set of hieroglyphics, so I think it's the display itself that's broken, not the display board.

The machine didn't want to produce any sounds, aside from the occasional bell ring, so I fiddled with the sound board connectors... cleaned off the contacts, reseated the fuses, reconnected everything, and viola! Sound!

* Just a side note, as it turns out Barracora evidently uses a lot of the sounds from the Defender arcade!

At the urging of my wife from the other side of the house, I quickly located the volume control and turned the sounds down to a much less house-shaking level. ;)

Only one of the coils on the playfield refused to fire during the coil test. The right side pop up for the last R in Barracora. Checking the manual shows that that coil is driven by transistor Q27 on the CPU... Check the schematics... as it turns out Q27 is THAT one:
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=50591.0;attach=41891;image)

Ok, so far so good. I have replacements on hand, a little soldering and it should be fine. What's really cool, is that the system seems to *know* that the drop target is broken, and doesn't actually require you to hit the R to complete a set! I had read that System 7s had broken part work-arounds, but it's kinda cool to see it in action.

The light Matrix test showed several dead lights, but they were quickly replaced with good bulbs, and now everything blinks on command.

The other problem that I've discovered is the coin switches themselves. Dropping coins into the machine doesn't add credits, and pretty much it's because someone seems to have tried to "fix" the delicate wire, and has it bent all out of shape. Supposedly there's a spring in there attached to the wire, but it's not really connecting to anything at all, so the coin switches just flop around. If I want to add a credit, I have to use the credit button inside the door.

One last problem that I've got will be fixed by a quick stop at Radio Shack tomorrow. The General Illumination wire that comes into the head doesn't have the same connector as the GI socket on the power board. That means that so far, all of the GI lights are just dead. Well, not really dead... just "waiting". Evidently when Keith was rebuilding the power supply, he upgraded that socket to a more current, more robust molex connector. It's good, because the old connectors would burn quite frequently. I'll just stop in and pick up the new connector tomorrow.

Although... I noticed that the connector that I need to fix this problem is the same one that powers the monitor of the RoadBlasters machine... Hmmm.... No! Bad! No stripping the Road Blasters for parts!! You can wait until tomorrow.

Heh. So the quick list of things to be fixed: ball/credit display, Transistor Q27, the coin switches, and the GI connector. Other than that, it's working fine! I played a few games, and I'm very happy!

Hey Chad, What sort of coin switches does your Que have? Could I get a closeup pic of the mechanism?

Thanks.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 12, 2006, 09:33:25 pm: Shnikeys.. Pinball Medic (http://www.pinballmedic.net/parts/williams_pinball_system_boards.html) has the ball/credit display for $65. That's a tad rich for my blood at the moment. I may have to wait until after tax time to slide that by my wife.

:P
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 12, 2006, 10:37:37 pm: Yeah, those displays are pricey, as they are a pretty specialized part now. Try Betson, maybe they have some. they seem to have everything else, and if they don't, try Marco Specialties or Pinball Life. Or hell try RGP again.

I fired up Barracorra in Visual Pinball and was pretty surprised to hear that the play sounds, at least the background "music", is identical to Laser Cue.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 13, 2006, 01:42:41 pm: ZzzzzhhoooooomZzzzzhhoooooomZzzzzhhoooooomZzzzzhhoooooomZzzzzhhoooooom!
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 13, 2006, 01:59:33 pm: Yep, that same urgency based cycling... the further into the ruleset you get, the faster it cycles.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 14, 2006, 07:02:58 am: Stopped at the shack, no connector... Bought a nice male/female set of 2-pin molex connectors.

Canabalized the RoadBlaster's monitor power connection, ;D replaced it with the shack connector, RoadBlaster continues to function fine.

A few quick passes with the soldering iron and ka-bam! General Illumination works!!!

Again... Schweet!

Het Chad, you get to be right again... ;D That corner on the black area on the backglass? You CAN see all the little cracks around the edges of the fix when the GI lights kick in. I know I've got one of those silver paint pens around here somewhere... That ought to handle it.

Piccy goodness pending.

Next on the list, replacing that transistor on the driver board. *IN THEORY*... it should be as easy as popping out the board, desoldering the pins (I absolutely LOVE my soldapult!), dropping in the new component and soldering it back up. We'll see what happens in reality.

Also, it's suprizing how *quiet* the machine gets when you put the glass on the field! All of the loud THACKs and POWs of the solenoids get muffled to relatively quiet thumps and bangs. Huh...
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 14, 2006, 08:36:45 am: The beauty of the Triple Thick here is that if you did it right, it helps with the touchups. If you mess up, you can carefully remove your touchup and try again.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 14, 2006, 09:16:41 am: Just for fun, this morning, I removed the ball/credit display from the machine and removed the display glass from the board. I cleaned off the old rosin and removed all of the old solder. The soldapult removes almost all of the solder from the pins, and a quick swipe with the copper braid removes the rest. Then the display glass pins just slide out of their holes as easy as pie. A quick swipe with goof-off removes all of the old burnt looking rosin, and leaves the board nice and clean and shiny... and ready to be re-soldered.

Worst case, I burn myself with the soldering iron, scorch the table, and the display continues to not work.

Best case, it fires up and works fine. Either way, I have gotten in more soldering/unsoldering practice. ;D

I've found a couple of ball/credit displays for sale, with just the display glass going for around $50. Once I get that taken care of, I can find out which switches are getting stuck.

In between balls, the machine will just sit, as if it's waiting for something, without resetting and spitting out the next ball. Sometimes it goes thru the drop-target reset 2-3 times. And on rare occasion, it won't start a new game. To me, it sounds like there's a switch closed or open somewhere where it shouldn't be.

Tonight, transistor Q27 gets replaced.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 14, 2006, 09:33:24 am: Check the trough sensor switches. It sounds like it doesn't know the ball drained. The drop target reset you see is a sort of "where did the ball go, fire all solenoids and maybe it will pop loose from its location". A pin in play will do that after a while when no switches have been hit under the assumption that the ball is stuck somewhere.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 14, 2006, 11:39:33 am: You're probably right about the trough sensor.

When a ball drains in Barracora, it kicks the ball into the waiting trough, the table resets it's lights for the new ball, drops all of it's drop targets and then re-lifts all of the targets that should be up. Then, all that done happily, it kicks a ball into the shooter.

It's kind of a happy little dance it does with the drop targets to get ready for the new ball... ThunkThunk.. thak!thak!thak!...thak!thak!thak!thak!thak!

What I noticed when playing yesterday is that the ball would drain, and then I'd wait. Thrumthrumthrumthrum No happy drop target dance. thrumthrum. If hit the flippers a few times, it might start it's dance and kick out a new ball. Sometimes it would dance more than once. Either way, I don't remember if it kicked the ball into the trough or not.

Diagnosing this would be so much easier with a working ball/credit display. :D
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 14, 2006, 11:49:52 am: Shouldn't be that hard without the display... take a good look at the trough sensor lever and the switch itself. That switch is a low traffic switch so odds are it's only misaligned or the lever itself is bent and not hitting it. It could be just dirty or has a broken solder joint. Check all of those common things.

Is this a new problem or is this a problem you're just now uncovering?
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 14, 2006, 01:15:42 pm: Probably one that I'm uncovering. Now that the thing is playable, quirks in gameplay are going to start coming out. I figure I'll fix those as they pop up.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 14, 2006, 01:56:51 pm: That's pretty much how it will work, until you get sick of it, and then decide you're going to rebuild all the flippers, retin the edge connectors, and repin the connectors, and replace all the IDC connectors because it keeps popping random issues.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 15, 2006, 12:34:24 am: Well, resoldering the display glass didn't work. It's still dead. I did, however give my soldapult quite a workout and I believe that I've got the hang of the thing.

So I put my m4d l337 new soldapult skillz to work, and replaced transistor Q27. For all intents and purposes, it looks like a success... except for the fact that the coil still isn't firing. So I put the machine into test mode, firing off the coils, and pause it on the non-working coil, intending to grab my meter and check if it's getting any voltage... and all of a sudden, *twitch*, *twitch*, *twitch*, the coil starts jumping just a little bit, then BAM! it fires! BAM! BAM! BAM! just like it's supposed to... then *twitch* BAM! *twitch* *twitch* *twitch*... nothing. So I wait, and after 15-20 seconds, it starts up again! Same routine, twitching, then firing, then fading back out again. (sigh) weird. I'll have to look into this one, and ask on RGP.

One of the drop targets in the same set seems to have a "falling down on its own" problem. After fiddling with it, it does seem to slide up as easily as the other targets. In all probability, taking that set or targets off (or both!) and disassembling and cleaning it wouldn't be a bad idea.

Another of the annoyances that I've found, the right flipper doesn't activate the top lane change. A quick look under the playfield shows it's missing a diode, and without that, no circuit for the lane change switch to close. (mumble mumble radio shack mumble) Easy fix, as soon as I get a diode.

Like you suggested, Chad, I took a look at the trough sensor switches. When the ball drains, the machine DOES recognize it, and kicks it into the trough... but the switch there counting the balls, specifically the third ball doesn't seem to register. That'd be why it wouldn't start a game before too! Can't play without 3 balls. So I rubbed it down with alcohol, and flipped it up and down a lot, and now it senses ball 3 just fine. Starts games, no waiting between balls.

So far, so good. I've found a few ball/credit displays for sale... for the most part, $50 for the display glass, and $65 for the whole thing.

All in all, it's coming along nicely. I'll put a flipper rebuild kit on my wishlist for my birthday.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: SirPeale on March 15, 2006, 07:55:41 am: Quote from: PetitMorte on March 15, 2006, 12:34:24 am
...and all of a sudden, *twitch*, *twitch*, *twitch*, the coil starts jumping just a little bit, then BAM! it fires! BAM! BAM! BAM! just like it's supposed to... then *twitch* BAM! *twitch* *twitch* *twitch*... nothing. So I wait, and after 15-20 seconds, it starts up again! Same routine, twitching, then firing, then fading back out again. (sigh) weird. I'll have to look into this one, and ask on RGP.

Something's dragging. Disassemble and clean. Replace the sleeve if you have to.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 15, 2006, 02:26:23 pm: Didn't he already replace all the coil sleeves? I thought he had but maybe I'm just assuming.

Definitely disassemble and clean those drop targets. They need it, plus if you don't, all the crap in there is going to get on your playfield.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 15, 2006, 05:18:02 pm: No, i haven't replaced any of the coil sleeves as yet.

I've got an order in for some, but they haven't arrived yet.

I soldered in that diode on the right flipper, and now the 1-2-3 lane change works again.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 16, 2006, 09:13:26 am: ah, well that's your problem. You definitely should have done that before cleaning the playfield. Now you may get black dusty crap from the coils up there.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 17, 2006, 10:14:04 am: not much progress of late. My wife is in the hospital with a blood clot in her leg. Since she's going to be in there for a few days, I may take the opportunity to buy another pinball machine. ;D

I wish I had a pinball parts store local to me. Paying $6 shipping for 12 more sleeves just hurts, and it makes me want to buy more stuff to justify the shipping charges.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 17, 2006, 10:43:36 am: Dude that's retarded. Figure out all of the supplies you'll need, triple the figure since you're going to get another pin before long, and order it all at once. Don't pay $6 shipping for 12 sleeves. At least order 60 short and 60 long if you want sleeves only.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 19, 2006, 11:16:05 pm: DOH!

I think I may have found the source of weirdness with my only-sometimes-working drop target solenoid. I was cleaning up my workbench today, and was going thru my receipts to see how much I've put into the thing so far. One of the receipts for Radio Shack had the transistor that I used to replace that broken one on it. The receipt said TIN120... not TIN102. And the schematic says it wants TIN122s.

I checked the part that I installed, and the recipts is right. It's a 120, not a 102.

I'll replace that as soon as my next parts shipment arrives. Chad, I took your advice and ordered a bunch of small stuff that I'll probably use.

On the plus side, I cleaned up my computer room, and made a nice big space for a pinball machine in one corner. I also scored a new second-hand PC to upgrade my MAME machine with! Going from a PIII 700, to a 900MHz, and upgrading to a GeForce2 card! w00t!
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 20, 2006, 07:47:59 am: Doh... that stuff happens.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 20, 2006, 11:46:48 am: Weirdly, the right flipper has started to stick in the Up position. The first couple of times I saw this, I freaked out thinking "Burning Coil!!! Burning Coil!!!"

As it turns out, it seems to be a friction thing, and not a stuck coil (whew!) It's still annoying though, and definitely affects gameplay. When the right flipper sticks, you can get it to release by flipping the left flipper, or by hitting it with a ball. Fortunately that parts shipment I'm waiting for includes a flipper rebuild kit. ;) I was so glad I added that one in after having friends over and hearing comments about the flippers seeming "a bit weak" or "kinda squishy"... and they're right. There's a good deal of play in the flipper linkages, and they do seem to be cobbled together out of whatever random screws and bolts were laying around.

So... the to do list:

1) replace TIN120 with TIN 102
2) rebuild flippers
3) replace all coil sleeves
4) take apart and clean all drop-targets
5) replace the ball/credit display
6) figure out how to "tune" the bumpers so that they fire faster and more consistently. Maybe do the same thing to the slingshots.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 20, 2006, 11:58:24 am: Bumper tuning is easy... it's only a simple mechanical device.

Replace coil sleeve, clean all parts well. Replace disc (the part the ball hits to activate bumper), clean/adjust leaf switch, reassemble.

Slingshot is even easier... replace rubber ring, clean/adjust leaf switch.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 21, 2006, 04:12:58 pm: The new ball/credit display arrived today! Scored it off Ebay for about $20.
popped it in, fired it up, and it works just fine. schweet.

Pics will be posted when I get home from work.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 22, 2006, 12:14:44 am: As promised, Piccy Goodness!

If you look, you can see the places where the paint has come off the bottom of the backglass.

All in all, it looks a hell of a lot better than it did when I brought it home! ;D
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: F1r3f1ght3r on March 22, 2006, 08:36:42 am: :o Awsome job! man that sure looks sharp.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 22, 2006, 09:18:28 am: Pretty sweet. Did you get the pop bumpers rebuilt?
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 22, 2006, 10:26:59 am: Thanks F1r3f1ght3r! but there's a lot left to be done!

I haven't rebuilt the pop bumpers yet. Still waiting for that shipment of coil sleves to come in. The left bumper, when I took it off the playfield for the waxing, had a broken metal plate... the one that the solenoid core attaches to... that he bumper's "thumper" rods screw into? It had snapped in half, and the parts were just held in place by the thumper bolts.

In the shipment coming, I've got a replacement for that, so I've been holding off onm doing anything just yet.

I did, however, talk my wife into bringing the pin inside from the garage. :D

The master bedroom is actually above the garage, so last night when she went to bed early, I went out in the garage and started playing. After a few games, she gently and delicately let me know that she could hear the pin from the bedroom, and that it was keeping her from falling asleep. ;) I explained that it would probably be much quieter inside the house, back in the computer room where the MAME machine is, and she agreed with me.

I think the machine will like it indoors much better than in the unheated garage.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 22, 2006, 11:15:00 am: How cold does it get there? I've read that really bad things happen when you let a Triple Thicked BG get too cold.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 22, 2006, 02:44:47 pm: Evidently it doesn't get *that* cold.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 24, 2006, 10:02:49 am: Crap. It's not the transistor that's keeping the R drop target from firing.

Last night I replaced the TIN120 on the driver board with a TIN 102, and there's no difference in the pin's behavior. crappitty crap crap.

(While I had the driver board out, and the soldering iron hot, I removed the old kludged-up battery holder from the CPU and put in a brand new shiny one.)

So I wandered over to marvin3m's repair guide and went thru the solenoid not behaving properly guide.

I connected a test lead to the side-rail, and touched the othe end to the NON-banded side of the coil's diode. BAM! The coil fired. That verifies that the coil is good, and that it is getting power. (touching the test lead to the banded side will cause the solenoid fuse to blow!)

Then I touched the test lead to the back-metal of the transistor I had just installed. Again, BAM! This verifies that the wiring from the driver board to the coil is working fine.

So that leaves me with 2 possible areas for the problem to be:

1) the pre-driver transistor, which, if I remember properly, did test OK. (although I do have replacements for it, so I might just do that anyway just to be sure)

2) the driving 7408 chip. Evidently I can test that with my meter in diode mode. I don't have any of these, handy for replacement but in theory they shouldn't be too hard to find.

Not my pin, but here's an example of a blown chip, a bad pre-driver, and a blown transistor.
(http://www.pinrepair.com/sys37/chipblow.jpg)

At the very least, this weekend I'll swap out all of the coil sleves for new ones and disassemble/clean the drop-target assemblies. I have flipper-rebuild kits, but I probably won't have the time to do those, all things considered.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 24, 2006, 10:24:31 am: Good stuff, keep going. Next time swap out the coil sleeves and clean stuff before doing the top of the playfield.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 24, 2006, 02:16:26 pm: Now I know!
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 24, 2006, 02:57:37 pm: I'm getting another System 7 pin on wednesday night, so we're going to be really heavy in Sys7 pins soon.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 24, 2006, 03:05:35 pm: Oooo! Which one?
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 24, 2006, 03:23:12 pm: I'm probably jinxing the deal, but Black Knight. :cheers:
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 24, 2006, 11:47:21 pm: Well, with all lack of jynxing, Best of luck to you!
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 27, 2006, 01:12:17 am: WAHOO!!! The R is fixed! Yes!

I tested all of the electronics again, and the solenoid is fine, the wiring is fine, the transistor is fine, the pre-drivers tested fine, and the driver chip tested fine too. So I went back to Marvin3m's fix-it guide, and started reading.

Lo and behold, there's a section about weird things that occasionally work, occasionally don't work! Pretty much what it came down to was the 40-pin connector between the CPU and the driver board. Evidently the solder on the pins gets old, and cracks, and turns into cold solder joints.

So I unsoldered and then re-soldered all of the pins on the CPU and all of the sockets on the Driver board.

ALAKAZAM! The R starts working! popping every time, reliably! ;D <dances a happy little dance>

While I had the head off, and the boards out, I added in the fuses for the solenoid and lamp matrix bridges.
(http://www.pinrepair.com/sys37/addfuse1.jpg)
Three cheers for Gorilla Glue!

I gotta say, having the pin inside the house, in the same room at the PC makes it so much easier to work on.

So I've started replacing coil sleeves, like I should have done before. I started at the bottom of the playfield and I got about halfway through. Both slingshots, the ball drain, and the shooter solenoids, and the 4 solenoids in the left drop-target assembly.

Those drop-targets were pretty interesting. I eventually unsoldered the wires holding it in, and removed the entire thing. That let me take the whole thing apart and clean all of the bits and replace the coil sleeves. Bolt it back in, resolder the wires and it's up and running fine.

I was thinking about replacing all of the lights under the playfield too. Most of em have a dark film on them, making them dim at best.

So many things to do. ;D So many things done and working.

<dancec the happy dance again>
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 27, 2006, 07:27:29 am: Eeek. If you do it right you don't have to unsolder anything with the drop targets... nice work, though, on all of that. That must have taken some time.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 27, 2006, 03:53:38 pm: I can see where, if the only thing you were doing was swapping out the coil sleeves, that you could unscrew the coils one at a time... but it would be a bit of a pain. I'd hate to unbolt the whole unit and leave it hanging by the wires. It was a lot heavier than I thought, and once I got it disconnected, I could take it into the kitchen and spread it out on the table, and clean all of the little parts with a toothbrush.

The most time-consuming part was the interboard connector.
... heat the solder, soldapult it, repeat... maybe bring out the desoldering braid to suck up the last bits from the hole... resolder... repeat x40... move on to the driver board

Another plus, I made one of Tailgunner's $2 bezels (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=17175.0) for the RoadBlaster. It looks fantastic, and is the last bit that I needed for that particular project. All I have to do now is wait for it to get warm enough to paint, and then I can post the thing in BST or ebay. No progress on getting the new Mobo/processor into the Mame machine. going from a PIII 650 to an AMD 900. That should wipe away that last bits of lag from Monkey Puzzle Coin Exchanger.

... AND... I gave the dog a bath.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 28, 2006, 01:42:54 pm: One more sleeve swapped and mechanism cleaned...lower ball lock. The plastic bit was also broken, and missing the little "ramp" bit that helped kick the ball out of the hole, so that part got replaced too. This should save on the wear on the playfield too.

Time permiting, I'll disconnect, clean, and resleeve the right drop-target bank... 5-targets in that one.

I have noticed much better performance from the solenoids that I've re-sleeved. The slinghots REALLY kick now! Thanks Chad.

Or maybe, if I can get a whole evening to myself, I'll rebuild the flippers. Ooooooo..... Or maybe upgrade the MAME cab.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on March 28, 2006, 01:58:14 pm: Yeah, replacing sleeves and cleaning out coils is MANDATORY in any shop job. It's the bare minimum along with cleaning/waxing the playfield.

I'd also recommend cleaning all of the bulbs and the underside of the playfield inserts. Those lights being nice and bright makes a difference.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 29, 2006, 03:31:46 pm: Couple of more sleeves replaced. I haven't tackled the 5-target drop bank yet, but I should soon. I got one of the bumper sleeves replaced, an in doing so, learned a valuable lesson! It's much easier to remove the spoon/switch assembly first, and then the bumper bracket than it is to just remove the bracket and bend the hell out of the bumper's switches. As it turns out, I had bent the switches pretty badly back when I removed the bumpers to clean them. Now that I have them all straightened out, the bumper is quite sensitive, and kicks like mule the moment the ball touches its skirt. Wow.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on March 30, 2006, 10:09:34 am: Nothing pin-related to report today. However, I did manage to replace the Motherboard/processor/harddrive in my MAME cab. Upgraded from a PIII600 to an AMD 900. Puzz Loop is now completely playable!!! Now I have to get a spinner for it!!! wewt!
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on April 03, 2006, 02:29:40 pm: Hey there!

I've got some good news, and some bad news.

The good news is that I've finished replacing all of the coil sleeves and rebuilding both flippers! The game (when it plays) plays visibly better, with all of flippers and kickers and bumpers snapping fast and powerfuly. While I was under there, I started replacing lights and cleaning the undersides of the inserts as well. That makes the lights sparkle nice and bright. ;D

I also figured out why I was having a problem with one of the drop targets not staying up. Evidently that particular target's solenoid had a coil stop (http://www.marcospecialties.com/mmMS/Images/A-12111_100.jpg) that was just a hair longer than any of the others. It was *just* long enough to keep the drop target from fully catching so that it could stay up. I compared the stops with the others in the drop-target assembly, and found that the proper "short" stopper was being used by the reset coil. Once I swapped those out, everything was great. :cheers:

The bad news is that it's developed some CPU problem that makes it unplayable. :banghead:

Randomly,whether in play, or just in attract mode, it will "lock up". If you turn it off, wait, then on again, it will come up normally, flash the high scores like normal. After a few seconds or acting normal, all of the matrix lights and the displays will flicker quickly for a second, and then turn off. This kills power to the flippers and solenoids as well.

I went out to Marvin3m's and followed their steps. I pulled the F2 and F3 fuses (solenoid and lamp matrix) and started a display test... Bzzzzzrrp. the displays kicked out and the machine locks up. So I'm pretty sure it's not any of the switches or coils that are doing this.

Just to be sure, I disconnected all of the wires from the body to the head, except for power. I turned on the machine and hit the CPU's Self Test switch a few times. The first few pushes got code 0... nothing is wrong. After that, the self-test either wouldn't run, or would stay showing 0 indicating that the game had "locked up" Also, the self test never automatically shows any numbers during the lockup. Usually it just goes dark like everything else but the GI lights.

So the problem at this point should be isolated to the logic circuits... I've tried reseating all of the connectors, but again, no dice. I went and checked the power at both the power supply and the CPU, and the +5 volts reads +4.98v. I did accidentally notice that one of the blue Flipper Eproms feels pretty hot as compared to the others.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: ChadTower on April 03, 2006, 07:27:37 pm: First suspect: interboard connector.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on April 04, 2006, 03:34:11 pm: Yes. RGP agrees with you.

Parts on the way to correct that. new sockets for the chip0rz too.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on April 11, 2006, 12:06:26 pm: Again, Crap. :angry:

I replaced the whole 40-pin interboard connector, replaced the molex power connectors to the MPU and unsoldered/resoldered the pins for them.

Same exact problem. :banghead:

The next thing I think I'll try is to replace the flipper chipset. The one *does* get hot to the touch, and I don't think it's supposed to.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on April 13, 2006, 04:14:17 pm: Here is a much better pic of the drop-target solenoid stoppers. The one on the left is the one that goes into the drop-target, the one of the right is the one that goes in the all-target reset solenoid.

Accidentally swap them and just that tiny difference gives you a drop-target that won't quite stay up all the time.
Title: Re: Barracora pinball restoration - Now with Picture Goodness!
Post by: PetitMorte on April 21, 2006, 03:02:46 pm: IT LIVES!!!! :cheers:

I managed to snag a replacement CPU board on ebay for cheap. It was from a Black Knight, but since they're both System 7 machines, it would work just fine.

In addition to being a System 7 board, it also cam eith Syste 7 Bllue Flipper Chips!

Switch the Barracora chips with the BK, insert board, and VIOLA! A fuly functional Baracora pin! *Sweet*

I was an hour late to work this morning, as I lost track of time playing it!!! ;D