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In Progress Bally Space Invaders - Complete Restoration.

Hey guys well I know it's been a while but I have updates!!!

It has been quite a long journey having received my playfield back late last year and then having too many other projects in the way to really make a start.

I started by cleaning as much of the polish from the playfield and replcing every bulbholder on the rear, cleaning the inserts as I went.

I fitted new warm LED's to all the GI holders and good working incandescent bulbs to all inserts. Each bulb holder was tested as I went and powered from a bench supply to test chains of bulbs as I went.

Next I started to refit the top of the playfield, mainly to see what pieces I was missing after over 12 months or lying around in my garage, mostly in many various boxes, post tumbling etc.

The one piece I was missing before I started was the horseshoe but I managed to get a salvaged one from a scrap Silverball Mania playfield.

After everything was refitted on the top side I then turned my attention to the underside, starting with the rollover switches, pop bumers and rebuilding the drop targets.

At this point I also tried to guage all of the switches, as I found out later the gaps needed to be a lot smaller then I thought.

I fitted new caps and diodes where needed.

Next I removed the PSU from the cabinet and rebuilt that, new Diodes, fuse holders etc, correct fuses and new pins for the connectors. I also wirebrushed the rust off the mounting plate and transformer, resoldering every wire to the -49 board.

Once done that was refitted to the cab and the playfield was wired up.

I had GI, no bangs or smoke so all good there.

Next I turned my attention to the backbox which as of this point had never been attatched to the machine in all the time I had owned it.

I had 5 good displays although they all needed the pin connectors re-soldering, as did all the pin connectors of pretty much every board except the Altek CPU.

I fitted a lamp board that was 'tested' and a driver board that was working, and I had locked on coils, hardly any lamps etc....

I took a closer look at the lamp driver first, One of the 24 driver IC's was damaged so this was replaced and then I still had most lights missing, I started removing pins in the connectors to the lamp board and nearly all of them had their ends damaged. This has a temporary repair for now.

I now have all lamps bar 7 or so, which is transistors.

Turning to Solenoids I had an annoying fault with the slingshots.

The left one had a broken diode so was locking once fired and staying on, the right one was locked but the diodes and transistor were fine. I tracked this down to be a faulty U4 IC.

Then the hardest fault to find of all was the background sounds...

There is no option 18 on this game but there are two dip switches, 29 and 30, that control what sort of sounds are played. These were both set on but we still had no background sound, or flipper explosion sound..... odd

I checked the solenoid triggering and thought it was very very odd but then resoldered the pins again on the sound board and re-capped it but still nothing.

The Altek must have been ok as it was working in Silverball Mania.

So I read the manual.......

Switch 15 - Background Sound on or off....

Yay, logic at its best, two switches to do the same job.

So pictures to follow shortly...

It's stunning, even if I do say so myself, I am very very proud of this.

So overall it's had :

New bulb holders,
New Plastic Set,
New Pop Caps
New 50point Caps
Repainted Playfield
New Legs
New leg protectors
New Drop Targets
All boards and displays repaired.

100+ hours of labour.

Courtney x
 
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