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Complete Gottlieb Genie

DRD

DRD

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Oct 26, 2014
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Newark
Bought this big girl on eBay as a non-worker. My first Gottlieb. Same width as the mighty Paragon, but even longer.

Beautiful artwork. The mirrored backglass is stunning ..

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Huge playfield with mini pf in the top left corner ...
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After giving her a once over, it looks like she will need a lot of love. Classic ex-operator game. This girl has never received any love.

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The backglass needs Triple Thick to stabilise the art.

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The back box lock was drilled out. The mech looks reassuringly overengineered. I have stolen whirlwind's quarter turn cam lock so the backbox at least closes properly.


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Pick and mix leg bolts with incorrect head sizes. Oiled legs. All manner of incorrect fuses. Iffy 13a plug. Neglected flipper mechs. Need to buy one internal leg bracket. Even one of the bolts holding the head on was too long so didn't secure it properly ....

Pretty filthy ...20181104_172101.jpg

But relatively unmolested...

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All manner of horrible connector issues need resolving. Main board has been hacked. Service stickers indicate that the boards were repaired in the late 1980s...

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I need to order an initial batch of parts, including fuses, before I can properly power her up.

The 2x bridge rectifiers are ok. But I don't want to go further until I get the necessary fuses.
 

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@DanLewell , I am hoping to have her ready for the League in January

I have never even played a Genie before, but as I love Paragon - I am hopeful that this similar size and age Gottlieb will be a comparable beast. If I end up liking her I think that Funhouse or Shadow might be for the chop as I am one game over my sensible capacity of 12 now.

I have ordered a raft of parts today.

Parts availability for these old Gottliebs is really good actually. Game specific parts like pop bumper artwork, drop targets, plastics .... are all available. Likewise the standard consumables like star posts, rubber kits, flipper rebuild kits, flipper bats, circuit boards, playfield protectors etc etc

looking at the state of the boards and the horrible connectors I am really tempted to shell out for a Pascal all in one board as these seem well regarded by Gottlieb aficionados. Will sleep on that decision as it would be c £250
 
Looks very straight and in really good condition ,nice find :thumbs:

I Think I would be getting the begging bowl out and asking a Gottlieb fan on bended knee for some help in repairing the board first ;)
 
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I bet you she fires straight up once you have the correct fuses in.
 
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Beautiful game, i would love a Genie but widebody games dont fit in my flat. You’re on to a winner with this one!
 
The Genie lives again !!!! I am very pleasantly surprised.

20181109_175531.jpg

All I have done so far is
  • put the correct fuses in
  • Rebuilt the most offensive connector, I think this was shorting and blowing one of the fuses
  1. All 5 displays seem to work, thank the Lord, but I have not checked every segment
  2. The drop targets go down and reset
  3. All but a couple of switches work
  4. All but a couple of solenoids work
  5. The sound card makes noises, but not during play
  6. All 5 flippers flip
I will continue to repin the connectors and take it from there
 
DRD said:
The Genie lives again !!!! I am very pleasantly surprised.

View attachment 74403

All I have done so far is
  • put the correct fuses in
  • Rebuilt the most offensive connector, I think this was shorting and blowing one of the fuses

  1. All 5 displays seem to work, thank the Lord, but I have not checked every segment
  2. The drop targets go down and reset
  3. All but a couple of switches work
  4. All but a couple of solenoids work
  5. The sound card makes noises, but not during play
  6. All 5 flippers flip
I will continue to repin the connectors and take it from there
Click to expand...

Have you rebuilt the power supply? Specifically new electrolytic caps, zener diodes, headers etc. Definitely worth doing this
 
All the voltages seem ok. The power board had been re-capped in the past.

I got the sound board going, so it now cycles through the test. There was a horrendous re-cap done in the past, damaging the relevant track, rendering the sound intermittent. It gets so hot now that it smells as though it will catch fire

On power up the game seems to go into Tilt mode (not slam tilt - the dreaded normally closed circuit is actually ok). Displays are dead again. Blowing the under playfield 2A fuse and 5A one on the transformer board.

The Tilt bob was removed when I bought it, and it looks as though the hacks to the switch matrix terminals on the board may be related to disabling this Tilt error on start-up ???

So much has been woefully repaired in this game - crap soldering, ugly board hacks, shabby tinning of board connectors, loose flipper mechs, incorrect coil end stops, drilled out lock that was not replaced ...

These Gottlieb boards have such a bad reputation that I have just bitten the bullet and ordered the Pascal 3 in 1 plus the plug in sound board.
 
DRD said:
All the voltages seem ok. The power board had been re-capped in the past.

I got the sound board going, so it now cycles through the test. There was a horrendous re-cap done in the past, damaging the relevant track, rendering the sound intermittent. It gets so hot now that it smells as though it will catch fire

On power up the game seems to go into Tilt mode (not slam tilt - the dreaded normally closed circuit is actually ok). Displays are dead again. Blowing the under playfield 2A fuse and 5A one on the transformer board.

The Tilt bob was removed when I bought it, and it looks as though the hacks to the switch matrix terminals on the board may be related to disabling this Tilt error on start-up ???

So much has been woefully repaired in this game - crap soldering, ugly board hacks, shabby tinning of board connectors, loose flipper mechs, incorrect coil end stops, drilled out lock that was not replaced ...

These Gottlieb boards have such a bad reputation that I have just bitten the bullet and ordered the Pascal 3 in 1 plus the plug in sound board.
Click to expand...

Even though it was partially rebuilt in the past, you don't know when, who by or what quality the parts were. My advice is rebuild it properly with new decent parts inc the zeners. Even more important now you have one of pascals great boards coming. Not doing this is like running a Ferrari with remoulds on ! Just my view of course :)

On a different topic, even though my favourite system is 80b (for obvious reasons) I wish they'd kept up the lovely backless designs and a nice plywood cab. Our 80b cabs are horrid and the back glasses, well.. best not mentioned!! Great backglass on this game :)
 
Which zeners do I need to replace pls Jim ? Do you know the part # ?

The Pascal 3 in 1 has a power board, capacitors etc built into it. It replaces the power board in the head.

This is my transformer board, which has a few diodes for the coin door switches...

1541870968447932629907.jpg

There is a cluster wacko jacko diode boards at the far end of the playfield. What do these things do ? Switch matrix ? ...
15418710464651192423059.jpg
 
DRD said:
Which zeners do I need to replace pls Jim ? Do you know the part # ?

The Pascal 3 in 1 has a power board, capacitors etc built into it. It replaces the power board in the head.

This is my transformer board, which has a few diodes for the coin door switches...

View attachment 74475

There is a cluster wacko jacko diode boards at the far end of the playfield. What do these things do ? Switch matrix ? ...
View attachment 74476
Click to expand...

Ah, I didn't realise it was a 3 in one one with a new psu design. Sorry. I thought you were getting a P1 just replacing the cpu . You should be all good then. Good old pascal :) Nice neat solution
 
@DRD enjoying the photos on this. Was wondering what was the sellers back story on this old gal?
 
DRD said:
There is a cluster wacko jacko diode boards at the far end of the playfield. What do these things do ? Switch matrix ? ...
View attachment 74476
Click to expand...

If those are like the 80b games then it will be the 4 sets of switch diodes for the playfield matrix.

Use this to check the wiring colours. This diagram is a bit confusing as it has playfield and cabinet matrix stuff shown separately to the different connectors, but hopefully will sort you out

fullsizeoutput_b.jpeg
 
@astyy

The seller said that he had bought the game in an auction. It was his first and only Pinball. When he bought it, he said that it worked.

It then developed an intermittent fault that he could not fix.

I think he was holding something back. Someone on the forum asked him questions which went unanswered. I asked for a photo of the back of the backglass, this was also ignored.

The seller was self employed. He had a pool table. Guitar amps. Electric guitars. Jukebox. Fruity. Quite a few outbuildings. So I reckon he had fiddled with it but given up. He knew basic electronics. He had wiring diagrams, service manuals and the like.

Problem for me is that this is my one and only gottlieb. I don't understand how these games should behave or boot. There are relays below the playfield to handle the tilt function for example. I only spotted that nest of diodes for the first time today when I put the playfield in a vertical position. The mpu board has been hacked - fly leads, cut resistors, replaced chips etc and I have no idea what these hacks do.

I did get it going on Friday night so my guess is that the wiring, displays, mechs etc are fundamentally sound. Absolutely everything needs cleaning and rebuilding. My buffing wheel and tumbler will have come out of retirement.

The Pascal all in one board is relatively expensive. But if I am right and the wiring is ok, it should sort me out.

I cannot even board swap with my other games, which is my standard way of isolating problems. The problems in this game could be multi-layered for all I know. I always had a policy of sticking to bally SS, system 11 and wpc so I could board swap.

Had it not been winter I wouldn't not have bought a dead game from a random geezer on eBay. It is years since I bought a game from an unknown seller. But it looked a bit like paragon and will give me something to do on the long nights.
 
You could buy that system 1 board from alpha1?
 
I thought about it, but I don't want to mess about with electronics. The mechs and corrosion in this game will take me long enough.
 
This came today. The famous Pascal 3 in 1 board plus piggyback sound card...

20181116_094138.jpg

This replaces all 4 of the original boards - voltage, mpu, sound and driver.

The board had inscribed on it what each pin of each connector does, which was extremely handy when diagnosing my switch matrix problem.

Mucked about for a while with a dead switch column. There were only 4 "switches" and 4 diodes in it, but Gottlieb does things differently. One of the 4 switches is actually triggered in 10 different places on the playfield ! So there are ten parallel leaf switches that feed a single diode in the diode bank. Two of the other three dead "switches" had multiple triggers too.

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The previous owner had tried to fix this - the manual had been annotated.

It transpired that the mpu connector, which was a corroded shambles, had also been pinned in the wrong order. The return from the dead column had been wrongly inserted into an unused strobe line.

Anyway, that is fixed now. Everything seems to work. When I have finished and I know the game is solid and 100% functional, I may have a go at rebuilding the original boards to see if I can get them going reliably.

Replaced a couple of missing rubbers and finally had a couple of proper games. It is hideously sloppy and slow. Every link has masses of play in it. But repairing stuff like this is the most satisfying thing for me.

Will be good to see how she plays when I have rebuilt the mechs. Looking to replace the worn moving parts in

5x flippers
3x pops - unfortunately these have wpc style hard-wired lamps you need to de-solder
1x slingshot
1x saucer kickout

Will replace the high voltage switches

Eos
Flipper
Pops (maybe, If they are too far gone)

When is a slingshot not a slingshot ? When it is in a Gottlieb. The lower playfield of this game has some remarkable similarities with Paragon. Weird lower left pop bumper (removed from Genie to assess wear), two lower right flippers, asymmetric slingshots. But with the Genie, the right slingshot has no mech in it, it is fake ...

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Some inserts are dished, so a playfield protector will deal with that. The one in my Paragon works a treat

This pop bumper works, but is very worn ....

15423862008401248991854.jpg
 
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Thats a nice looking game. Love the artwork.
Congrats on getting it going, especially finding the wrong wiring side of it.

That Pascal 3 in 1 boards look nifty. There's some clever people out there.
 
The gameplay in these early SS games of the late 70s and Early 80s is limited by modern standards. But the artwork is phenomenal.

Bally was always the benchmark for me. You just don't see many early SS Gottliebs in the UK at shows or meetings. But looking on the net, Gottlieb produced some stunning artwork during this period.

Other than @Poibug 's - there is literally no mention of anyone owning a Genie on Pinballinfo, before I took a punt on this one.

It has opened my mind
 
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