Complete Jokerz!

MajesticPinball · Aug 10, 2018

My most recent purchase failure was an incredibly overpriced (thanks to an ebay auction) Williams Jokerz! that has definately seen better days and after getting it all set up has also seen some electrical horrors. The more i look at the machine the more i find cut wires and connections bound with electrical tape. Its going to be a big project but perhaps when its complete i could trade it for a minty Addams Family! :rofl:

And now for the electrical house of horrors

My favourite, “oh no, the connectors broke - lets cut it off, wrap the wires together and stuff them in a rubber that i can take off of the playfield!”

MajesticPinball · Aug 10, 2018

Firstly i checked the fuses, not too bad really as only 13 out of 19 were completely of the wrong value. Ive placed a big order of fuses of all values as ive never had a good backup supply so its about time i did. I have also ordered a few IDC connectors and plugs to try and make a start on the multitude of connector sins!

astyy · Aug 10, 2018

Classic stuff, I like the brown gunk spread around the header pins, was probably a chewed Toffee originally :tut:

MajesticPinball · Aug 10, 2018

astyy said:
Classic stuff, I like the brown gunk spread around the header pins, was probably a chewed Toffee originally

I have no idea what it is, but i have found quite a lot of it so far :hmm:

BigIan · Aug 10, 2018

JReedie said:
I have no idea what it is, but i have found quite a lot of it so far

Yeah go with toffee, don’t be sniffing it just in case ....

deathrow · Aug 10, 2018

I bid on that ?

MajesticPinball · Aug 11, 2018

deathrow said:
I bid on that ?

I wish that i didnt! :rofl:

James · Aug 11, 2018

@deathrow a pretty clean one (looked clean, but all know I am useless at pointing that out) came up on Gumtree in Lowestoft but they wanted £1200 for it I think...

MajesticPinball · Aug 11, 2018

James said:
@deathrow a pretty clean one (looked clean, but all know I am useless at pointing that out) came up on Gumtree in Lowestoft but they wanted £1200 for it I think...

Its down to £1,100 now but looks like half of the GI is out. Still considerably better than mine and theyre not really asking for much more than what i paid

James · Aug 11, 2018

MajesticPinball · Aug 12, 2018

Today I removed the interconnect board to replace a set of header pins, turns out the burnt connector lead to a completely burnt/destroyed trace on the reverse side of the board so i soldered in a jumper wire to bypass the destroyed trace.

MajesticPinball · Aug 19, 2018

Was quite surprised to see her spring back to life so quickly but here she is lit up for the first time. I’ve repaired the GI relay boards for now but have a couple of new ones on their way so will just replace those to save problems in the future. My next issue is getting past a very intermittent factory settings restored message. There is no acid damage around the battery holder but from what i can see there is a partially broken tab which isnt making the best contact with one of the batteries so next i will remove the holder and wire in an external one.

MajesticPinball · Aug 19, 2018

As this is my first System 11 machine I’m not 100% sure but I’m lead to believe that the only way to change the language settings on a System 11B game is to change the game roms, if this is correct would anyone be willing to burn the english game roms for me as my french isnt too good and reading the test menu is a struggle :hmm:

Jay Walker · Aug 20, 2018

Re. the text language; the early System 11 games had a selection/adjustment for this, but it was English or German (boards with jumper W7 not connected booted up with German text), but the later ones didn't have enough memory space for a second language. Swords of Fury, slightly earlier than Jokerz, was one such case, so I suspect Jokerz will be too. If there is an adjustment, though, it would have the existing value as 'Francais'

MajesticPinball · Aug 20, 2018

I did try the W7 jumper just for luck but it made no difference. I Cant seem to find a language adjustment in the menu so I might have to learn French pretty quick :hmm:

Bandit Boy · Aug 20, 2018

Had one of these in the 90's.. Loved it, had to sell when baby came along!!

MajesticPinball · Sep 1, 2018

A bit more progress, playfield is partialy stripped down and I’ve fitted a remote batter holder which seems to have fixed the intermittent booting issues i was having.

I also finally took the plunge and ordered a Lyman Turbo Pro 1200 tumbler which arrived this morning so cant wait to annoy my neighbours and start tumbling parts haha!

Mooseman · Sep 12, 2018

I have a new top ramp for Jokerz the one with the lanes built in. Most are very yellow. Also a Jokerz overlay if your interested in either.

MajesticPinball · Sep 20, 2018

Got cracking again today, i stripped the playfield down as far as I’m going to go. Most of the posts and T-nuts were so rusted i dremmeled the heads off of the screws and banged them through - will just replace all of these with new parts when the time comes.

I cleaned the playfield a bit before taking those pictures and wax is on the playfield now so while waiting for that I disassembled all 3 drop target banks, cleaned them and gave them a spruce up with some gorgeous new decals. I also changed 4 sets of header pins on the drop target boards as they were either missing, bent out of shape or covered in mysterious brown gunk.

Very excited that the first of my parts horde has arrived, including a full flipper rebuild kit which i will probably move on to next.

MajesticPinball · Sep 21, 2018

Wax off and pretty happy with the results. Now the playfield is clean the scratches all around the place where some idiot tried to remove the mylar with a screwdriver are really showing up. I also spent way too much time hand polishing the trough mechs but I’m very happy with the results. Autosol is definately my newest favourite product!

MajesticPinball · Sep 24, 2018

More screws and misc. parts through the tumbler, pretty happy with the results and i polished the ball guides and put them back on the playfield along with the black wood trim. I cleaned the jet bumber bodies and thought the new blue skirts suited the machine better. I was considering a playfield overlay but honestly dont think its worth the cost and extra work for this machine. More star posts on order soon as for some reason i only ordered 20.

Pretty pleased so far i think its going to look great once done, it’s a shame about the bozo with a screwdriver who tried to remove the mylar but I think ive managed to find a decent colour match for the blue by the center ramp.

stumblor · Sep 27, 2018

Man the tumbler does a fantastic job of those metals. Never played Jokerz but it looks like a fun layout. How are you planning to deal with the yellow top plastic?

James · Sep 27, 2018

You can see why the king chose her...

Classic Pinball

MajesticPinball · Oct 1, 2018

stumblor said:
Man the tumbler does a fantastic job of those metals. Never played Jokerz but it looks like a fun layout. How are you planning to deal with the yellow top plastic?

I had a few test games when I first got it running just to get a quick idea of what works and what doesn't and it was quite a fun game even on the sorry state that it was in, I think what puts a lot of people off is the annoying music.

I'm going to try and clean my ramp up a bit but will probably end up sourcing a new one. @Mooseman kindly offered to sell me his so I will probably do that

MajesticPinball · Oct 11, 2018

Progress has been a bit slow this week, I’ve been really unmotivated by it this week the scratched up playfield is really starting to bother me. Anyway, I’ve been fixing a lot of odds and ends under the playfield, mainly the spliced and cut wires everywhere. The Playfield is slowly taking shape again, the 3 shopped drop target mechs are back in, all brand new T-Nuts underneath, new playfield Starposts, Posts and screws. I never order enough of the starposts and I'm missing 4 at the top by the rollover lanes.

A big thanks to @Paul for burning 3 new ROMs for me. The game is now upgraded from revision F-2 to L-6 which also means she finally speaks English!

I cant really do much more on top of the playfield for now until i get some parts orders in (especially LEDs) so will start working on all of the mechs under the playfield next.

If anybody has any plastics for this game, especially the slingshots please let me know!

MajesticPinball · Oct 15, 2018

Removed the slingshot mechs tonight along with the light boards. Cleaned up the slingshot switches which polished up quite nicely! LEDs are on order as well as a few more odds and ends for the top of the playfield.