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Man Overboard - A whitewater project

myPinballs

myPinballs

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10 Years
Joined
Nov 19, 2011
Messages
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Location
Pudsey UK
This arrived on sunday to replace the fish tales that has gone on to new pastures.

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Check out some audits. Game still on L2. Timestamps give an idea of the time to generate £2221.70. Just over 2 years. The clock is set wrong, but the date difference is accurate. Not bad for an old 90s game!

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Here’s an interesting observation. Check this wms factory label. Typo! should say J-123. Doh!! luckily J-132 has key different but is a 4 pin connector to

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Fixed a few opto issues. Decided may as well strip and clean the mechs whilst out. Ultrasonic cleaner works magic on opto cases and all parts really. The plan currently is not a full strip down as that will come later, just enough to get it playing properly for now, with any missing/broken/wrong/weak parts replaced, as time is limited

Also upgraded the coil wiring to have connectors like later games. Easier in future for removal/service

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Those connectors are such a great addition, I was thinking of bulk buying the connectors and adding them into any other games I get to do work on, should I do another project, which I am hoping I do, are they readily available?

Any playfield pictures... love a playfield picture.
 
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New Targets, for the commonly missing green oblongs

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Only one place for these nasty little ****ers

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After

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James said:
Those connectors are such a great addition, I was thinking of bulk buying the connectors and adding them into BSD and any other games I get to do work on, should I do another project, which I am hoping I do, are they readily available?

Any playfield pictures... love a playfield picture.
Click to expand...

Yeah I sell them in pairs with the pins. You can get them in bulk if you need to
 
Been alittle busy with an office move recently along with creating a new store room! You can never have enough space to put things!

But have done. Fitted 2 new full new lower flipper mechs with new correct power coils, upper playfield one to go in later

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Wiring looms and playfield underside cleaned whilst i was sorting this.

Also did a quick cleanup of the trough and associated mechs. Will probably get all this replated at some point but for now is all clean again

Before

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After

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I am also looking at my missing topper situation. :( I thought i'd start by getting the hardware up and running again. Have ordered a new loom from best of pinball as mine is missing and i have some work to do on the lamp boards to

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I have an idea on a little mod to the strobe board so i can use different more readily available bulbs to. More on this later after some experiments. The 194 bulbs seem pretty expensive and hard to get these days.
 
So my topper strobing lamps. time to fix it.

Removed the lamps boards and controller board to inspect, clean and repair. The lamp boards were ok apart from very dirty and 1 bulb holder needing replacing. Also had to resolver around4 or 5 sockets. Fitted all new bulbs and put them to one side

The controller pcb had some burn and only 1 led lit.

After a quick lena in the ultra sonic looked like this

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Replaced a broken and leaking cap and 3 resistors (all burnt). That brought the pcb back up and running.

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However, the new lamp cable was another story and the lamp patterns were all messed up with the last lamp not working either. Part 2 shortly!!
 
So, the lamp cables i purchased were wired wrong :( I ended up having to take them apart and rewire using the manual, which is also wrong! The schematic for the board doesn't match the wiring on the lamp board page, but the lamp page wiring is the correct part!

Rewired everything and re-installed

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Now was all working correctly except the last lamp was off all the lamp. Lamp no 16. Logic probe out and traced this back to a dead 2n6427 darlington. These are no longer made so i've found 2 alternatives that i stock in case anyone needs some. These are

MPS -A13
and
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Changed it and we were back in business

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Now, in any other situation this would be the end of this little mini journey, BUT...

Every time i turned the game on the lamp strings would light in random 'locked on' patterns, and when going into test mode would freeze at the pattern position as you pressed the enter button. This just felt wrong to me, though studying the schematics showed clearly that the williams design had no way to clear the lamp shift registers on demand.

So....

I decided to make a small hardware mod to the board. Something that anyone else could do to improve the operation of their whitewater games to, or possibly i'll make a kit for this, or even design a new updated controller board!!

The design is to add a watchdog timer ic into the mix that monitors the clock input and pulling down the clear lines of the shift registers if the clock line stops being generated. This is the same idea as how whitestar driver boards work on a blanking line

Had a look at the schematics and worked out where to add this mod and bingo! No more janky lamps stuck on on boot or frozen lamp patterns during test modes!

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See here for a quick video on how my game now behaves on boot and in test

 
Bagged this full set of new ramps recently :) Its really making me want to start the full strip down, but i have so much on must be patient!! and my proto topper chase lamp boards arrive here soon.

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