I recently picked up a Rotation VIII, I've been looking for one for some time and one turned up in Germany on Ebay, a cheeky offer to the seller was accepted, probably still paid over the odds, but how do you value something when there are no benchmarks?
Anyway..... it was non working, to it arrived nd the challenge commenced.
It wouldn't boot up, this was down to the connection between the logic board (CPU/MPU) and the EPROM board, with that sorted it then booted.
This then showed that it was still dead, feature lamps were very bright and the seven segment displays non working, traced to three dead transistor on the logic board, the transistors were for driving rows/columns on the matrix, with the transistors replaced things were starting to calm down and with a few feature lamps replaced all lamps were working....
Next onto the display, what was noted here was that when there was the issue with the column transistor the signal to the displays was 23V instead of around 2.5-3V, this had killed one of the Darlington arrays, with this replaced the displays were now alive again....
Things were getting exciting by this point and attract mode was consequently doing what it should be....
Attention was now being given to the playfield, the parts list is interesting, looking for part numbers on the internet shows up little or nothing! one pop bumper coil bracket and coil was missing, but it looked strangely familiar, on comparison with my WPC games it's identical in every way! Looks like Williams Bally designers strive as hard as the Porsche designers
Checking out Andy's and Phil's websites Andy had the correct coil so made an order with Andy for a few bits, all arrived next day, great service as usual. Missing pop bumper bracket/coil replaced and other pop coils replaced as another had clearly been hot, found the pop bumper coil that had been hot to be 'locked on', still work in progress on this one as the logic driver on the logic board sees the correct input from the pop spoon switch, but output is incorrect, replaced the driver chip but no change.... back to that one another time!
Next was the rotation motor, it would only rotate the table anti clockwise, traced to a Darlington pair transistor on the motor drive board, replaced that and the rotation was restored.
Next was to try to 'play' a game, the rubbers were hard as glass, so just pressing targets by hand, soon found the left flipper would flip but not hold, open circuit hold winding on the coil, back to our Andy for three new coils.
Strip, clean and wax the playfield, fit new rubbers and clean the plastics (which look like new) and we have life....
All in, a nice little project and a machine I've been looking for for quite a time, it's the first I've seen and its mine
All the best,
Chris.
Anyway..... it was non working, to it arrived nd the challenge commenced.
It wouldn't boot up, this was down to the connection between the logic board (CPU/MPU) and the EPROM board, with that sorted it then booted.
This then showed that it was still dead, feature lamps were very bright and the seven segment displays non working, traced to three dead transistor on the logic board, the transistors were for driving rows/columns on the matrix, with the transistors replaced things were starting to calm down and with a few feature lamps replaced all lamps were working....
Next onto the display, what was noted here was that when there was the issue with the column transistor the signal to the displays was 23V instead of around 2.5-3V, this had killed one of the Darlington arrays, with this replaced the displays were now alive again....
Things were getting exciting by this point and attract mode was consequently doing what it should be....
Attention was now being given to the playfield, the parts list is interesting, looking for part numbers on the internet shows up little or nothing! one pop bumper coil bracket and coil was missing, but it looked strangely familiar, on comparison with my WPC games it's identical in every way! Looks like Williams Bally designers strive as hard as the Porsche designers
Checking out Andy's and Phil's websites Andy had the correct coil so made an order with Andy for a few bits, all arrived next day, great service as usual. Missing pop bumper bracket/coil replaced and other pop coils replaced as another had clearly been hot, found the pop bumper coil that had been hot to be 'locked on', still work in progress on this one as the logic driver on the logic board sees the correct input from the pop spoon switch, but output is incorrect, replaced the driver chip but no change.... back to that one another time!Next was the rotation motor, it would only rotate the table anti clockwise, traced to a Darlington pair transistor on the motor drive board, replaced that and the rotation was restored.
Next was to try to 'play' a game, the rubbers were hard as glass, so just pressing targets by hand, soon found the left flipper would flip but not hold, open circuit hold winding on the coil, back to our Andy for three new coils.
Strip, clean and wax the playfield, fit new rubbers and clean the plastics (which look like new) and we have life....
All in, a nice little project and a machine I've been looking for for quite a time, it's the first I've seen and its mine
All the best,
Chris.
