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Repairing Old-School PLASMA Williams Pinball Displays - 40 years old!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ม.ค. 2020
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Worked on a lot of these Bally and Williams games and replaced lots of bad 100K resistors and the glass displays too. I still get into lots of electro mechanical games too and I'm getting ready to get into a Kiss that needs a new MPU. I love to save these old school pinball games and jukeboxes they are history of American manufacturing! I have wonderful childhood memories growing up from a very young boy learning to work on them with my dad. Love your videos!!!
Very cool Harry, thank you for watching! You'll have that KISS up and running in no time, sucks about the MPU. Thanks for keeping the games alive!
I love the look of the old VFD score panels, and nobody gave a stuff about player 4 !...I bet Ken was never player 4.
Exactly! Ken didn't even check that probably :)
You is my HERO !
Aw, thanks!
Man this is such an underrated channel i would of you had like a million subscribers
Thanks Austin, we appreciate it :) We've been getting a lot more viewers and subscribers lately, just think... you were here at the beginning!
Thank you, Joe's Classic Video Games, much appreciated William's Pinball Display restoration.
Sir, contact pads - fiberglass pen, soft pencil eraser?
And conformal coating, for board protection opinion?
I've used both to clean them fiberglass pen is probably better if you have one. I think the coating would probably be a good idea depending on which area you're working on.... Thank you for watching as always Spider, we appreciate it!
Shout out to Ken ! =) You're right about pressing the button …. looks like everything just shorted out when you go into test mode. Nice displays, good as new !
It worked out great, by the way that Tri Zone pinball turned out NICE we play it in a later video still to come :)
@@LyonsArcade awesome .. looking forward to watching that vid =)
Pretty cool 👍
Thanks Rome!
Man love your videos. It has to be so satisfying to fix these machines. I miss troubleshooting and going thru schematics to find the problem. But watching you there is real work in getting these machines in good working order.
It would so cool to hear from the original designers.
Anyway thanks!
Thanks Dave for the nice words! Some of the designers pop up in some of these comment sections if you can believe that, the gentleman who designed Asteroids Deluxe was just on one of our videos about it the other day, explaining why he changed the difficulty of the game, pretty wild! I think there are some blogs around where people have tracked down some of these designers and done interviews with them, on a lot of these really older pinballs though unfortunately we've lost the designers over the years.
Great video - I have pretty basic skills - can diagnose and repair old audio equipment but would love to have the knowledge and skill to tackle these machines - think my wife would have something to say though as the living room is my workshop 😂
Pinball is a lot more straight forward to grasp what is going on.
Thanks brunster & Eric, yes it's fairly straight forward and the good thing is the boards work in several different games, so once you've fixed one you've fixed many in a way...
I think every squiggly QC mark I see is now Ken...LOL
Ken was a Stud!
You have been my latest binge. I love your content keep it up!
Thank you Pilot Kid, glad you enjoy them! See you on the next video....
Rumor has it that Ken left the pinball repair business around 90-91 to focus on his other career as a World Warrior when his old rival Ryu invited him to travel the world and kick some butt. He had an illustrious career as a pinball repair pro between 88-90 when he tried to leave the professional fighter profession due to a misunderstanding with his best pal Ryu that led some fighting in the streets.
THAT WAS THE SAME GUY???????
Thanks for the video been a while since I worked on these old beauties, its inspired me to get my but in gear and get my 5 machines that need some love done.
do it Chris, you can knock it out :)
Great video. It's nice that there are LED kits to replace the displays. Going solid state was probably the only reason pinball machines could keep being produced as long as they were. I bet you could build one now using a Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards to control everything.
You definitely could... some folks have pulled it off it just takes awhile to get the coding right.
Someone could exactly emulate the original hardware on a CPU, then load in the original ROMs and it would function identically to the original.
That looks far more complex inside than I would have figured. Thanks for the video.
They can do it a lot simpler now but that's what it took in 1977!
With most 7 segment display systems, the displays are multiplexed using "digit lines" to select which digit to light and "segment lines" to select which segments in that digit to light. The processor then scans through the digits in rapid succession so it looks to the human eye like they are all lit at once. Each segment line and digit line will have a drive circuit on it which on a display system this big can add up to a lot of components (especially with VFDs that need high drive voltage), but it's not really complex just repetitive.
On very large systems like this one it makes sense to increase the number of digit lines to reduce the number of segment lines (and also increase the brightness). So for example on a 30 digit system you could use 30 digit lines and 7 segment lines for a total of 37 drivers, but it's more efficient to use only 15 digit lines and have 14 segment lines for a total of only 29 drivers.
I could only find a low quality copy of the schematic but it looks like on this system they had 28 active digits driven by 14 digit lines and 14 segment lines.
Sorry I misread the schematic, it actually has 16 digit lines. This is because all the displays on the main board have to use the same segment lines (since they are in the same VFD). So there are effectively 4 unused digit positions in the matrix.
hi guys,thanks for taking your time to shoot these great videos :) x
Thanks Hope for watching, we appreciate it as usual :)
Cant wait to see the next video on rebuilding those new displays !
Coming Soon :) Thank you for watching!
I use contact cement to glue the displays back down. Dob a cotton swab into the contact cement and use it like a small paint brush. Just put a small dob of contact cement in each corner of the board where the display would sit and the same for the back of the display itself. Wait for the cement to dry about 5 minutes then press the display against the board. Presto! Display is firmly attached again and the board is still clean.
perfect Ken, thank you for the tip!
I have a master display where all the displays are off but looking at the side, you can see a yellow light on. Any ideas as to what's wrong? Nothing looks worn out
If you can see that light it probably means that the high voltage is there and that the glass of the display is o.k., but you're not getting the signals to illuminate any of the digits or segments. If you plug it into it's slave displays and some of them don't work it will help you narrow it down with the schematics (some of them are ran by the same chips). You could have bad resistors on the master display, or bad segment driver chips
Not sure if someone else pointed this out but if _all_ the middle horizontal segments are out on that one board it seems likely (to me) that it's a bad connection on the edge connector or on the PCB rather than them all failing together.
You would think that, that's why I swapped it to another location, and cleaned the edge connector... unfortunately it was the glass though (all of them are connected with 1 line inside the glass)
JOES CLASSIC VIDEO GAMES, in a summary what did you do in this video? you replaced some of the burnt resistors because some of the segments weren't lighting up and you glued down the display down using gorilla glue. Anything else to add in the summary or to look out for in repair pinball displays?
That's about all Bill!
@@LyonsArcade ok thanks just checking
Its working just fine😎
I hav buy a new LED display for my Williams Fire! project old displa was burn glass all four to expenicive to repair easy is to buy new LED , I also had Gottlieb pinball they newer go bad old blue futaba displays are good build from factory
Yeah those Gottliebs run on like half the voltage, I usually don't have to replace one but zap them when they get dim:) I'll do a video soon for the LED's i'm putting in this Phoenix, I'm going to build them :)
Never knew that the glass had all the magic in those displays. Seems to be the same tech used in those 80s digital clocks.
Ken would be proud of you😭
He's my Hero!
Tri Zone is one machine I want to own in the future. :D
Definitely fun. We have a video of us playing that one coming up soon, it's deceptively fun, very well designed game for it's age.
Thanks! Very informative! My '79 Williams Gorgar displays have developed a couple issues on 2 of them so now I have some clues. What product did you use for the cleaning, would've liked to see that, but still good video!
for cleaning the glass just windex for cleaning the edge connectors a fiberglass pencil, thank you for watching Troy as usual!
Thanks for another great video!
Have you worked on newer machines, such as anything by Jersey Jack? I've heard their machines are pretty unreliable....!?
Unfortunately I haven't so I can't really comment on that... I know on Pinside Lloyd works for them and handles their tech stuff and he's a great guy, so I know if there is a problem, you should be able to get Lloyd to help you get it fixed!
A note of caution, NEVER use a rubber eraser to clean board contacts as the sulfur in the rubber will attack the copper underneath the tin plating. The missing digit segments can be troubleshot with a scope or voltmeter to verify if the display is actually bad.
Is all the system boards interchangeable with each other?
I mean if you had a system 4 pinball machine and had a system 6 board.
Can you switch it to the system 4 machine?
Or dose the machine need a system 4 board.
System 3 and 4 are almost identical, System 6 has more space for roms (larger code)... however, you can modify any of the boards to run any of the codes. The driver board, the displays, the power supply, all of that is the same. On top of that, all of the boards are cheap so it's easy to keep one of these up and running. TONS of parts floating around, PLUS they make everything new.
Would you happen to have a William Phoenix backglass, and if so would you sell it to me? Thx
I always use lead-zero blanking when I write code for games. The extra zeros annoy me hehehe
By the way, do you think there’s a decent market for electronic drop-in conversions for pinball, such as replacement display systems? I’d design one if I thought there was a good market for it.
They already make the replacement LED displays, but there might be a market for an alternative design depending on what you had in mind.... We'll have a video up Wednesday about the LED displays if you're interested!
Joe's Classic Video Games, I like to do things a little more, shall we say, “extreme”, like maybe a “smart display” that multiplexes all the numeric displays into a larger unit that shows all scores on a single dot matrix, and also shows graphics, much like a modern pin. Sometimes I get slightly carried away. Oh... and WITH lead zero blanking!
I realize this will be a problem for the original glass 🤔
So...My system 7 credit/ball display is missing one segment in each ten position. Should I check resisters then? Connections were reflowed. The rest are fine, so not going to step up to LED display kit just yet. Thanks
If all the other displays are fine it's not likely to be a resistor (it would show up on another display too, the resistors do more than one display)... it may be a bad solder joint on the resistor though (maybe the line to the credit display is disconnected), or it may be a bad solder joint or broken connection at the glass, or a bad glass itself.
@@LyonsArcade Oh right, resistors do more than one display. Will check out your suggestions, thanks!
Congrats on 555'th video. Lets see if you can make it to 6,502.
You. I see what you did there. After that, i'm moving on to 68000!
Wonder if those new Stern's last for 40 years with those node boards and pcu
I'll let you know 35 or so years from now :) I know I won't be able to fix them, the SMD stuff leaves me out.
@@LyonsArcade same here, it's like with new cars, replace parts instead of repair them
to make the hard to find displays last longer lower lower the high voltage drive from the display section of the power supply ,, thus is done by replacing the zener diodes in the high voltage plus and negative rails , example www.pinwiki.com/wiki/images/5/59/PSU-Display-PWR.pdf many feel they are over driven in the first place as you said.
Definitely worth doing especially if your high voltage has failed and you're working on it anyways!
Excellent video as usual. Thanks!
I do have a question though. On my William's flash the player four display is missing the last digit. Completely blank. Ideas?
If you don't know, do you have Ken's number? Lol.
Haha! You need to take that display and swap it with one of the other displays and see if the problem stays with the display, or with the 4th player position. If it stays with the 4th player position it's got to be something on the wiring or the edge connector... if it moves with the display it may be bad solder on the display, if not it's the actual glass.
@@LyonsArcade .... The problem stays with the fourth player position and not the display. I did a continuity test for each one of the wires on the wiring harness to player four display. All checked out good. Right now I'm thinking there might be something wrong with my master display. Do you concur?
@@John-on-Money It would certainly seem like the next place to look. I tried to find a schematic for the master display, but the only one I could find was very low quality. From what I can tell though it looks like the digit lines for the player 4 display are in paralell with those for the player 2 display, so testing whether that is in-fact the case would seem to be the next step.
Back in 79 Bally displays burning up n missing digits. Gottlieb display would dim till u burnished contacts on display board. Can't say i ever seen a Williams display missing digits.
You are really wanting axial caps correct not Radial.
Yes, they should be axial (lead out each end), I never have the right ones in stock, I need to order a few hundred so I'll have them around when I work on this stuff!
What does the LED display look like?
They look really good, we haven't assembled these particular ones yet but we will film a video when we do... we've had them in the past though and they look almost identical to the plasma originals.
So let me get this right , WMS Industries, Inc, is the old Williams Manufacturing Company? its totally irreverent to the video but look at the williams logo and trade mark its so Iconic for arcade and pinball machines.
Yes sir, that's what's left of the same company. The focus has changed a little bit :)
@@LyonsArcade am a environment artist for games and graphic designer, i see things in a estetic way Joe im damaged . kept looking at the logo on that board all the time, thinking to myselfs ive seen this before .)
We really need a comment from Ken.
HAHAHA I think Ken's still out there, Ken wouldn't die or get old on us.
@@LyonsArcade I believe Ken invested all his savings in a small upstart company named Apple back in the early 80s, today he lives on his private topical island with an enormous collection of rare pinball machines.
I am surprised that Pinball used gas plasma displays for so long. I am surprised that they never switched to LED in the pinball era. It seems like the need for high voltage power supplies, displays getting gassed out over time, and other issues with the plasma gas diplays, that LED would have been a better choice.
They only designed the games to last two years... .
Same Ron time.
Same Ron channel.
So to speak.
ha! You know it. Tuesdays and Fridays, HIGH NOON BABY