The other day I was working on a game and traced the problem back to a blown bridge rectifier, so I thought it might be nice to produce a short little video on how to test/check bridge rectifiers in pinball machines, as well as a little info on what they do.
Diagnosing problems with the mist multi-ball assembly on a Bally/WMS Bram Stoker’s Dracula pinball machine. In this case, we were not getting power to the motor, which is supplied from the 20vdc circuit on the power driver board (which also powers the flash lamps). In this series of videos I show how to test the mist motor, and where you check for power and back-trace it to the driver board, then identify which components are related to this problem and how to fix it.
If you have a broken plunger/linkage, you can repair it and replace the broken part for a lot cheaper. Sometimes you can’t find complete linkages but you can get the individual parts or the linkages. Here’s how you can build them, or repair them. It’s been awhile since I did this so I had to refresh my memory of how I did it.
I recently had a pop bumper bracket on BSD break and I realized this wasn’t an easy fix. To get to the top of the pop bumper you have to almost completely disassemble the coffin assembly, which isn’t obvious. So I made a video on this process. Enjoy!
Below is a time-lapse of the process:
For the third part, here’s a nice video on how to rebuild a pop bumper assembly. There are some tricks to this and many times people put these things together wrong.
This is a fun series of videos of me trying something new. Let’s replace the old gas plasma displays in a Bally 35 solid state pinball machine with new low-voltage LED displays. This reduces the power consumption of the pinball machine and cuts out the high power portion of the power supply board for the display – a whole area we don’t have to worry about any more by switching over to LEDs. The price for this as a kit is quite reasonable (and cheaper than replacing them with used displays usually). But it takes some time and skill to populate your own circuit boards. I’m going to give it a try. Let’s see how it goes!
Here is a time lapse of me doing the lion’s share of the board work:
And here’s the finished product!
Pinball machines (as well as other arcade games) use a wide variety of wires and connectors. The most popular brand of connectors is called “Molex” which is a specific maker, but also a generic term often referred to as the plug/un-plug style connectors you will find on everything from power supply wiring to board connectors.
In this video, I go over the most common sizes and types of connectors you’re likely to find, what tools are available and how to rebuild and re-pin these connectors.
This is a short video demonstrating how to add a DBA (dollar bill acceptor) to a new Stern game (in this case, Jurassic Park). The older Stern games came with the cable necessary but now they’re not bundling them. I take a cable from Iron Maiden, along with a DBA I pulled from Wizard of Oz, and install it in Jurassic Park before I put the game on location.