Tag Archives: battery

Adding a memory capacitor to a Gottlieb Sys80 “Jacks To Open”

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Now that I’ve got space to pull more of my project machines out to work on them, I’m diving into Sys80 stuff. The first order of business is to work on a “Jacks To Open” machine, which is a solid-state remake of Gottlieb’s popular wedgehead, “Jacks Open”. This game came with the battery removed (or maybe I removed it when I got it – I don’t remember honestly) but the MPU board was in good shape, but the game wouldn’t remember any settings because obviously, there was no battery-back-up.

This is a simple fix, and for these games it makes more sense to add a memory capacitor than a remote battery pack, so in this 4-part series, I go over adding the memory capacitor to the machine. Check it out:

First Look: Gottlieb “Charlie’s Angels” and the damage batteries do

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This is a quick post of a short video I shot awhile back that I hadn’t had a chance to upload because I’ve been spending so much time renovating the new pinball place, but I wanted to share with you all soem of the new pick-ups. I’ve been on a moratorium of pinball buying but every once in awhile the price is too good to pass up, and some of these games I believe if I don’t get them, they’ll end up cannibalized and turned into a hipster’s coffee table — we can’t have that if the game has a chance of living again, so into the repair queue it goes!

In this video I give you a “first look” at a new game before I’ve unloaded it and show you the damage caused by a leaky old battery and why that’s so bad.

First Look: Bally Black Rose and dealing with leaking batteries

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Another deal came my way recently and as usual, when you’re out of room and almost out of money, and someone offers to sell you a game, I threw out a pretty low number and it was accepted.  Actually, I’ve been wanting to get a Black Rose pinball machine for awhile.  These early Bally/WMS DMD games are quite good IMO, and they bridge the gap well between the older games and the more modern ones with extremely complex rulesets.  Like its predecessor, Party Zone, Black Rose is a very fun game that doesn’t require curling up with a big printout to understand the ruleset and enjoy the gameplay.

However, first things first… when the owner told me they had no key to the backbox I suspected the worst…

And as expected, we had battery issues, but this looks like it was rescued in time…

Remember, the first rule is to neutralize the acid on the board and then clean it thoroughly.  Then make sure everything is thoroughly dry before you put the board back in the game.

If you want details on how to install a remote battery pack, see this article:  http://pinballhelp.com/how-to-add-a-remote-battery-holder-to-your-pinball-machine/

How to install a memory capacitor to replace a battery pack

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As many of you know, one of the biggest problems with pinball machines and repairing them is dealing with leaky batteries on solid state machines, that cause corrosion and all sorts of damage. I’m going to go over how you can completely eliminate this from happening by replacing old-style rechargeable batteries with a high-tech “memory capacitor” that will last longer and not have the same problems that batteries do.

Now lets test the new memory capacitor in the game:

Here’s source info on the caps:

Category:

1.5f 5.5f “super capacitors” at Mouser Electronics.

Specific item I used:

1.5f 5.5f Panasonic Supercap

You can also get these from Great Plains:

http://www.greatplainselectronics.com/Category-67.asp

Product ID: CER-1.5F-5V
Capacitor, Radial Electroltyic, 1.5F, 5V
Capacitor, 1.5F, 5V, 85C, Radial Electrolytic
Manufacturer: Panasonic
Manufacturer Part Number: EECF5R5U155
Diameter: 21.5mm, Height: 8mm, Lead Spacing: 5
Price: $5

How To Add A Remote Battery Holder To Your Pinball Machine

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One of the biggest problems with vintage solid-state pinball games is damage to the circuit boards from leaking batteries. Here I show you how to install a remote battery pack so the batteries are away from the sensitive circuit boards, eliminating the possibility of them leaking electrolyte and causing corrosion and other damage to the pinball machine’s electronics.

This type of remote battery pack will work with almost all major pinball systems. The main thing to note is some games by default used rechargeable batteries (many Gottlieb and Bally systems) while others used non-rechargeables (WPC). If you use a remote battery pack on games that by default used rechargeable batteries, install a blocking diode in the path of the battery pack to keep the batteries from having power supplied back to them. Doing this with non-rechargeable batteries can result in bad things like batteries exploding.

Installing it in the game..

and lets test it..