Thursday May 17, 2012

Techdose Blog



For Sale -- Stern SB-100 Sound Board Replacement Cables
I'm now selling replacement SB-100 sound board cables for the Classic Stern machines (Lectronamo, Wild Fyre, Nugent, Dracula, Trident, Hot Hand, Magic). These are brand cables that connect the MPU to the sound board. They're 18" long and use military-grade 22awg wire. Great if you are missing the cable or have a damaged cable.

Contact me via the "Contact Us" link on this website and I will give you a better price on a set than I can offer on eBay due to their fees.

Posted May 15th, 2012 4:51 PM by AceBHound
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Road Kings - System 11 MPU Repair
I've been busy the last few weeks working on a lot of house projects, disrupted with my computer due to home office getting redone. I've worked on some pinball projects though.. much of my time the last month has been assembly-line building some new Bally/Stern MPU boards that require probably near 200 components each. I also bought a few new pinball machines and got a chance to work on them some. Most recently just sent out a PCB board design to have my first prototype board made -- and yes it is pinball related. I plan to get some more prototypes made very soon now that I got the ball rolling there. Then once the prototypes look good I'll have some products for sale of my own creation. Exciting stuff really.

Anyway, I added some the System 11 MPU repair on a Road Kings to the Repair Log. I've had that repair done for a while now but just getting around to posting it. Road Kings is up and running, just need to replace a flipper assembly that's broken and I think it should be good to play! Check out the repair though.. it turned into a bit of a wild ride!

Posted May 10th, 2012 5:26 PM by AceBHound
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More Updates
I've been light on posting in the last few months since I've had some house projects going on and have been trying to tackle some other items on the to-do list. That should change over the next few months now that I'll have some time to work on projects again & hopefully get some more repairs posted.

Got the Williams Pinball CPU tester fully built & working. The cables took quite a while, but I have most if not all of the cables for System 3-7 & System 9/11 made up now and did some quick testing. May still have an issue or two to work out with cables, but that was a large item checked off the to-do list with money wrapped up in components for it.

Hot Tub (Jacuzzi Quanta from the 80s) is repaired -- another huge project that was drawn out over several months.

Recently worked on a true "System 11" (not 11A, 11B, etc) board from out of a Road Kings. It has an LED digit display, versus the 2 led lights on the MPU board. It had alkaline damage which looked like it would be fairly easy to clean up, but turned out that most of the traces running to the 6821 PIA's under the battery holder were destroyed. Decided to clean it up and use ribbon cable to run new connections. Still working out some issues with this board.. will get some pics/repair info posted eventually.

That's all for now, lots of other stuff in the works. Gearing up to work on a bunch of project machines that have been sitting for the last year. Lots of tools and components purchased, lots of money going out.. but it'll be good to get some of these machines fully working.

Posted Apr 14th, 2012 7:58 PM by AceBHound
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For Sale - NVRAM Williams & Data East Pinball 6264 RAM Replacement - Eliminates Batteries
Offering for sale some NVRAM Ram Replacements for Data East / Williams pinball machines. These will replace 6064, 6264 or 2064 RAM ICs. From what I've found so far, practically all Data East machines use this type of RAM & it is in a socket so it's a very simple swap-out. Williams machines may use a different type of RAM & it will be soldered to the board, so will take more work to use this NVRAM.

These adapters are simply taking an SOIC Ramtron chip that is already pin-compatible with 6064, 6264 or 2064 RAM & using a common SOIP-28 to DIP-28 adapter board to turn the surface mount part into the DIP part. If you have a temp controlled soldering gun and are handy enough at soldering surface mount parts, I'll sell the components (pcb board, RAM & machine header pins) for $12ea shipped or less if ordering bulk amounts.

Contact me via the link on this website or Pinside if you're interested.

Posted Mar 10th, 2012 2:49 PM by AceBHound
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Now Accepting Stern SB-100 Sound Boards for Repair
I'm now accepting repair requests for Stern SB-100 sound boards. If your have a non-working SB-100 that is not severely hacked, contact me via the Contact page. I have parts on-hand to repair most of the common issues with the sounds on these boards. In the future, I may offer a trade-in service depending on the number of spare boards I have on-hand. Costs will be reasonable, but depend on severity of the issues & number of components being replaced.

This sortof of originated from a handful of requests I've received on whether I have any SB-100 boards for sale or if I offered repair services. Up until now, I've just been repairing my own boards.. but I have way too many components (since I buy in bulk) to not offer some repair services =)

Posted Feb 25th, 2012 10:58 PM by AceBHound
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Previous Topics

02-20-2012
Williams Pinball Tester

02-19-2012
Lethal Weapon 3 Pinball Repairs

02-04-2012
History of Skee-Ball Machines

01-26-2012
Mouser Order and Other News

01-22-2012
Project Overload =)

01-21-2012
Rocksmith Thoughts / Mini Review


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