FS: Johnny Mnemonic

[marcg]

Posting for a friend. For sale Williams 1995 Johnny Mnemonic. Fully
shopped and in nice shape. Asking $1250, located in Charlotte. Email
Brandon at wbm...@bellsouth.net for more details.

Pretty good deal imho. Great playing pin, and Brandon does a nice job.
-Marc G

[Matt Horn]

Hi Everyone,

I've got a quick question for those of you that do pinball work. I've got
an old Spaceinvaders pinball, I've repaired and reworked most everything on
it. The one problem though that I seem to keep having is after about 20 to
30 minutes of game play the flipper solenoid seems to stick and it makes a
buzzing noise. After a few minutes you can turn the system back on and
everything is fine for another 15 or 20 minutes.

I've taken the flipper solenoids out and disassembled it and cleaned it with
WD40 and a Q-tip... it ran well for the first few months.

Has anyone else heard of this, or know a quick fix?

Thanks for whatever help you can offer.
Matt

[Donnie Barnes]

First, never lube pinball solenoids. They shouldn't need it, and the
lube just attracts carbon dust and it gums them up. If you have
assemblies that stick you need to find out what parts are screwed up
and need to be replaced. That's usually a coil sleeve and/or plunger.
When fresh, they'll slide like butter and you'll see that you don't
need lube.

Not sure why those would be sticking like that. Make sure the EOS
switch contacts are fine. Those should never be cleaned with a file
or sandpaper...only something like a business card wedged between,
squeeze contacts together, slide card a bit. If they've been filed or
sanded you have to replace them with new.

--Donnie

[do...@nc.rr.com]

As Donnie B said, no WD-40 on pins. It may also be the coil stop causing the problem. I think vendors like Pinball Resource are now offering flipper rebuild kits instead of having to order the individual parts. I would highly recommend getting a copy of the Bally repair guide at www.pinrepair.com for further info on maintaining & repairing pins.

-don

[Matt Horn]

Thanks for the info guys. This is my first real pin repair and it's obvious
that I know just enough to get myself in trouble.

[Matt Horn]

Hi,

Thanks for the tips and tricks on the repair you guys offered. I think I've
found the problem and the source of that clicking noise I talked about.
Looks like I have a bad (or going bad) solenoid driver board. The relay on
the board was making that horrible clicking noise. I'm guessing that it's
either getting direct AC or that one of the caps has gone bad and isn't
filtering the voltage properly in the bridge. Just a wild shot in the dark
with that guess... it may not even have a bridge circuit.

Anyway, do you guys know of a quick fix, or a good source to buy a driver
board for a Space Invaders table? I wouldn't mind finding one locally
(Raleigh/Cary, NC) but don't mind mail-order either.

I may be looking for a sound board sometime soon as well if anyone has a
source for those.

Thanks a million & Happy Holidays!!
Matt

[Donnie Barnes]

Just get them fixed. If you care about the game, just send all the
boards to Clive:

http://webpages.charter.net/coinopcauldron/Index.html

Clive will test them all and go through any showing errors and make
them right. Good prices, great work, and reasonable turnaround. He's
in Greenville, SC, so UPS Ground only takes a day or two.

--Donnie

[Don Shoemaker]

The solenoid driver boards are pretty easy to fix. It's probably a bad
driver transistor. I think Q15 is the one that drives the relay
flipper. The two large caps on the board are for the high voltage
section (displays) and 5V (MPU and sound board), so they are probably
not part of the problem. Remove all connectors except J3 (upper right)
and measure voltages. Use a meter or logic probe on the metal tab of
the driver transistors. Any that show low or zero volts would cause the
solenoid to be locked on and require investigation.

I had a box of ~15 solenoid boards that I finally got around to
upgrading/fixing and was selling on eBay. I still have three left to
fix, but am pretty slow, so I don't know when they will be ready. The
boards I sold went for around $50. There is one guy on eBay that is
selling them for $115 and apparently is selling a few. If you buy one,
try to get one that has had the 5V cap replaced.

If you want to try your hand at repair, I have a "cheat sheet" I can
send that you can use along with Clay's repair guide. The spreadsheet
has additional information on pin outs, etc, so you don't have to use
the schematic. Steve Kulpa also has good information on his web page
(http://www.geocities.com/stevekulpa/pinball.htm).

Good luck.