Time Warp: To Restore or not to Restore

[Metahugh]

Hey Guys,

I would like some opinions on this one. I bought a project Time Warp
the other day for $150. After taking a much closer look today it's
shaping up to be a HUGE project. Would you spend the time and money
restoring this one?

Here are some pictures:

http://www.metahugh.com/pinball/timewarp/index1.html

I have the CPU board, just not in the pics. I was told the CPU board
was bad but I'm thinking that really the driver board is the issue. I
noticed burnt caps on the board. Then noticed that about 5 of the
coils were burnt.

It's not a situation where I got a game that I really liked, it was
cheap and that was the main reason for purchase. I'm having a hard
time seeing putting another $300+ into this one. I'm debating parting
it out, I should be able to get the $150 invested, I would think!

Thanks,

Hugh
metahugh at comcast dot net

[Lloyd Olson]

Before you decide to part it out, any chance of finding someone who does
like it and would give it a good home ? LTG :)

"Metahugh" <meta...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1134852877.4...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

[garavaml]

It doesn't look *that* bad.....

"Metahugh" <meta...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1134852877.4...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

[John Wart, jr]

If you don't restore it, try to sell it whole to someone. It appears to be a
fairly solid example of Time Warp. If you bought it with profit as your
complete motive, well, you may not fare so well. There's nothing wrong with
using profit as your motive, don't get me wrong!

Most of the ones I've seen had glasses much worse than the one on this
machine, I'd have to think about it for awhile, but you might have a really
nice playfield under all that mylar. Those driver boards are usually in need
of some sort of love to fix them up, yours isn't unusual.

How's the CPU? Is it ugly due to hacks and acid damged, or just not working?
If you're handy with a DMM and a soldering iron, you can rebuild the CPU and
driver yourself. If you are not, Clive @ Coin Op Cauldron can rebuild both
of them fairly reasonably.

Plus, WMS only made 2 games with Banana flippers, and this is one of them. I
prefer the gameplay of Disco Fever, but this one shouldn't be that bad
either. Barry Oursler made some fun games!

Check all the coils with your meter before you do any board work, there's no
sense hooking a bad coil to a rebuilt board as it may go up in smoke again!

The device on the left side of the cab you asked about is a tilt mechanism..
if you lift the front of the game, the ball rolls to the rear of the channel
and closes the switch, activating the tilt.

Check out Clay's guide on repairing these games, it has some good info and
is a fun read.
http://www.marvin3m.com/sys37/

--
http://www.myhomegameroom.com

"Metahugh" <meta...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1134852877.4...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

[someotherguy]

The parts you see burned on the driver board are actually large resistors; they
are frequently burned on these machines and in fact have nothing to do with your
coils. They're lamp matrix resistors. And they probably still work, regardless
of how awful they look. ; )

The burnt coils are probably due to the MPU locking up and energizing coils
full-time, with nobody around to shut the machine off before they burnt.

The mechanism inside the machine that you're wondering what it does, is called a
"ball roll tilt" - it's an old-fashioned cabinet tilt detector.

The machine doesn't look to me like that huge of a project.. heck I may even
have a sys6 MPU for you.

Richard

[pin...@thistledown.com.au]

I am a fan of this game, it was the machine I enjoyed the most back in
the early eighties on site, and the first machine I bought for home use
six years ago, and I still have it despite turning over other machines.
It has some entertaining shots and the banana flippers can make for
some really fast ball speeds on a polished playfield.

[barry c]

I had one in my collection for a time. I really enjoyed playing
playing it. The banana flippers make it play like no other pin. Make
sure you can get flipper rubbers, I got some at Marco about 2 years
ago. The problem will be when you want to sell, it is not a real
popular game, it was hated when it came out because of the flippers. If
you are fixing it to resale, you might not want to put in all the work.
Look at past prices on Ebay and Mr. Pinball.

[seymour...@excite.com]

flipper rubbers NLA. I don't know what I'm going to do for when I redo
mine.....

[Metahugh]

Thanks everyone for the words of wisdom.

I bought it to keep since I don't have any pins at the moment. I just
wanted something cheap that I could play and have some fun with. I
have seen working examples selling around the 400-600 price range so I
wasn't sure if it would be worth putting a lot of money into it, but
part of this is also a learning experience so I've got to remember
that.

I knew it was going to be a project from the beginning but my biggest
fear is the boards. I haven't tackled a project this big and this will
be the first time I have done board work. I've done a little bit of
capacitor replacement on PC motherboards but nothing too difficult. I
guess I looked at the boards and got a bit worried. =) I'm not
worried about any part beyond the board repairs, and maybe the fact
that the displays might need to be replaced! =)

I checked all of the coils, including the burnt ones, and they are
measuring around 4.05 on the ohm setting.

Richard, thanks for letting me know those were resistors, that would
explain why the board is black in those areas. As far as the coils go
I guess I should replace all of the ones that are burned, at least
according to clay's guides. There are 4 burnt and one for one of the
drop target backs is missing.

The CPU/MPU that came with the game is a System 4. Here are some
pictures:

http://www.metahugh.com/pinball/timewarp/cpuboard/index1.html

It's not the right board for the game, and from what I read in Clay's
guides Sys 3-7 are backwards compatible but I couldn't determine if
they were forwards compatible. So I am looking to buy a System 6 cpu
board.

I'm going to start at the power supply, since I can test that without
burning anything else up, but as far as the other boards go, mainly the
power driver board, should I check each individual part before trying a
test power on?

Thanks!

[TheKorn]

"Metahugh" <meta...@comcast.net> wrote in news:1134852877.411231.212600
@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

> I would like some opinions on this one. I bought a project Time Warp
> the other day for $150. After taking a much closer look today it's
> shaping up to be a HUGE project. Would you spend the time and money
> restoring this one?

I'd probably do enough work to get it working solidly, then pass it along.
It should require $10 or so in parts to get the CPU and driver boards
solid, plus some labor. That's not much in the grand scheme of things.

(I don't particularly like time warp, but it's always easier to sell a
working game than a non-working game!)

As for your "what does this do", it's the ball roll tilt mechanism. You
put a 1" (NOT a 1 1/16"!) ball in there, and it's designed to detect when
someone has lifted the front of the game up, changing the angle. (i.e. not
a sharp jab like is required to set off the tilt bob, but a constant change
of angle, like putting the game on books.)

They stopped putting those in right around sys 11A or so.

[Fred Kemper]

If it's too much for you, pass it on.

That's pretty decent looking from the
pictures. DON"T part it out.

--
Fred
TX
CARGPB#8
******************

"Metahugh" <meta...@comcast.net> wrote

[Metahugh]

I agree, I won't be parting it out. I'm gonna tackle this one head on
=).