Williams Pinball ASIC Troubles – Twilight Zone (WPC)

WPC ASIC socket replacement

From the world of arcade repair… as the cold of winter hit a few of my pinball machines started acting up. On game nights with friends, it was creeping up to a 75% failure rate! Ouch!

This one took me for a bit of a ride. Twilight Zone was getting random resets. Sometimes, I was getting audio and graphics errors, as if the ribbon cables between CPU and Audio PCB needed reseating. But things weren’t adding up. It turns out that tapping the ASIC chip would cause all sorts of issues.

I attempted to do a sloppy job prying out the ASIC and cracked one corner of the socket. My goal was to carefully deoxit the legs of the IC and maybe pins of socket. Oh well. Found some sockets on eBay, ordered them and thanks to Hakko 808 desoldering tool it took about 15 minutes total to remove the old ASIC socket and solder in the new one.

So far, things seem good. I won’t believe the game reset issues are solved — that seems to be an issue with the AC input connector on the power driver board, but time will tell.

Galaga Arcade Cabinet Bottom Panel Repair

This one is checked off and done, although the pictures don’t show it. This was quite a PITA, honestly.

The place I live had a condensate drain clog. The floor has a drain, but the concrete was graded in a manner that everything flows away from the drain. This led to it getting in carpet, then soaking up into my Galaga cabinet which is made of particle board.

I used Milwax wood hardner and soaked it into the wood really good to stiffen it. I removed the broken soaked bottom panel and replaced it with a cut piece of plywood. It took two tries to get the cuts right, as I measured it wrong on one of the attempts (oops.) Also, given that the wood was flared out a bunch it didn’t go so easily. I added some L brackets, and also lots of pieces of wood glued to the side and bottom. I ordered new leveler feet, although I’m still nervous about having the cabinet sit on the replacement board 24×7. I might just leave it and the new game that is joining it sitting on 2x4s in case the carpet gets soaked again.

Pictures are of the initial removal, I didn’t seem to have any of the replacement in the album and it’s back on it’s feet.

Galaga Cabinet Repair

GeForce FX5200 overhaul, Andamiro Mark 6.1 / VI – Pump It Up Arcade Hardware – Fan, Swollen Capacitors

Andamiro Mark VI / GeForce FX5200 overhaul

A few years ago I got a decent deal on a dead Pump It Up NX2 cabinet (Thanks Matt!) I was originally after a DDR machine, settled on a Pump It Up machine, then got a DDR machine while waiting for the PIU deal to go through. Both machines were dead, and needed to be repaired. I suppose they’re always in a state of repair, but that’s okay.

A few weeks ago I let my friend Greg borrow the computer from my Pump It Up machine to do some software development/QA on newer versions of the software that run on these machines (he does contract work for the company that makes it.) While the computer was out of the cabinet, I figured I would replace the cooling fan on the video card. It had seized up before I got the machine. It still runs but it’s probably only a matter of time before disaster hits in the form of DRAM failure or GPU failure.

So while the computer is out I ordered a replacement fan from China for the NVidia card:
Triangle Screw Distance: approx. 25mm between each two
Mounting Hole Dia: approx. 2mm
Dimensions(mm): approx. 36 mm(Diameter)

(See slideshow pics above for pics of the video card.)

These haven’t arrived yet so I don’t know how they will mount up. The fan on my heatsink is removable via 3 small screws access through the blades.

While the card is laying on my desk, I look at it and notice bulging capacitors. Common issue on a lot of electronics, not surprised. To be fair it might be from the excess heat from the GPU not having a running fan, but while we’re rebuilding this thing might as well do it up right!

Caliper measurements on the caps says they’re 8mm x 12mm, 1000uF 6.3V

A good replacement seems to be Digikey Part: P5509-ND Panasonic 105c with 3.5mm lead spacing, 8mm diameter vs 12.5mm height .

Going to add this to my DigiKey order, will update this post with results.

I had to replace the power supply in this computer already. For those that don’t know, EVERYTHING IN THESE PUMP IT UP CABINETS RUN AT 220V. Yes, it’s fed 110-120V but they run a 1:2 ISO transformer!!! Fair warning, if the PSU isn’t auto switch on the computer set it to 220/240v!

And no, I’m not very good at Pump It Up or DDR
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