Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure • MAACA.org

R.A.B.

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Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

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Postby R.A.B. » Thu Oct 01, 2015 7:33 pm

J.F., thanks for taking a creative leap into writing this kind of different and refreshing post. Very much enjoy reading this type of service/storytelling style of prose and know that it is much more work than just laying out the facts of a repair or restoration with a few pics here and there to keep people's attention. I personally find it quite enjoyable to read, especially when someone else writes about a subject that I have abused and hence may have rendered redundant through my pen over the years. Nothing like a fresh perspective on something old.

The Gatineau character sporting the Canadian Tuxedo and walking around with a baseball bat adds a certain "je ne sais quoi" to the story, I think that this type of angle accentuates the story and gives the reader another take on the adventure. Hell, some moments in life are just priceless, don't you agree.

As for clearing up the mystery of the bingo heads, I do remember this crazy "client" named Serge from Magog (hyann can also tell you stories about this nervous pinball picker maniac) who brought me this bingo he had bought from Alouette for about 150 bones. I remember getting stumped on some problem or other when trying to fix it in the garage where it was set up years ago. I came back to it several times in several more clear headed services attempt in order to find the bugs, but never really succeeded in resolving the main issues. I figured something was fishy in the state of New Jersey and so I told crazy Serge to go get another Sea Island head from Alouette for 100 bucks so I could get a chance to swap components - yes I know, the last resort of a tech who has lost hope. He bought a second complete Sea Island, the whole thing if I remember correctly, and from there it fell into "l'oublie" as they say. Serge had moved on to other conquests by then and didn't care about the big bad bingo machines by then and neither did I. So I gave him some money for what was left, (no one in their right mind would want to move these if they didn't have to) and started parting one of the heads because it took up too much room. In any case, it wouldn't fit in hyann's car when he came looking for a bingo project, much like you did. I warned him that he would have one major project on his hands with this monstrosity. So now, 5 to 7 years after crazy Serge got this thing out of Delmeade, the pieces to this puzzle are in your capable hands, and frankly I can't think of anyone else I would confidently put my money on to get it going again.

Keep fixin' my friend and why not write about it. It is therapeutic in a way. I don't know which one of the two aforementioned activities is harder to do, so if you can pull both off successfully, hats off to you.

Rob

Last edited by R.A.B. on Sat Oct 03, 2015 10:37 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Maxed out at 11 machines, no more no less. Toujours a 11 machines, pas moins pas plus.
Une règle suivi gueri de tout. A rule respected can cure anything.

A philosophy of doing shall rule til the days when I can no longer "do" arrive. Because when I am too old to wipe my own ass, adjust an AX relay or take care of my wife properly there will be only memories to fill my time. So, the task at hand is to build a RRSP of memories, come hell or calm tides.

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cait001

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Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

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Postby cait001 » Thu Oct 01, 2015 7:55 pm

Yes! I was hoping you of all people would start documenting these journeys.

Have: GTB Central Park (loan), SEG Apollo 13 (loan), WMS Alien Poker (loan), GTB Sinbad (lent), BLY Corvette
Want: CAMELTRY marquee, good cond FUTURE SPA backglass, Super Score backglass, Fairy backglass
http://pinballnovice.blogspot.ca/ http://facebook.com/groups/PinballWomenOttawa

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cait001

Complete MAACA Wacko!

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Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 3:42 pm

Location: Centretown, Ottawa, ON

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Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

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Postby cait001 » Thu Oct 01, 2015 8:03 pm

"My God, it's full of steppers..."

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Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

That line awoke the sci-fi nerd in me. It reminds me of 2001 a space odyssey novel. When Bowman is about to go through the star gate. End of chapter 39: "Oh--my God--It's full of stars!" End of digression.
I will post part 2 very soon.
And to avoid unnecessary stress and tension I will reveal that the Sea Island is already repaired.
Part 2 will deal with the problems found and the repairs that were made.

Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

Part two

The repairs: In this part, and this part only, I will chronicle the repairs I did to the Sea Island.

Info dump: When working on a Bally electromechanical game you must take into consideration two basic facts:

1) Bally had terrible fuse clips that are prone to poor contact, heating up, and breaking apart.
2) Bally had terrible jones plugs that are prone to poor contact, heating up and failing.

The first thing I had to do to this game was change the line cord and all the fuse clips. Then I cleaned and checked all the switches in the body: Shutter motor switch stacks, ball through switches, coin door switches. Cleaned all jones plugs with a small brass bristle brush.

Then I cleaned all the switches of the trip bank, taking apart each stack, first cleaning it with a brass brush, then cleaning off the old corrosion and carbon on the points with a flexstone and dentist's tools. Then I check for excessive pitting of the points and finally I check the switch gaps. Just the trip bank takes 2 to 3 hours of cleaning.

Then I was ready to put the juice to the machine.

Trying to troubleshoot bingo machine problems before cleaning the aforementioned components is an invitation to insanity. Furthermore, you absolutely need the schematics AND the manual for the machine. These can easily be found online.

If someone is wondering why I have the machine down on the floor in the workshop. It's simply because it's easier to work on the units, especially the ones at the top of the head. On it's legs, I would've needed a step ladder.

The first major issue with the game revealed itself when I first turned the machine on: The magic screen index coil was permanently energized, the magic screen would go all the way to the end and the red and yellow super section feature coils would trip. Hmm.

One or multiple short circuits? A wiring mistake maybe? I started thinking maybe that's why the head looked so new. A problem no one could figure out. This lemon of a head probably went from coin-op to coin-op, the problem never to be found. An unsolved mystery. Time to find out if I earned the title of Bingo Mechanic!

The writing on the... head

When I pulled off the backglass, I found a collection of names written on the magic screen panel and on the credit meter. I wonder who were Bob M., Lego, Ronny and Joe? Maybe they were techs who tried to fix this game? I like to think that's who they were.

Also there was the serial number written in magic marker on the left side of the head, preceded by the letter “X”. Did “X” stand for crossed? As in a crossed wire? Perhaps.

This first problem turned out to be terribly subtle. The short circuit was in the magic screen feature unit wiper assembly, also commonly known as a “spider”. The spider is a stack of fingers making contact with different rivets on a stepper unit's biscuit for different circuits such as odds, features, lamps and proportioning. Different groups of fingers must be insulated from adjacent finger groups by way of insulating spacers. The most common insulating material in EM games is micarta.

Micarta is made from organic fibres with a binding resin, similar to fibreglass. The problem with micarta is that if it burns up it leaves the carbonized organic material. Carbon is basically a conductor. If a insulating spacer should, for any reason, burn it becomes a conductor and you have a short circuit!

From the outside, the magic screen unit wiper assembly looked intact. However, when I proceeded to dissect the “spider” I discovered that the very last (bottom) insulating disc had two tiny burned spots at the core. There was the first short circuit. It was my first time encountering such a subtle problem.

The second major issue was two pronged:

1) Red and Yellow super section feature trip coil would always trip when machine was powered on.
2) When the machine went through the search cycle, the machine would always score 166 credits. Even it there weren’t any balls on the playfield! The 166 credits was actually 75 credits from red score, 75 credits from green score and 16 credits from yellow score (at basic odds).

Again, I found the problem to be a faulty wiper assembly with no outward sign of failure. I narrowed it down to the yellow score unit wiper assembly. Yellow score, yellow super section feature and red super section feature all pass through the yellow score unit. Checking the wiper assembly on the work bench with a multimeter, it turned out to have a four way short circuit! That's enough to render the machine inoperable. I swapped the wiper assembly with one I had from the spare head and the problem was solved.

The third major issue was the game scoring nothing for a 3 in line and scoring a 3 in line when there was a 5 in line, through all 3 colours.
That one turned out to be simple: the core of the search wiper was broken and the soldering points for the slip rings to the wires for the search wiper fingers were cracked. Again I swapped the broken search wiper with the spare one I had.

After that, minor problems were solved by cleaning the various stepper units and changing the score extra step unit coil that was burnt. Nothing very interesting. The usual stuff.

The machine now works as it should.

End of part two

R.A.B.

Complete MAACA Wacko!

Posts: 2404

Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2011 8:17 pm

Location: Fluttering above the trees and the bushes on the Island of the Nones.

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Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

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Postby R.A.B. » Mon Oct 05, 2015 7:31 am

Part two is a fine example of what it takes to repair bingos J.F. thank you for reminding me of this.

Peristance, understanding and questioning are all crucial. In EM pinball repair, (and solid state as well) you need to understand how things depend and relate onto eachother in order for these units to make something happen that was engineered to happen many moons ago. You are basically trying to take part and somehow connect to someone else's thought process. The schematic is an essential map to guide you through this since it essentially lays out the whole machine's electrical symbols right in front of you. It is worth learning to read these if you want to begin understanding the machine as a whole. EM schematics are great for this because they are usually on one piece of paper, solid state diagrams are on several pages and this sometimes may make things a little harder to connect simply by the physical act of turning pages. The latter demands a different mindset when flow is interrupted by a simple physical act of looking for the appropriate page relating to what you just acknowledged as probable cause.

Especially in EM repair I think that you have to know what each unit/component does, it's assignment, and then start to explore how it relates to the others (each with their own purpose) in order to begin to grasp the theory of operation. Bits and pieces of information you will find in repair guides relating to a specific problem you identified are all find and dandy, but this isolated type of accumulated information still does not equal understanding in most cases. Understanding comes when connections are recognized in your thinking vis à vis the individual units and how they relate to eachother to form a whole, this does not always take place, it takes a certain open minded disposition.

Thanks J.F. for part two of this repair adventure, a great example of what it takes to tackle a problem which I would never have found considering how indisposed I was when this machine was under my gaze. In 2009-2010 I was preparing the shop move to Pitt street and working on how to make that happen properly.

I am anxious for part three, which I am sure will give me something new to think about. Something that has not occurred to me yet, - is that too much pressure ?
No worries, I have already learned alot from you.

Rob

Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

Thank you Sylvain and Robert. To me, there is no higher compliment than praise from master pinball experts such as yourselves.

Thank you Yannick for the Sea Island and the parts. I'm glad you like the thread. I remember you mentioning when I picked the game you were interested in knowing what was wrong with it.

Thanks Pat. I find problems, like in the Sea Island, through direct observation, consulting the manual and schematics, testing circuits with my meter, giving the game a thorough cleaning and a bit of intuition. It's detective work. One has to be patient. Sometimes it's more like electromechanical archeology.

I am working on the last part of this repair adventure: the conclusion. I've been inspired by the old pinball magazines into writing a full article on bingo repair. I thought the Sea Island was a proper vehicle to carry the story through. I write for myself, the fact that other people can enjoy my writing is a bonus. Cheers!

Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

Part Three

Conclusion

Sometimes, when I think about how these old machines travelled time and space to end up in my basement, I can't help feeling overwhelmed. I Imagined all the times they escaped the crusher and wonder why they didn’t end up at the metal recycler like most bingo games did.

However, we must not get too sentimental, overly warm and fuzzy about bingo machines. They are after all the great grand father, or equivalent of modern day video lottery terminals. Thy caused the same problems to players back then as their modern equivalent do now. The only difference being that the player had minimal control on where the balls would land with a bingo machine. These games made a fortune for the guys who owned them. Many players were made penniless (or nickel-less) by these machines. Bingo machines were responsible for the bad reputation given to pinball machines. Yet it's undeniable that these games were electromechanical marvels. The technological high water mark of the electromechanical amusement device industry. Electromechanical computers.

In their heyday these games were almost everywhere: Pool halls, taverns, bars, drug stores, snack bars, corner stores, gas bars etc. Yet, nowadays, these games have been virtually erased form our collective memory. Replaced by the more socially acceptable proper pinball machine. You practically never see a bingo machine in the background of a 50's and 60's period movie or TV show! Here are a few exceptions.

Memories from Rouyn-Noranda

Back in 2002, I was 19 years old, I was sitting in a Rouyn-Noranda bar at around lunchtime. My father and I were chatting with 2 guys that were partners in a coin-op business. We were relaxing a bit before making the seven hour trip back to Gatineau. We had just bought a large quantity of arcade machines and jukeboxes off them. In the back of their shop they had a beat up Super Wall Street. I wanted to buy it, but, unfortunately for me, they didn’t want to sell it. At the bar, I asked them why they didn’t want to sell it. Their answer was that these games were too complex. That I would never be able to fix it. “They're full of cams” they said.

Ten years later. I bought my first bingo machine. I was 29, I remember repairing that first Super Wall Street. I think I must've spent about 80 hours repairing it, but I did it. I remember I didn’t even know how to play it. I had to learn everything as I went. I think it was a good thing that I had to wait so long before getting my hands on a bingo machine. It gave me some time to mature, to learn to become more patient, more thorough.

These game were obsolete before I was born. Yet, I can't help being drawn to them. The first time I read about bingo machines, I was intrigued. Just the idea of the “Most complex EM amusement device” fascinated me. Their very existence was an open challenge for me to repair them.

The first time I saw a bingo machine in person, I was mesmerized. The first time I worked on a bingo machine, I was hooked. There's nothing like being in the zone when I'm working on one of these machines. It took many years before I got my hands on my first bingo machine but it was worth the wait. Most important is the fact I've met lots of people and made a few friends along the way through my bingo repair adventures. I hope to meet more people still and drive many more miles for this crazy passion.

Return to the writing on the head

I think it's justified that I add my name to the collection of names already there. Doing this, I also think of people who had this game before me. Gerry, Serge from Magog, Robert and Yannick. This game has been around! And like any good MacGuffin, it carried this story through.

Re: Bally Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

Thanks Cait.
I had to google that acronym.

The name Vic Camp comes up a lot in bingo machine related stuff. He's a bingo collector heavyweight.

I'm not on pinside. I usually don't peruse the threads.