FINALLY Got a Bally 6803 Based Pinball Machine In To Fix! - 1985 Eight Ball Champ PCB Repair

[@DavidWilliams-rn6uq]

Lemme see if I can do this justice… The lamp phase a/phase b circuit is simply amazing. It’s important to remember that all the lamps are operating on AC power, 11V nominal. That’s what makes the switch elements possible. Using a SCR as the switch element has a problem for AC, of course, as the SCR will only conduct when it is forward biased and the gate voltage is high enough to fire the SCR. A lamp in series with a SCR will only light on the positive half of the AC waveform. But this is exactly what the engineers used to light both lamps. In this application, the A phase is positive when the B phase is negative, and vice versa. If you connect one lamp from phase A to the positive end of the SCR, and the other lamp from phase B to the same terminal on the SCR, then the lamps may be controlled. Just enable the gate when the A phase is positive, and disable the gate when the B phase is positive, and only the A lamp will illuminate. Leave the gate enabled all the time, and both lamps will illuminate. It takes a bit of extra processing to determine when to enable the gate, but the engineers did that with the zero crossing detect circuits. There is one wrinkle - if we just tied the lamps together in this fashion, they would be in series across the voltage between phase A and B and be continuously lit. The engineers added diodes from the phase voltage to the lamp. This blocks current flow when the SCR is not gated. When gated, however, current flows from the positive phase through the diode, through the SCR, and back to the lamp ground on the transformer. Brilliant.

[@simondempsey1]

Love the machine and the video. My Centaur waits around 20 minutes before it starts shooting the balls out and talking to attract you to play, remember, a watched pot never boils, as we say in the UK

[@karennafry3022]

I award your patriotism with your parts... and your videos are golden.

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Karenna!

[@EsotericArctos]

The batteries on board were not a mistake at the time. Bally didn't design this to be on site for 40 years, so the battery on-board worked for the time that Bally expected this to be on site for :). It's just a bugger for us now trying to restore these machines after a 40 year old battery has decided to fail..... Definitely still doesn't stop us complaining about batteries though lol :). As a note, that 3.6V original battery most likely is a rechargeable, even if it is not labelled such. Anyway, you know all is said in good fun. I always love your videos.

[@naytch2003]

Another great pinball machine..seeing Games I have never seen in my life thanks to Ronnie and Joe..they never fail to deliver people

[@atschirner]

Ron, another great pinball repair video. The zero with a slash represents phase so Phase A and Phase B at the connectors.

[@wackyworldofwindios3476]

The dally count down videos to Santa day. Thanks for pumping out all the videos. I makes a nice Birthday presents count down to the 20th witch is the first part day of winter . Then it's all up hill from there.

[@mattdixon2571]

You was born the 20th?

[@wackyworldofwindios3476]

the first part day of winter is on December 20 th. the beginning of winter is always in December. so is my Birthday. @@mattdixon2571

[@Titanic4]

Early Bally 6803 games used the keypad, including few alphanumeric games released with this system. Starting with Escape from the Lost World, Bally changed the menu a bit, so the initials entry buttons were used to scroll through the menu instead of using the keypad. In Blackwater 100, these buttons were moved closer to the actual flipper buttons. When Bally released Truck Stop, they made the flipper buttons scroll through the test menu, which works quite similarly to Capcom pinball games in this regard, without the automatic test menu access upon opening coin door.

[@markjackson1444]

A new day … and a new video. … I just love December. Thanks for all the work both on the machine and in making the videos. The 15 balls in 8 ball make an excellent framework to build a game on. This machine is just one of many successful games built on this theme. … There’s Eight Ball, Bank A Ball (50s and 60s), and many more. This game is right up there with the best pool themed games of all time. What a classic game this is.

[@Petri547]

Nice video. This one is a cool game. I've played this at the bar of Lahti Railway station. It was the very first 6803 machine. It gives instructions and other talkings to you, while playing. "Chalk up". "Rack' em up"'. "Shooting solids/stripes" (start) "Too bad". You Scratched"' (drain) "Whoops"! "Too much english". (TILT) "One more game perhaps"? (Game over) and many others.

[@irieman442]

The color of money video machine with some Ace with Paul Carrack playing.. What could be better? LOL

[@paulclarke7571]

25:13....That battery is a Champ! Held in there since 1984! They just don't make em' like that no more.

[@LyonsArcade]

Very high quality!

[@ocsrc]

THAT is cool using A/C to power 2 lamps. They designed it to have more lights using the same amount of components and space on the board

[@LyonsArcade]

Yeah you'd think they would have started doing that the first time around, but by 1985 they had figured it out :)

[@mattdixon2571]

Nice 3 videos in 3 days!! I honestly wish I could find an old pinball machine around here and try to fix now because of you lol!! Keep up the good work you two.

[@MoparStephen]

Nice! The 6803 is the CPU in my engine control computer of my 1987 Daytona Shelby Z.

[@darren1720]

Good video very interesting

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Darren!

[@oldradiotvsc9836]

Looks like an awesome machine!

[@randycarter2001]

The zero A and zero B are actually phase A and Phase B. The Greek letter used as a phase symbol looks a lot like a zero. Kind of like the Greek omega letter is to indicate ohms of resistance. Using 2 phases levels out the current draw. Half lights on A and half lights on B is better than a big spike on A and nothing on B.

[@eDoc2020]

Not changing the battery would normally be on the owner but here there is one specific thing of note. The battery is soldered to the board. If they expected you to replace the battery it would be removable. I think the machines are simply being used well beyond their designed service life.

[@LyonsArcade]

Yeah but the owner is an arcade operator, they had soldering irons!

[@lawrenceveinotte]

Thanks for the video, you do a great job on them.

[@danijelcar5184]

Nice lights work fine.😎👍

[@douro20]

The 6803 adds new instructions, including 16-bit ones, and has a clock generator and 128 bytes of RAM on the die.

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you!

[@OhRonaldo]

Aaaaahahahahahaaaaaa While you were digging inside for the test keyboard, your video stopped and went to a grey screen, just like you went on a "C'mon People" rant. I said: "Very funny, Ron. Wow, he's really selling it this time. Wow this is too long. Did my TV just die?" My Google chromecast dongle had reset right at that spot in your video, first time ever. I was blaming you! Haha great video as always. Thanks!

[@LyonsArcade]

Well i'm glad you got it going again :)

[@gallimead]

I'm fixing up a strange science 6803. And it's probably the cheapest system / cabinet I've ever dealt with. Following with interest..When you pulled out the bally keyboard those things are junk..but "Bally testing is as easy as ABC". There are replacements on Marco

[@TimIskander]

Nice video Ron.... fwiw I think the "zero" in 0A and 0B is meant to be the symbol "phi" which is used to indicate phase. You can add it to u being "mu" for micro lol! cheers /Tim

[@Habreno]

14 ball bulb also seems out of touch, flashing with the strobing of the playfield instead of staying dark while the balls count up (in the "rack" not on the field)

[@jasonsteverson4609]

Hey Ron!!

[@PlumGurly]

I think that is known as Charlieplexing. Often, that would use signals that float to the CPU or digital logic. So when the signal is high, it supplies the positive voltage for a line, when it is low, it supplies the negative voltage to the other line, and when tri-stated, everything is turned off. And the CPU does a tad more work since if you need both bulbs, you'd have to flicker between them. But since things would be getting done at the CPU clock's speed, you can't really tell. And if you have a loss of brightness, they could simulate the original brightness by increasing the voltage.

[@douro20]

It's not Charlieplexing as such a scheme requires the use of LEDs and it relies on the fact that LEDs will only conduct in one direction. Not to mention that the technique wasn't developed until around 2001.

[@PlumGurly]

@@douro20 -- I don't think that necessarily requires LEDs. I mean, you can let transistors, diodes, chips, or SCRs take their place and they can drive whatever they want. So you could have PNP and NPN transistors. You said the key, that voltage can only go in one direction, and remember the regular diodes in series that Ron pointed out on the schematics? And well, the technique was around for longer, just that it wasn't published, named, or patented prior to the time you gave. (Yes, that is an example of patent trolling where past art does make it in. And thus, it may likely get nullified in court if a suit results.) Many circuits that were patented around that time were circuits I came up with in my play as a teen and younger (and likely others via independent invention, though "independent invention" is only allowed as a defense in copyright suits, not patent suits). I never thought I'd invented anything. So if I could have thought up similar in the mid-'80s, so could a number of professional engineers with more experience. I'm not really disagreeing. I'm as curious as you may be.

[@eDoc2020]

Charliepplexing is a specific kind of multiplexing making use of three state outputs and convoluted wiring to provide tons of outputs. This board uses regular matrix-based multiplexing where it's wired as a grid of row and column lines with the devices placed at each intersection. Here we have two row lines driven by the AC phases but in more common setups there are more lines which are cycled electronically.

[@Brendan_Keyport-WA7BMK]

under the drop targets? Sounds like I'd be putting a warm LED back there.

[@LyonsArcade]

Yeah it's all pretty tight back there, kind of crazy!

[@ManChicken]

Hey Joe! I finally got all the boards on my Champ plugged back in and flipped on to test. No fires yet but I'm having a strange display issue I can't quite figure out; Match/Credits display seems to be shifted. For instance when I start a game, the ball In play count is showing up on the pair of digits on the left-most of the display, which are of course behind the backglass artwork, instead of it being in the right-most pair that show through the second window. Match at the end of the game is the same, although I only see 1 digit (which I assume is the second digit or the 1s of the 2-digit number, considering I see "1", "2", "3" for the ball-in-play indicator in the second digit slot during a game.) Any idea what that could be? 🤔 It's also throwing me off when I go into Test mode, which all 4 player displays flash "08" and it beeps in sync, while I can only see a "9" flashing on the Credits/Match display behind (I assume it's trying to say 94 per the manual, with 08 being the Outhole switch which makes sense as the ball was sitting in it.)

[@LyonsArcade]

You definitely have a 6 digit display in there I assume? That's a strange one I haven't ran into that exact problem before. It could be a strobe problem but if it did that you probably wouldn't get it perfectly off one digit like that. For it to be all the way to the left when it should be all the way to the right doesn't make much sense...

[@ManChicken]

(Oops sorry I meant 'Hey Ron!' but I had you yelling at Joe stuck in my head! 😀)

[@ManChicken]

@@LyonsArcade Yup it's definitely a 6 digit display. I took the backglass out earlier and now that I can actually see it, it is the first digit that's the only one that ever displays anything, not the second as I originally thought (I wasn't thinking about the covered digit between the two match/credit windows.) When it's trying to display more than 1 digit (like when it's picking the match number at the end of a game) the segments for the two digits get kind of mixed together and displayed in the one. I don't know how these things actually work, but it seems like a clock signal or something that selects which digit of the display it's talking to isn't happening.

[@RetroFix]

2:03

[@dennismorris902]

I have the exact game that I need to work on. I need to get the sound to work. Do you have any way I can get the paperwork that you have? Thanks Dennis

[@LyonsArcade]

It's on IPDB.org

[@yuwish6320]

The values you're talking about, C1, A8, look like extremely high hexadecimal numbers. So like C1 coins per play, would be 193 coins per play or some such, assuming that is an actual hex number. Its still random garbage. But at least its understandable. For other settings, a number that high could break play settings in interesting ways.

[@ruaraidhmcdonald-walker9524]

Wow! I’m so behind on JCVG pinball videos!

[@mfranzusan3014]

Xing could also mean transmitting

[@waynegram8907]

JOE CLASSIC, What is that test keyboard part number or name of it because it has a special connector? Do you know what its called when using the AC ripple phase A and phase B for this type of lamp switching technique, there must be an electronic term for doing this type of lamp switching technique. It looks like the CPU microcontroller or ROM chips is sending out a strobe signal that is a PWM pulse width signal

[@douro20]

I wouldn't know the part number for the keypad but this is a device they used in their slot machines (the world's first computerised slots, from what I understand) and was carried over to their pinballs with a slightly different pinout. There are replacements out there which use miniature pushbuttons instead of the cheap membrane used here.

[@waynegram8907]

@@douro20 yes he is using the membrane keypad but it must have the correct pinout connector also for it to work correctly, there must be a part number and name for this membrane keypad

[@eDoc2020]

general term for this type of lamp switching is multiplexing. The same grid-based technique is used when you have tons of switches you want to monitor but don't want to monitor a gazillion lines. It's used on computer keyboards and I _think_ the switches on these pinball machines are also wired like this.

[@waynegram8907]

@@eDoc2020 no I'm not talking about the switching multiplexing. I'm talking about using the AC phase A and AC phase B for lamp switching. The pinball game designers are using the 60hz or 120hz AC wall voltage and rectifying it into phase A to turn on a certain group of lamps on the playfield and Phase B to turn on certain group of lamps on the playfield. This Phase A and Phase B of using the 60hz or 120hz must be called something because its a technique used.

[@waynegram8907]

@@eDoc2020 What do you mean by Grid-Based Technique? most switching multiplexing is done using Diodes which there are not diodes being used on the lamps in this type of switching technique.

[@ocsrc]

That must come off the opposite sides of the transformer and they reverse the circuit for each phase. When the A is hot the B would be ground and when the B is hot A would be ground. An electrical engineer would have come up with this design

[@geoffreed4199]

6803 is a 6800 with internal ram added, likely 256 bytes

[@kimmacdonald1678]

When i push the test mode button, It goes into LAMP mode test, if i press any keyboard button it jumps to STUCK SWITCH mode and has an annoying sound, and will not do anything other then flash in that mode with 01 which doesnt appear to be a stuck switch anyway. But I cannot use the keyboard to go into other modes, Its either lamp mode or stuck switch mode thats all i can use and i cant even use the mode as its only on lamps or just showing the (01) in SW mode. doesnt cycle or anything in the mode just plays an irritating sound.

[@lawrenceveinotte]

Battery holders could be 3d printed.

[@ocsrc]

This is why we are seeing the insane flickering on the video. The camera sees this but the human eye can't see it.

[@pauldzim]

CMOS is pronounced See Moss

[@lileveretteyoakumiii]

Hello Yodelayheehoo

[@LyonsArcade]

Hello Lil Everette!

[@Sizzorfite]

I don't understand why you don't just use an 18650 lithium battery for backup?

[@LyonsArcade]

Think about it a little bit and you'll figure it out

[@eDoc2020]

Lithium-ion batteries don't like being charged with improper circuitry. I believe the original battery was NiCd so if you want a rechargeable battery this (or NiMH) is what you should go with. But the load is low enough regular batteries work just fine.

[@sirgreybat]

"trying to stay away from things made in China"...Thumbs up!!!

[@ray73864]

I consider it negligence. I mean, when you own a car, you routinely have to maintain it, when you own a house, you have to maintain it. Same as a pinball machine, if you fail to maintain it (such as changing the battery), sucks to be you, any issues not doing so creates is entirely on the owner not the manufacturer. A manufacturer issue would be an unforseen issue, or bad parts. Even a brand spanking new battery fresh out of the packet, leaking all over the board, isn't on the machine manufacturer, that's on the battery manufacturer.

[@LyonsArcade]

that's how I see it too, people want to blame the designers but I think that's misplaced, these things were fairly well designed. Even the Gottlieb stuff was pretty well designed, just not quite as nice as the Bally/Williams stuff (talking SS of course)

[@elysiom_original]

You removed the old battery on board but the quality of those AAs in that remote battery holder are hot garbage - Alkaline batteries are now made very cheaply in China, unfortunately I’ve had multiple sets of “premium” Duracells etc. that have leaked with in a year.

[@LyonsArcade]

Then why are you paying money for "premium" duracells if they leak? Buy cheap batteries

[@elysiom_original]

@@LyonsArcade I don’t, replace with lithitum

[@yuwish6320]

They still make 3.6VDC batteries in AA size. Why not use those? edit: nevermind.... lol Made in China.

[@patmcnally6]

Stop Talking and Start Chalking