Pinball 2000 Repair
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1 Introduction
Pinball 2000 was the answer to a failing pinball industry. This was the last system used in a pinball machine before Williams ceased production of pinball machines. The reasons for why Williams ceased production is highly debated and more information can be found here.
This system was a hybrid of conventional pinball with a video aspect. Using a 19" arcade monitor and special playfield glass that is coated to reflect the image, creating the illusion of animated images standing on the playfield. To be able to handle both the pinball and video aspects of the game, the designers of Pinball 2000 used a commercial off the shelf PC based on a unique graphics and CPU processor, the Cyrix MediaGX. There are two proprietary components, the PRISM card, which contains the roms and booted the PC without a hard disk, and an audio amp. Unfortunately, the software requires the Cyrix MediaGX CPU for its display. The MediaGX did not sell well, and the boards and chips are now hard to find.
2 Games
- Revenge From Mars
- Star Wars Episode 1
- Wizard Blocks *
- Playboy *
* Denotes a game that was never produced
3 Technical Info
Pinball 2000 was run using a commercial PC with the Cyrix Media GX CPU The software depends on the integrated graphics in the Media GX CPU to operate. The PRISM card is a PCI card that carried the ROMs and ran the basic boot process of the PC to run Pinball 2000. Along with the PRISM card, the PC contained a custom audio amp to drive the stereo speakers and subwoofer. Optional pieces of hardware available for the Pinball 2000 system would be the XXX ethernet card and a barcode reader. These worked to be able to access bookkeeping info over the internet and also host tournaments involving barcode based "login" to the system. Currently working on this, including adding pictures
4 Problems and Solutions
4.1 Power Problems
The AT power supply in the PC case is a common failure. If your power supply fails, you have 2 options: 1) find another AT power supply, or 2) Put an ATX power supply into your machine. The first option is becoming extremely hard to do because of how long AT power supplies haven't been used, it is hard to still find one. Option 2 involves cutting 2 wires out of the molex connector and connecting them to each other to force the motherboard to boot.
4.2 PC issues
One of the issues with the PC is that the fan on the CPU heatsink is prone to failure. Once the fan stops working, the CPU overheats and over time will eventually fail. A big factor that causes the fan to fail is the foam piece that goes across the lid. Due to heat, the glue gives up and it sags right down on top of the fan. The best thing to do is to trim it back to just over the PRISM card, which is the foam's original purpose.
Another tip for prolonging your PC's life is to underclock the CPU., which will be detailed here once I pull up my info for it.
4.3 Solenoid problems
Be sure connectors are on coil lugs tight. Vibration can loosen them and burn the lugs, or on flipper coils if a connector slips off - they aren't insulated and can short to the next lug and take out a transistor for the flipper coil.
4.4 Lamp problems
With Pinball 2000 came some methods to help make operator maintenance easier. One of those features is a burnt out lamp detection. The only problem with this is that if you put LEDs in your machine, they draw to little current to be detected as good and will report as bad to your machine.
4.5 Switch problems
The switches are a common failure on these machines. Most switch related problems are the switch itself not the switch matrix. There are 2 common switches in a Pinball 2000 machine which are XXX and XXX.
4.6 Monitor problems
The monitor inside a Pinball 2000 machine is a normal low-resolution arcade monitor. Two different brand CGA monitors were put in Pinball 2000 machines, a Wells-Gardener 19K7302 or a Ducksan CGM-1901CW. At this age, most of these monitors could use adjusting, if not a capaitor kit.
Another option for Pinball 2000 monitors include purchasing an LCD and mounting it place of the CRT. This option will require a signal converter to convert the low resolution signal to something a VGA computer monitor can handle.
4.7 Sound problems
The audio amp inside the PC box is pretty reliable, but if it does ever have problems, there are 2 strikes against it: 1) it is proprietary from Williams, and 2) it is all surface mount components. This makes service and replacement a little bit of a challenge.
4.8 Flipper problems
It should be noted that the E.O.S. switches are normally open.
5 Repair Logs
Did you do a repair? Log it here as a possible solution for others.