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Got My First Pin - Bally Supersonic


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Hi Guys,

 

I finally made my first pinball purchase, a Bally Supersonic. I picked it up last weekend and have been working on it every chance I have had. It looked a good game that the family would be interested in.

The pin hadn't been used for years and had the backbox disassembled when I purchased the game. Playfield has a couple of small ridges, backglass is also cracking but has been mylared and cabinet has been resprayed but overall it was all complete and something I could get stuck into learning on.

 

Re-assembled the pinball when I got home. After a quick look over for any obvious problems before firing it up. Replaced missing fuse on rectifier board. Back of the board has some burnt connectors and previous owner had then solder the wires directly to the back of the board rather than replace the connector. Fired the game up and had some arcing from the burnt area on the back of the board. Removed burnt area from around connector and fired game up again. Checked voltages and had +5, +12,+43,+190 OK.

 

MPU board was not completing self test and was only giving two flashes. Quick re-seat of all MPU chips got the board to pass self test and gave 7 flashes. Was able to get game up and running and gave it a couple of quick games but I did not want to cause any further damage to playfield until I had cleaned it. Even though the battery has been relocated the MPU board has some previous damage and I will need to clean the up and replace all sockets with decent quality ones.

 

Most of the rubbers on the pinball were either rock hard or had split in half and were laying on the playfield. Also about 80% of the bulbs were either missing or blown. Downloaded the Supersonic manual and made a list of replacement parts, Rubbers, bulbs, pinball, flipper bat (as one was cracked), novus, millwax..

 

Parts arrived and first gave the playfield a good clean with Millwax ( as my Novus hadn't arrived yet.) I would be interested to know what the general consensus is on Millwax? Replaced all rubbers and blown bulbs. Used #47 in the backbox and #44 in the playfield. Replaced the flipper bats and tightened on of the loose coils underneath. One flipper is sticking a little and there is a bit of play in the flipper links so I will replace these at a later stage.

 

At least I was able to have a few games now and played it for a few hours. After I while the game starting rebooting midway through the game, so I needed to check this out. I have a couple of volts AC ripple across the C23 and this cap is known to cause this problem so after a quick trip to Jaycar for a suitable cap and this solved my restarting problem.

 

A couple of the displays are faulty with one having burn to couple of the digits and the other totally dead. I will to replace these at some stage. The match and ball score displays also displays the incorrect digits. Will display a 7 instead of 5 and 2 instead of 0. This will probably be the decoder chip on the display board. So I will change this when I get a chance.

 

Even after replacing all faulty bulbs some of the playfield lights work intermittently so I need to check this further. Bulbs buzzed out OK so I'll need to check wiring, bulb holders, and perhaps driver board for these.

 

Sound stopped working after a couple of games so I'll need to look at this further. I measured all electrolytics with a capacitance meter and these checked out OK so I'll dig out the Cro and check the waveforms. The Bally schematic for the board is great and lists the signals for each point so it should be fairly straightforward to troubleshoot. There is a guide on http://www.pinball4you.ch/okaegi/rep_soundold.html which takes you through step by step and is good as it list the correct replacement equivalent part numbers for the bally chips. Setup the Cro and put the pinball into self test #4 which plays the chime over and over. Traced the circuit though until I reached U11. I had a signal in at pin 1 but flat-lining or either pin 9, 11 so will replace this with a 74LS93 and retest.

 

 

 

Still To do:

 

Repair Rectifier board connector.

Repair problem with playfield lights.

Replace sockets on MPU board and repair corrosion damage.

Replace flipper assemblies.

Repair Sound card.

Repair/replace 2 x 6 digit displays.

Repair incorrect digits on match display.

Repair playfield damage.

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Looks good, even the SST area is intact. There's a replacement decal for this area now if it does wear out.

My second pin was a Supersonic, and I really liked it.

 

Great observation - They are always worn in this area, and around the slings.

 

I had a Supersonic as well, one of the underrated early Bally SS titles.

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Thanks everyone.

 

Hi Strangeways, I will have a crack a painting it a a latter stage. I would like to get in back to as original as possible. The marvin's guides are fantastic and have saved me hours of troubleshooting.

 

Thanks for the tip XYGT regarding the decals. Mine game is worn around the SST decal and around each of the rollovers surrounding the big star. Any tips for replacing the decals? How would you cut around the circle surrounding the star?

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Thanks everyone.

 

Hi Strangeways, I will have a crack a painting it a a latter stage. I would like to get in back to as original as possible. The marvin's guides are fantastic and have saved me hours of troubleshooting.

 

Thanks for the tip XYGT regarding the decals. Mine game is worn around the SST decal and around each of the rollovers surrounding the big star. Any tips for replacing the decals? How would you cut around the circle surrounding the star?

 

IIRC, the decal covered the entire bonus section... I think there was a thread on RGP a while ago with the source of the decal as well...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the link, Wotto. My spinner is worn so I'll give the link a try.

 

I think I saw a few of the Supersonics around when I was growing up too. Its a good game that the wife doesn't event mind playing,

 

I have repaired the sound card now so the game is now much better to play with sound. Resoldering the connector pins on the lamp driver board has stopped the intermittent problems with the playfield lights going on/off. I still have a few lamps which don't light and have found a few of the SCRs faulty which I am going to replace soon. Slowly coming together.

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