My Goodness/Your Badness

No DIA this time because there hasn't been any official movement, but the Loser 500 should be due for a spanking soon... while my Dad and brother were here, we celebrated my birthday a week early and I got some fabulous cash and prizes, which I intend to apply towards my debt to the family.

My brother actually played a few games of pinball while he was here, mostly Quicksilver since it's upstairs. But as he is an electronics whiz and we resisted my Dad's urge to put him to work around the house (on previous trips he has installed the lighting in our basement and office) so that on his last day here he actually volunteered to show me some soldering. In his youth he scored 100 on the NASA soldering test, so how could I go wrong?

In the limited time available, we decided that of the 7 boards that could use some work, the best ones to try would be a WPC CPU and the EBD lamp driver with the bad traces. My brother surprised me with an actual de-soldering iron, which is so much easier to use than the solder sucker that I have. He also confirmed that my soldering iron, which I think is about 2/3 as old as I am, is junk. I plan to buy a new one soon with one of the gift cards that were my gift from him.

Let's do My Goodness first. The lamp driver worked out great. Rather than soldering on a new wire to replace the trace, he cut out the middleman with a pretty cool trick: He noticed that the middle leg of the transistor didn't connect to anything on the underside of the board, so he bent it up and soldered it to the trace. Check out the picture: The elegance of this solution is amazing. He also critiqued my soldering technique of the other transistors... he said I used too much solder. When he finished, I plugged the board into the game and put it into the lamp test, and for the first time since I bought the game the left arrow and the Target 1 Ball lit in all their glory! That left only two lights out, so tonight I replaced the burnt out bulb in the left bumper and fixed the Rack 2 Ball by jiggling the wire on the connector. So for this brief, shining moment, everything on Eight Ball Deluxe is working! Let's pause and savor this moment... ahhhh!

The CPU didn't work out so well. My brother desoldered and removed the old U20 chip (and I helped a bit) with relative ease. Then he soldered on a socket, which didn't go so well... his precision soldering technique is apparently a little rusty. He started getting angry and frustrated, which happens pretty much any time he does work for me but is never a good sign. He was worried that he might have broken some traces or something. When he finished, I did a bench test and the board booted. With high hopes I attached it to the game and fired it up. Unfortunately the results were a little less than spectacular. It said there were pinballs missing even though they were all in place. Then I did the switch test and found that although the one column that was broken has now been joined by two more. Ouch! Well, to paraphrase Meatloaf, 1 out of 2 ain't bad. When I have some time, I'll try to compare continuity tests on the two boards and see if there's anything really obvious, like bridged connections.

But I'm still relatively happy... EBD is working, and that's good news. Plus I got to do some desoldering and watch him solder, which according to D&D should be worth a few Experience Points. Time will tell whether it's enough to level me up.