Same here. Used an old coin box lid to make an extension to my trough guide. Needed one for a wide body but only had a regular trough guide. Well concealed under the apron and can’t be seen normally.

If the next guy thinks it’s a hack he can replace it.

IMG_2275 (resized).jpeg

Cheetah is a wide body like Big Game. Put a strip of black Gorilla duct tape across those ball guides under apron. And then remove the anti-bang back ball guide wire.

If Cheetah is anything like my Big Game, when a ball is coming down from the right side, sometimes you will get a Lazareth ball. Just enough so you can catch the ball with the right flipper and put it back into play.

I discovered this by accident and decided to leave the wire guide out. I had the bad habit of throwing my arms in the air when the ball drained. This last chance rebound taught me to keep my fingers on the flippers until the ball is really gone.

You probably don't need the tape but pull the wire and play it for awhile. My standard size Sterns do not have this wire but my Big Game and F2K do have this wire. And now your Cheetah.

Is it cheating? I don't think so ( But it is not something you would do if you were an OP looking for coins ). it is just one more shot that takes a bit of skill to keep on playing.

My one Gottlieb pin has a rebound post under the apron that can give you that one last chance to recover. But it only happens about 5% of the time.

Keep your finders on the flipper buttons.

Try it and tell us what happens.

Thanks.

BTW: That is how Stern did this on Big Game. A regular ball guide with a 3" extender, just like what you did. There is no long ball guide.

When I was looking for this part you are probably the one that said to make my own.

Yes, should not have installed that anti-bang back wire. It's tempting to remove it but that would risk damage and leave two fugly holes.

I always leave the biff bars off when swapping. No particular reason just don't think most games need them.

I wouldn't mind putting them on - but I really really dislike how Big Game's is over the 'Collect Bonus' text. So whenever I get my new PF for it, I'll leave that one off.

This is just a piece of wire without any locking tangs squeezed on. It will pull out easy. And you will not see the holes when playing.

Get ready for a carargument: I was at a street car show a few years ago and was talking with a guy who who had resto-modded an old Hudson Terraplane ( a car ). I commented on some of the rock chips in his fenders. He said, " Either you cover the car with a blanket and drag it out on weekends so you can ooh and ahh your friends as you swill beer and cover it back up for next weekend.

Or, you drive it and enjoy it. And you get rock chips.

Unless you are 10 foot tall, you won't be seeing anything right in front of the apron while playing.

But you will enjoying playing with that wire removed. When you see that ball coming down from the 4-5-6 drop targets, keep your fingers on those flipper buttons.

I was surprised today to get my new 1B-243 from Mantis. Excellent! Beautiful and about 25% thicker than the original, 0.038 vs 0.030 inches. Seems like I just ordered it.

IMG_9727 (resized).jpg

Not while playing, but I have friends, and family who like to play, and when they do, I'll stand on the side of my game to watch. (Especially when my niece and nephew play.) .. I will see it then.

Well, I can't argue with that. Well, I could but it sounds like I would not get very far

Keep your fingers on those flipper buttons

anyone have one of the seawitch ball deflectors they aren't using? need one for work. ball constantly getting stuck on left plastic.

I sent you a PM.

Getting a Stern Magic up and going, it has the barakandl MPU, otherwise original.
When it boots up, p1-4 show 00 and the credits show 10, then when it shows last high score the credits window changes to 6, and then back. However it seems to always credit 10. I can press "credit/start" 4 times, power off game, power back on and the credit window is back to 10. However, we did flip dip switch 20 per manual However, that shows credits and is free play. If that is off, then no credits show. wondering what may be going on..... Game is configured correctly for MPU 100 and cosmic princess/magic.

In switch test, the switches test fine.

I'm not familiar with the barakandl MPU....is there a "clear NVRAM" or similar function? When I've come across similar behavior on Allteks, clearing the Alltek memory (setting a dipswitch to the "Clear" value, powering on then off, then returning the dipswitch to the previous setting) usually works for me.

I did click the "reset" button, which rebooted the mpu. I also thought something similar as sys1 gottliebs do some weird things when the ram needs to be reset.

Resetting the MPU and clearing the memory are two different things. I looked up the board - see the switch settings below to clear the memory. Here's a link to the full PDF:

https://nvram.weebly.com/uploads/5/4/2/5/54255141/bally.combo.2023.12.03.pdf

b-mpu (resized).jpg

I saw that on the site and it mentioned mpu200 but i'll try it for this as well.

All bally or stern games do not do a checksum of ram so corruption can always occur and should be cleared when changing games.

You can do it with the clear rom or use the built in audits in each game to clear each audit location.

Stepping through every audit and clearing them back to zero should be good enough to reset the memory for every game except the buggy version of Meteor (sound problems) which no one should be using anymore.

There is a couple early MPU200 games that don't program the sound RAM until you finish a game/ball. The first game played on Ali with new RAM the bell sound is usually bugged out. Once you finish the first game it fixes itself.

You're running my Magic code.

On power up if the credits are zero in freeplay mode, the code will auto stuff a value in there and this value is configurable between 0 and 15 (10 is the default). It's the last option in the software settings at the end of the audits.

In freeplay mode there is an option to do the typical subtract one credit per player when you start. Or it can be optioned to clear the credit display so it's blank when you start a new game. Any credits you earn then get displayed normally. In freeplay you will never see the number zero in the credit display. I personally use this option because sometimes I like to see how many credits I can earn in a game - this value is even shown in the credit display as a 'highest credits to date" when the highest scores are shown.

On barakandl web site scroll down to the "Magic 2021-10-30" custom ROM document for details about configuration and other enhancements.
https://nvram.weebly.com/custom-rom-info.html

Any questions, just ask.

I JUSR REALIZED THIS! Hahah. I did grabbed and have him burn your code on. So turn off dip 20 and it should be fine?

If you just want the credit display disabled, that will do it.

Hey Classic Stern fans. I need a OEM coin box for my current project. Anybody have a decent one to spare? DM me with a price.

Firing up my rebuilt boards for my Dragonfist and testing voltages along the way…

Transformer set up for 120v (getting 121.7 incoming).

Rectifier board voltages in spec except for unregulated 12 vdc measures 14.6 volts with SDB unplugged and then 15.0 vdc w SDB. Is this too high?

TP3 on driver is 5.33v

Is it ok to plug in the MPU?

The 5v is technically too high, but its probably fine after the voltage drop across the plugs. Looking over the datasheets of the parts I am using on the replacement MPU, the oscillators is the only one I see right away with an absolute max of 5.25vdc.

If you want to bring the voltage down, remove the cheats bally does to pump up the 5v regulator output. Cut out SDB R49 is the easiest thing to do. Jumper over R50 is the other one. The voltage will probably be closer to 5v if you do that.

The 12v will read ~15vdc when the driver board is in circuit, so that is normal.

Thank you Andrew. Your MPU is real nice and I didn’t want to blow it up. Has a lot of optional features built-in, very cool.

This is the version SDB I’m using (Rev. C). Should I do both, snip out R49 and jumper R50?

IMG_2365 (resized).jpeg

Here is some homework for you on how to calculate the output voltage. Note the specification for uA78H05 5V voltage regulator is that its output can be between 4.85V and 5.25V depending on the characteristics of your part. The formula assumes a 5.0V part.

Note, Stern and Bally use a different resistor value for R50 - hence Stern solenoid driver boards output a slightly higher voltage on the 5V supply rail.

LM323_Voltage_Adjust (resized).png
uA78H05_Voltage_Spec (resized).png

Good info.
Bally = 5.11
Stern = 5.235

If you pay attention to significant figures.
Bally = 5.1
Stern = 5.2

Now you can measure the actual voltage output of your specific uA78H05, black meter probe on the regulators metal case, red meter probe on test point TP1 on the SDB. Sometimes resistors R49 / R50 can be a little out of spec which slightly affects the boards output voltage.

Related question - are there any good, readily available substitutions? I've yet to bring home a classic that actually had the coin box. Putting them on location I generally just put a shoebox or something in there, which works, but would be all for having a couple better options in hand.

Thank you barakandl and Quench Success! SDB dc voltages-
Pre-surgery:
TP1 5.357
TP3 5.333
Regulator 5.098

Post-surgery:
TP1 5.095
TP3 5.073
Regulator 5.099

Last question (on this)- should TP1 and TP3 be connected together or not necessary?

Wasn't somebody on this board selling a repro Dragonfist backglass? I seem to remember reading something about one being available but can't find the post.

http://coos.net

Yeah, they are great but some already had an extra one in the US. I would like to save some cash on shipping if I can.

This?
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/price-check-1980-sterns-quicksilver-stargazer-seawitch/page/202#post-7866748

Yes, that's it. It looks Like he might of sold it off Pinside. I'll message him anyway. Who knows, I might get lucky.

Buy only the film from Coos. Take a badly flaking glass (any title), scrape off the art, clean. Using rapidtac apply the film.

I wouldn't say they 'should' be. Installing that jumper is about providing redundancy to mask a potential connector issue with SDB J3. I presume you have rebuilt this connector as it's for a Dragonfist scratch build? Anyway adding the jumper doesn't hurt.

Thanks. Yes, new headers and connectors.

I think it was Big Al that said the TP1 and TP3 looping through the connectors was just to make some kind of cheat for a compliance requirement with the 48v with a 5a fuse being on the same board with the 5v regulator. Sending the 5v in and out of the board some how made them happy to get UL compliance or whatever it was. If the connectors are in good shape the jumper is not needed.

anyone has a good tip to keep wire guide that keep popping out in the PF? These do not have barb and are near the flipper or drop target so with a lot of vibration.

Epoxy

I pack the hole with wood putty and tap it back in.

Anyone familiar with memory lane? Picked one up and the drops are all busted. Looks like they are bally style with a shorter ledge catch?

This is actually a fun little layout!

Memory Lane is a tough fun pin to play.

Someone could have installed a Bally drop assembly at one time. There is a bracket that the targets catch/land on. You can turn that bracket over and then the Stern targets will work fine. The Stern targets drop more easily with the longer catch.

Ah, good call. I'm guessing they flipped the bracket to use bally drops. I cut the ridge down on some used stern ones I had on hand to get it running, but they're bricking fierce. Didn't think about flipping that bracket. I've gotta take it apart again anyway; of course the only drop that wasn't broken snapped a few games after putting it back together. Gotta get LEDs on those rollovers too, can't even tell what's lit unless the room lights are out, and even then it's tough. Might try the two headed flex ones from comet, design was clearly not made with being lit well in mind.

Also - wasn't someone selling new door trim here recently?

anyone have a rubber size and quantity for dragonfist and quicksilver?

https://www.titanpinball.com/kits/index.php/view/id/1215

https://www.titanpinball.com/kits/index.php/browse/bygame/3796

thanks, hopefully they r accurate lol

Can always compare to the manual

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EA70E31E-2F5E-4442-AD6A-52E3EE9F0EE4 (resized).png

Hey gang -

Having an annoying problem with my Stars. Left bank upon reset is having two of the three drop targets go back up, but one out of 6 or 7 times, the middle target doesn't reset. The small problem is that this instantly awards 500 points to the player. The bigger issue is it occasionally screws up the game's ball state logic and advances to the next ball if the trough kickout is slow or takes multiple attempts to kick out from the trough. Want to use this in a tournament so it's problematic.

Any ideas? Not sure what to do about the ledge if that is the issue.

Thanks

Mike