Pinball machines tradin' paint! Back "in the old days" there were a bunch of little sandwich shops near where I worked with three or four machines crammed into a corner, head units touching.
Thanks Ron! Another machine that you’re gonna bring back from the dead! Interesting to see the technology from early EMs through early Solid State and beyond.
Yeah this is some of my favorite stuff, this period and since the gottliebs are so archaic it's kind of my favorite. I like the mid 80's Gottlieb stuff a lot too.
I grew up playing pinball in the 70s and 80s and all of the Gottlieb pinball machines i remember trying to play were not working either completely or partially but all of the Bally and Williams games were working most of the time. So in my opinion that is why the Gottlieb pinball machines are in good condition and the the Bally Williams machines are worn.
Being a union projectionist of course I ran this movie when it came out❗️ that girl on the left when she's looking out the door in a white light she says ''they're here'', Also the tower on the playfield is the ''devils tower'' in Wyoming‼️®™️☑️☑️
This was a pretty fun game to play when it first came out. …. I just love Gottlieb machines. Even though their early digitalis had issues, they are still very good games. I know you’ll whip this into great shape, and then we’ll see a great game in action. …can’t wait. …..what happened to that Bank A Ball that was hanging around?
How you not seen Close Encounters? John Williams score and steve Spielberg directing. We are from the UK and we were pissed that at the Devil's Tower tourist store, the pinball table was broke while camping there, they show the movie every night in front of the tower so get down there 😂
1. you HAVE to watch the movie (but I'm guessing you are pulling our leg) and 2. Close Encounters and E.T was both made by Spielberg :D (which I now heard you reference in the end - lesson learned: always watch all the way through before commenting ;)
@@LyonsArcade Ahaaa :) ‘74 myself, and discovered «close encounter» in the vhs rental shop after watching E.T. and other Spielberg/Lucas movies back in the moviebox-days when we would rent a vhs player for a weekend and watch as many movies as possible, often pal pirate copies of ntsc originals imported from the US, like all the Ninja and horror movies we couldn’t rent here in Norway due to very strict censorships on «violent» movies - good times indeed with rental shops full of arcade machines and pinball games :)
This game has been on my want list for a while. I saw one in Dallas a short time ago, the guy had torn it apart to restore and not finished it. I told my wife, she gave a dumb look and said no. What are ya gonna do with that???!?
The Gottlieb/Rockwell partnership blew up in Both companies Faces. Mainly cause Rockwell was the one trying to pull a fast one on Gottlieb and Gottlieb was advertising the usage of Rockwell's design. Rockwell Was going to use the "spider" chips in the Apollo 19 mission but that was cancelled so when the Pinball kings came knocking all their stock of Spider chips had a new home. Rockwell never intended to make more and when the supply was dried up they planned to move on. then 1979 happened. Not even 6 months in to the line up of the first solid state game did the issues start happening. At first Rockwell would service the games and this was fine until the chips ran out. then the reputation started to get sour. the rest is history as you know it.
Love these «long form» videos, they are just perfect to sit back and relax with a beer :) Any chance there is an upcoming video featuring a Gottlieb Roller Disco Machine in the future? Got my hands on one a year ago, and slowly making progress, learning as I go (had to change the main board to one of the new remakes since none of the previous owners thought to check the battery and there was tons of leakage on the spider leg chips :/ ) Also, some brainiac who couldn’t get hold of proper connectors soldered all the connector cables to the main boards lower connector row :/ Hopefully, one day it will live again and spread joy in my quad roller skate shop in Norway, but for now it’s a slow moving project of love - but would love to see a video on restoring/fixing one of those, hoping to pick up some tricks on this video since it’s the same system :)
Unfortunately I don't have one of those in but if I get one i'll do videos on it. as you know though all the System 1's are very similar. Thank you for watching Andre!
@@LyonsArcade Thanks to you for making such great content, a joy to watch the detective work and methodical search for errors :) Looking forward to the next part of this repair job, and hopefully pick up a few tips and pointers for fixing my own system 1 machine :)
0:30 And I'd die laughing it it was. Then again you're talking about you first pinball machine you fixed. If it's traded hands a few times or been well played since then yeah I'd totally see it returning for some more of your repair man lovin
Why would every lamp in the playfield be out? There is a very talented embedded programmer in Italy who makes boards for System 1 and System 80 games which run completely new code and add numerous new features.
They may have shorted the solenoid voltage to the playfield lamps, or they may have just never replaced any of the bulbs and every single one of them burned out.
Hahaha, I was thinking the same thing, have you really never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Ron, grab Joe and some 🍿 and watch one night. Too bad they did not put the classic 5 notes into the game, but looks fun to play.
@@LyonsArcade I was born in 79, guess I was lucky because my Dad bought a VCR in '84, recorded it and showed me that movie. Got me hooked on expensive special effects and Imax movies at a young age.
Roadside dwellers often have missing cords because it's the easiest to snip off when walking by without getting caught. Edit: I never seen a resistor in a fuse case, interesting construction._
JOES CLASSIC, To power the displays the power supply is 69VAC and outputs 60VDC for the larger displays and 42VDC for the smaller displays. The RMS Calculator 70VAC will equal 50VDC/50RMS. So I'm confused how they got 60VDC out of 69VAC when the RMS value of 69VAC will be 50vdc RMS. Can anyone explain this?
AC Voltages are printed in RMS unless otherwise specified, such as 50Vp or 50Vp-p. So if it says 69VAC, it's 69VAC RMS. Now, cheaper meters will just read the average voltage on the positive cycle and do a small calculation to approximate the RMS voltage but it will still be close to the real RMS value in most situations. In short, if the meter says 69VAC, that's likely to be its RMS value. So 69VAC will easily power a 60VDC display, assuming it's behaving. But also, the RMS voltage is about 1.4x less than peak voltage. So 69VAC is actually about 96Vp. With no load, rectifying this voltage into a capacitor would give you around 96VDC. At max power transfer, it will be 69VDC though. But then they regulate it to 60V.
As for the "battery," it is very possible that was NVRAM too. Dallas made a number of permanent battery chips that also included other features such as a real-time clock and NVRAM. Some PCs used those. They contained the real-time clock, the "CMOS" memory, and the battery for both, all in one package. On the cord, I have another possible scenario, though not as likely. Scrap metal thieves were bad for a while. I mean people going as far as committing burglaries just to cut off the cords of everything they could find.
I was born in 78 so it was just the wrong time to see it :) By the time I was old enough to watch a movie like that, there were other movies to watch :)
the rockwell pps/4 chipset. they put the ROMs into the IO chips which like to fail. Imagine if your mask ROMs were in the 6821's and you couldn't just swap them out when they failed. Interestingly they put "generic" pinball machine controller software into the ROMs, and the game-specific things into a small PROM (which also likes to fail, but at least it is not custom unlike the IO/ROM chips). Unfortunately these chips run on weird voltages and signaling so you can't easily make a replacement with IO and an EPROM.
I'd argue the Gottlieb's didn't get any wear because they rarely worked. Rockwell really shit the bed when they designed the control boards for Gottlieb. It's a shame because there were a lot of great games. Some of the mistakes Rockwell made when designing the boards are inexcusable. I truly believe that Gottlieb ultimately went under when they did because Rockwell did SUCH a shitty job designing the System 1 and System 80 electronics. Disclaimer: I LOVE the System 80 Gottlieb's! The two biggest problems by far are the use of card edge connectors instead of Molex connectors and the fact that the grounds are NOT tied together. The grounding issue is particularly bad. I've seen Gottliebs lock on all of the coils, frying all of them. That said, with a few modifications, the System 80's can be every bit as reliable as a Bally-35, Stern-200 or Williams system 3-11, even if you have them on location running all day, every day. It's just a shame that wasn't the case when they left the factory. The System 1 uses a proprietary IC (the infamous spider chips) that have been made out of unobtanium for decades now, so if one of those goes, an aftermarket board is really your only option. Mechanically, they're as bulletproof as ever. Gottlieb's EM's are famous for being VERY reliable, and the mechanical parts of their games stayed that way. The System 3 Gottlieb's were also VERY reliable, but by the time Gottlieb switched over to System 3, operators didn't trust them any more. They should have sued the hell out of Rockwell for designing them pure shit.
Believe it or not it actually happens often.... and it's not as hard as you'd think. The General Illumination lights don't have any IC's controlling them, they're just wired to the transformer, so if you somewhere short the solenoid voltage (40?) to the General Illumination (6v) it has the potential to just burn up all the bulbs. All it takes is one light somewhere near a coil to have the frame of the socket touch the solenoid lug or a loose wire, etc.
they picked rockwell because they were the only company that could design and make the boards in the time frame they had. there engineer quit and took the designs and prototypes for the system 1 and put gottlieb in a bind that hurt them until the next iteration of ss boards. ps with the cord cut like that one of the first things before putting on a new one would be putting a fuse on small transformer. My nit picky thing would be cut that battery off and neutralize alkaline and ground mods before powering that board. the big cheat would be to replace everything with a pascal janin board. the time you would save would make up for part replacement and rebuild especially of the spiders were dead already but it wouldn't be as entertaining.
The only complaint I have ever had on a Gottlieb pinball? Wiring.... The ones I used to work on resembled Medusa having a bad hair cut with the wiring harnesses. But once you got used to working on these classics- Not bad at all! Fairly reliable and decent earners back in the day.
I'll be honest with you, Ron -- This game DOESN'T look much like the movie! LOL Like most licensed product, I don't think they had access to a lot of still photos from the movie or cared to use photo reference. I don't think Universal Pictures (the distributors of CE3K) care, either, as long as the pinball company paid the license fee!
It's worse than that :) Columbia Pictures produced Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, and they also owned Gottlieb. So they didn't pay any licensing rights they owned both companies :) So they don't have any excuse about not having stills :)
I can remember lining up at the movies to watch that film. For a while in the 70's everything was UFO/Alien related. Played this one too.
Pinball machines tradin' paint! Back "in the old days" there were a bunch of little sandwich shops near where I worked with three or four machines crammed into a corner, head units touching.
Yup lots of locations they put them in as tight as they could get them.
@@LyonsArcade I would pick where to go for lunch based, not so much on what I wanted to eat, but what I wanted to play.
great content :)
my hypothesis for the side "red splatter" is The Andromeda Strain .....
Andromeda *Stain* you mean 😁
who knows!
Thanks Ron! Another machine that you’re gonna bring back from the dead! Interesting to see the technology from early EMs through early Solid State and beyond.
Yeah this is some of my favorite stuff, this period and since the gottliebs are so archaic it's kind of my favorite. I like the mid 80's Gottlieb stuff a lot too.
Excellent video Ron, one of my favourite films of all time, thank you :)
I mean I knew I made a good little video but that's just crazy! Thanks for watching Mr. K!
Love the movie this classic is based on. I like that they have the Devil's Tower stenciled on the side art.
I'll watch it eventually!
I grew up playing pinball in the 70s and 80s and all of the Gottlieb pinball machines i remember trying to play were not working either completely or partially but all of the Bally and Williams games were working most of the time. So in my opinion that is why the Gottlieb pinball machines are in good condition and the the Bally Williams machines are worn.
Reliable once you fix it. Best line ever!
I'm glad you understand!
Being a union projectionist of course I ran this movie when it came out❗️ that girl on the left when she's looking out the door in a white light she says ''they're here'',
Also the tower on the playfield is
the ''devils tower'' in Wyoming‼️®™️☑️☑️
I'll have to make it to Wyoming one of these days....
@@LyonsArcade I think I'm going to have to make do with using mash potato to model Devils Tower.
That’s a cool looking game. Looks like a lot of fun!
Close Encounters is a must-see.
Must be cigarette packet foil, that's what I was taught to use as it would burn out with a proper short 🤣👍👍👍
I love the Gottlieb system 1 games. I have several and Close Encounters is one of them. They had some unique features like the vari and roto targets.
Always interesting. Great video
Thank you Joe, glad you enjoyed it!
This was a pretty fun game to play when it first came out. …. I just love Gottlieb machines. Even though their early digitalis had issues, they are still very good games. I know you’ll whip this into great shape, and then we’ll see a great game in action. …can’t wait. …..what happened to that Bank A Ball that was hanging around?
The opening scene from CE3K where they show the lost WW2 planes was the best scene in movie history. Find it on youtube!
I might have to track it down
I suppose the two people in the bottom right are supposed to be Roy and Jillian from the film 🍿
Man that is one of the best back glasses!
You should watch that movie Ron, it will explain some of the art.
Some of it looks vaguely familiar from just seeing it in pop culture but I never watched the film
How you not seen Close Encounters? John Williams score and steve Spielberg directing. We are from the UK and we were pissed that at the Devil's Tower tourist store, the pinball table was broke while camping there, they show the movie every night in front of the tower so get down there 😂
I was born in 78 and it's not a kid movie so I didn't really ever hear that it was a good movie. I saw E.T. because I was a kid :)
1. you HAVE to watch the movie (but I'm guessing you are pulling our leg) and 2. Close Encounters and E.T was both made by Spielberg :D (which I now heard you reference in the end - lesson learned: always watch all the way through before commenting ;)
Yup, and that is why the alien design is similar in a few ways.
I was born in 78 and it's not a kid movie so I didn't really ever hear that it was a good movie. I saw E.T. because I was a kid :)
@@LyonsArcade Ahaaa :) ‘74 myself, and discovered «close encounter» in the vhs rental shop after watching E.T. and other Spielberg/Lucas movies back in the moviebox-days when we would rent a vhs player for a weekend and watch as many movies as possible, often pal pirate copies of ntsc originals imported from the US, like all the Ninja and horror movies we couldn’t rent here in Norway due to very strict censorships on «violent» movies - good times indeed with rental shops full of arcade machines and pinball games :)
That's a bitchin pinball machine. I especially love how funky those vacuum displays look!
Yeah the Gottlieb displays were so cool! They had little painted windows on the backglass that made them blue, but some of them green.
Man that movie freaked me out as a kid in the 80s.......suddenly got a craving for mashed potatoes😉👍
Oh my! _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ is seminal, go watch it, you won't be sorry.
This game has been on my want list for a while. I saw one in Dallas a short time ago, the guy had torn it apart to restore and not finished it. I told my wife, she gave a dumb look and said no. What are ya gonna do with that???!?
She dont' know what the hell she's talking about LOL
really neat machine, long, long ago
Don't forget to look for that switch, gotta be in there somewhere 🤣
The Gottlieb/Rockwell partnership blew up in Both companies Faces. Mainly cause Rockwell was the one trying to pull a fast one on Gottlieb and Gottlieb was advertising the usage of Rockwell's design. Rockwell Was going to use the "spider" chips in the Apollo 19 mission but that was cancelled so when the Pinball kings came knocking all their stock of Spider chips had a new home. Rockwell never intended to make more and when the supply was dried up they planned to move on. then 1979 happened. Not even 6 months in to the line up of the first solid state game did the issues start happening. At first Rockwell would service the games and this was fine until the chips ran out. then the reputation started to get sour. the rest is history as you know it.
You haven’t seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind! “come on people!”
Love these «long form» videos, they are just perfect to sit back and relax with a beer :) Any chance there is an upcoming video featuring a Gottlieb Roller Disco Machine in the future? Got my hands on one a year ago, and slowly making progress, learning as I go (had to change the main board to one of the new remakes since none of the previous owners thought to check the battery and there was tons of leakage on the spider leg chips :/ ) Also, some brainiac who couldn’t get hold of proper connectors soldered all the connector cables to the main boards lower connector row :/ Hopefully, one day it will live again and spread joy in my quad roller skate shop in Norway, but for now it’s a slow moving project of love - but would love to see a video on restoring/fixing one of those, hoping to pick up some tricks on this video since it’s the same system :)
Unfortunately I don't have one of those in but if I get one i'll do videos on it. as you know though all the System 1's are very similar. Thank you for watching Andre!
@@LyonsArcade Thanks to you for making such great content, a joy to watch the detective work and methodical search for errors :) Looking forward to the next part of this repair job, and hopefully pick up a few tips and pointers for fixing my own system 1 machine :)
0:30 And I'd die laughing it it was. Then again you're talking about you first pinball machine you fixed. If it's traded hands a few times or been well played since then yeah I'd totally see it returning for some more of your repair man lovin
Why would every lamp in the playfield be out?
There is a very talented embedded programmer in Italy who makes boards for System 1 and System 80 games which run completely new code and add numerous new features.
They may have shorted the solenoid voltage to the playfield lamps, or they may have just never replaced any of the bulbs and every single one of them burned out.
Hahaha, I was thinking the same thing, have you really never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Ron, grab Joe and some 🍿 and watch one night. Too bad they did not put the classic 5 notes into the game, but looks fun to play.
I was born in 78 and it's not a kid movie so I didn't really ever hear that it was a good movie. I saw E.T. because I was a kid :)
Yes teddy can't believe yo haven't seen this classic movie!
@@LyonsArcade I was born in 79, guess I was lucky because my Dad bought a VCR in '84, recorded it and showed me that movie. Got me hooked on expensive special effects and Imax movies at a young age.
Such a good game! Ohhhhhh a Firepower how much!
Roadside dwellers often have missing cords because it's the easiest to snip off when walking by without getting caught.
Edit: I never seen a resistor in a fuse case, interesting construction._
That’s those older ones I think they’re called mdl
Close Encouner of the 3rd count is a Steven spielberg one of his first you should see it :)
This might have been based on Close Encounters of the Third Kind but they pretty much went their own way... woohee. Sheesh. Still it's pretty cool.
@19:14 cmon people... we use "a·luh·mi·nee·uhm" foil in the UK; you say.... I say.... let's call the whole thing off.... nice video btw
JOES CLASSIC, To power the displays the power supply is 69VAC and outputs 60VDC for the larger displays and 42VDC for the smaller displays. The RMS Calculator 70VAC will equal 50VDC/50RMS. So I'm confused how they got 60VDC out of 69VAC when the RMS value of 69VAC will be 50vdc RMS. Can anyone explain this?
AC Voltages are printed in RMS unless otherwise specified, such as 50Vp or 50Vp-p. So if it says 69VAC, it's 69VAC RMS. Now, cheaper meters will just read the average voltage on the positive cycle and do a small calculation to approximate the RMS voltage but it will still be close to the real RMS value in most situations. In short, if the meter says 69VAC, that's likely to be its RMS value.
So 69VAC will easily power a 60VDC display, assuming it's behaving. But also, the RMS voltage is about 1.4x less than peak voltage. So 69VAC is actually about 96Vp. With no load, rectifying this voltage into a capacitor would give you around 96VDC. At max power transfer, it will be 69VDC though. But then they regulate it to 60V.
As for the "battery," it is very possible that was NVRAM too. Dallas made a number of permanent battery chips that also included other features such as a real-time clock and NVRAM. Some PCs used those. They contained the real-time clock, the "CMOS" memory, and the battery for both, all in one package.
On the cord, I have another possible scenario, though not as likely. Scrap metal thieves were bad for a while. I mean people going as far as committing burglaries just to cut off the cords of everything they could find.
Funnily enough if I remember correctly there was a couple who were hiding in the rocks like the couple in the bottom right
This I. Love ❤️
ET was a retooled version of the Close Encounters followup Night Skies, which would have had a more horror take on the subject.
nice backglass, hope there are less drinks inside than mine
We'll see how it turns out!
Great movie but a long one!
Are you telling me you've never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Come on now people! 😄
I was born in 78 so it was just the wrong time to see it :) By the time I was old enough to watch a movie like that, there were other movies to watch :)
the rockwell pps/4 chipset. they put the ROMs into the IO chips which like to fail. Imagine if your mask ROMs were in the 6821's and you couldn't just swap them out when they failed. Interestingly they put "generic" pinball machine controller software into the ROMs, and the game-specific things into a small PROM (which also likes to fail, but at least it is not custom unlike the IO/ROM chips). Unfortunately these chips run on weird voltages and signaling so you can't easily make a replacement with IO and an EPROM.
6531 is the chip your thinking of
I'd argue the Gottlieb's didn't get any wear because they rarely worked. Rockwell really shit the bed when they designed the control boards for Gottlieb. It's a shame because there were a lot of great games. Some of the mistakes Rockwell made when designing the boards are inexcusable. I truly believe that Gottlieb ultimately went under when they did because Rockwell did SUCH a shitty job designing the System 1 and System 80 electronics. Disclaimer: I LOVE the System 80 Gottlieb's! The two biggest problems by far are the use of card edge connectors instead of Molex connectors and the fact that the grounds are NOT tied together. The grounding issue is particularly bad. I've seen Gottliebs lock on all of the coils, frying all of them. That said, with a few modifications, the System 80's can be every bit as reliable as a Bally-35, Stern-200 or Williams system 3-11, even if you have them on location running all day, every day. It's just a shame that wasn't the case when they left the factory. The System 1 uses a proprietary IC (the infamous spider chips) that have been made out of unobtanium for decades now, so if one of those goes, an aftermarket board is really your only option. Mechanically, they're as bulletproof as ever. Gottlieb's EM's are famous for being VERY reliable, and the mechanical parts of their games stayed that way. The System 3 Gottlieb's were also VERY reliable, but by the time Gottlieb switched over to System 3, operators didn't trust them any more. They should have sued the hell out of Rockwell for designing them pure shit.
C'mon... C'mon people... don't just replace half a cable, people. So funny. :)
oh man you need to watch that movie... everything on the board is referencing the movie..
This means something...
its funny how every single bulb was blown on the playfield... someone must have been playing with the breakers for that to happen lol
Yeah it's hard to imagine anything that could blow the bulbs without also making craters in the ICs.
Believe it or not it actually happens often.... and it's not as hard as you'd think. The General Illumination lights don't have any IC's controlling them, they're just wired to the transformer, so if you somewhere short the solenoid voltage (40?) to the General Illumination (6v) it has the potential to just burn up all the bulbs. All it takes is one light somewhere near a coil to have the frame of the socket touch the solenoid lug or a loose wire, etc.
Yodelayheehoo
You were within the FIRST MINUTE of this video today Lil Everette, that's quick!
I had to give a thumbs up purely because of the George Clinton reference.
Probably had solenoid voltage on the lamps lol
Yeah it likely did...
they picked rockwell because they were the only company that could design and make the boards in the time frame they had. there engineer quit and took the designs and prototypes for the system 1 and put gottlieb in a bind that hurt them until the next iteration of ss boards. ps with the cord cut like that one of the first things before putting on a new one would be putting a fuse on small transformer. My nit picky thing would be cut that battery off and neutralize alkaline and ground mods before powering that board. the big cheat would be to replace everything with a pascal janin board. the time you would save would make up for part replacement and rebuild especially of the spiders were dead already but it wouldn't be as entertaining.
You should watch the movie. These graphics would make a lot more sense.
I like this channel. Makes me want to buy some broke-ass machine and not be able to fix it.
You might surprise yourself :)
The only complaint I have ever had on a Gottlieb pinball? Wiring.... The ones I used to work on resembled Medusa having a bad hair cut with the wiring harnesses.
But once you got used to working on these classics- Not bad at all! Fairly reliable and decent earners back in the day.
It’s funny because Spielberg directed both Close Encounters and ET so it being a “ripoff” isn’t too crazy! 😆
Half -a-cord is half-ass, people.
Preach Jason
Please say you're joking that you haven't seen that movie.
Man its a great movie.... Spielberg director, Richard Dreyfuss.. Teri Garr...
Yeah I couldn't believe it either.. heh.
I was born in 78 and it's not a kid movie so I didn't really ever hear that it was a good movie. I saw E.T. because I was a kid :)
@@LyonsArcade Well, no more work on that game until you watch the movie. That game better have some chimes that play A4 B4 G4 G3 D4.
@@stlmusic LOL... that was perfect...!
George Clinton! LOL! PFunk!
FLASH LIGHTTTTT
Good game, but the stiff left spinner sucked
I'll be honest with you, Ron --
This game DOESN'T look much like the movie! LOL
Like most licensed product, I don't think they had access to a lot of still photos from the movie or cared to use photo reference.
I don't think Universal Pictures (the distributors of CE3K) care, either, as long as the pinball company paid the license fee!
It's worse than that :)
Columbia Pictures produced Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, and they also owned Gottlieb. So they didn't pay any licensing rights they owned both companies :) So they don't have any excuse about not having stills :)
@@LyonsArcade Now, THAT'S a conglomerate operated by lazy people!!!
For the love of god dude clean that Fluke that things filthy.
The dirt is keeping it in spec. we use our tools around here