Review & Installation of the Rottendog MPU326 (Williams)
| Degree of difficulty: Moderate
Time: 30minutes - 1 hour Items needed: MPU326 board from Rottendog.us Review info at PinRepair.com Screw driver |
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In this series of videos I will review and install the Williams System 3, 4 & 6 Combination MPU & Driver Board from Rottendog Amusements If you have any questions or comments, please post them down towards the bottom of the page and I'll get back to you ASAP. - PinDude
DISCLAIMER: These instructions & videos are provided to help but ARE not a substitute for following & understanding the instructions provided with your Rottendog Amusements MPU326 board.
RottenDog Amusements (Jim Night) Combination System 3-6 CPU and Driver Board. Does not yet support System 7 but I think it will in the future.
It's great to have replacement boards - especially if you don't want to repair them youself. There are poeple you can send your boards to for repair, but I decided to buy the RottenDog Board.
I was excited about the RottenDog board coming out. I picked up a Williams Phoneix at the Allentown, PA Pinball show late one Saturday. It was pretty trashed but I totally restored it. I haven't totally gone through the circuit boards yet because my plan was to buy the RottenDog board.
The RottenDog Board
I received it in only 2 days! Wow that was quick! It was well packed and in an ant-static bag, instruction sheet & schematics for the board in case you need to do any repairs (but contact Jim Knight first!). Be careful when opening the board. I usually touch the ground strap in my pinball. There's a little baggie in there with a battery in it - kinda like a large watch battery.
The board is mighty small for being an MPU and Driver board. It's pretty much half the size of what it was. The original boards are two seperate boards that connect together vie a 40-pin inter-connect connector. It connects the MPU to the driver board. These connectors often fail and are a pain to replace. The new RottenDog board eliminates this problem.
When buying this board you have to figure out if the cost is worth it. When this video was filmed the board costs $260. And I'm putting it in my fully restored Phoenix Pinball Machine from 1978. Now, this Phoenix isn't highly desireable and if I sold it I'd be lucky if I could get $500-$600. For this particular game, putting an almost $300 board in it isn't really cost effective. BUT - this board does NOT need a game ROM - they're already on the board. It can be used for ANY Williams System 3 game! They are all listed on the board itself and you just need to flip the dip-switches to set it for the particular game you are installing it in. So, this board is very useful to me. I can put it in any System 3-6 game I have.
If/when I sell my Phoenix, I will remove the RottenDog board and put back the original MPU & Driver boards (I'll make sure they're working before then). Then I still have my RottenDog board and can put it into another game. I'll sell the Phoenix with the original boards.
If you have (or will have) more than 1 Williams System 3-6 game, then buying this board is a no-brainer. If you only have 1 game, then you might want to send your board out for repair to someone like Clive at Coin-Op Caldron where the repair may cost around $100. This is something you'll have to decide for your self.
The RottenDog board is VERY WELL DONE!
- All the solder joints look like they were done right at the Williams factory.
- The screen printing is perfect.
Part 2 Preparation & Installation of the Board:
BEFORE you power up your game for the first time go to PinRepair.com and read through the Williams 3-7 section. Read everything that pertains to "what to do before you power up your game".
Check the power supply. My Phoenix came with a brand new RottenDog power supply which was really cool. This board has the test points right on it for the voltages. I would power up the power supply and check the voltages first.
I also have 2 fuses out the F-2 & F-3. The lamp matrix and the cellunoid power. When the MPU boards don't boot it it could lock on your coils, switch matrix lamp lights and could cause other problems to your game.
So next I power the game on and I see that there are 2 solid LEDs on the MPU board - this means that the board is not booting. I checked the driver board and that is fine. But the MPU doesn't work - eventually I will repair it.
Now I'm going to remove the MPU board. I need to take off the connectors and I like to label them to make things easier when I put the board back in on a later date. You really can't mess it up - but I like to label them just in case. I'm going to carefully remove the connectors and remove the board.
The old boards are now out of the game and the power is off. The RottenDog board is about 1/2 the size of those 2 other boards. Now I have the instructions and the RottenDog board out. And I'm going to remove the center support bracket that was used by the two old boards. I want to keep this for when I need it in the future. Like I mentioned earlier, when I sell this game, I'm going to put the two old boards back in it. I'll label the bracket and probably store it in the game itself - in the coin box. This way I won't loose it. I'm also going to put the 2 screws back into the game so I don't loose those.
Now I'm going to mount the board - it goes where the old driver board was. And I also need to remove the wiring clips that are up top so they can reach the board. I'm going to put the clips back up there for when I need them in the future.
The instructions state to install it with the 4 corner screws. There are 6 screw holes - but 1 does not line up. I ended up putting in 5 screws. As long as the 4 corner ones are in and tight (but not too tight) then it'll be fine. These screws are how the board grounds.
Attaching the 1 J 2 connector. This is to hook up the power to the RottenDog board. It'll be booting with just the power supply so you can rule out any other problems with the game. If there are other problems with your game you COULD blow up the board!
Remove the battery
My board was shipped with the battery already out.
Set the dip switches at dip switch bank 3 to all 1's - push them all downwards. The ROM dip switches.
Next...power on the machine to verify that the 2 LEDs flash on and off in 1 second intervals. I had already tested my power supply. I power on the machine and see that the 2 LEDs are flashing - that's what they are supposed to be doing. Now the directions say to press Switch 1 and the LEDs went solid, then they go back on. Next step, turn off the machine. That was a quick diagnostic of the board to make sure it's working ok. Just make sure you check your power supply first.
Next, set the dip switch to the game you want. I'll be setting mine to Phoenix. 1 is down, 0 is up.
Next, attach the top connectors and still leave the battery out. Leaving the battery out will cause the Machine to go into "audit mode" and that's what we want to happen. The game booted up to Audit mode. Next, we're putting the battery into the board with the game on and turn the game off. Now we'll attach the rest of the connectors and turn the game back on and then it should be a working game.
It took me around 20 minutes to install the board. Take your time making sure all of the connectors are in the right place. Now the game should be working and we're going to try and play a game on it.
Part 3 Powering up the Game
We got the game up and running, it was plug-n-play. But I had a problem with the special cellinoids (the 3 pop bumpers and the 2 sling shots). When I hit one of the pop bumpers, all 3 would pop. And the other problem was that either sling shot would continuously fire when a ball hit it like it had a stuck switch. On the original board if you had a locked switch or the ball got jammed under the rubber and stuck the switch on it would lock the coil on, the coil would stay locked on until the coil burned out, you shut the game off, a transister burned up or wherever. With the new RottenDog board, they made it so that if a switch got locked on the coil would stay on for 70 milli-seconds and then go off. No more burned out coils.
Because of the machine-gunning sling shot problem I was having I thought it was a problem with my game. I pulled and checked every switch down under the game. I happened to be on the newsgroup (rec.games.pinball) and I saw that someone else had also installed a new RottenDog board and had the same problem. What he did is he gapped his sling switches wider and that temporarily solved the problem. I did that too. The problem with that is that the sitches are so far away now that the sling shots really don't work like they are supposed to. But it did solve the problem for now. If anyone has any insight into this problem, please get on rec.games.pinball or e-mail me directly. It's not the switches (there are no shorts). The switch contacts don't even touch all the way and they're already triggering the cellunoid.
They do work, but they don't activate on a light hit now because I had to gap them so far apart. I also had to gap the pop bumper switches wider than I normally do. Otherwise when I hit one, all 3 would go off. It's either something that I'm missing or something in the board.
Some really good things about this board:
- the coil going off after 70 milli-seconds
- not having to change game ROMs
- and it's all one board with newer components.
Tagged with: driver board • mpu board • mpu326 • pindude project • pindude review • rottendog amusements • Williams
Filed under: Pinball Projects
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