addams family pinball machine

when computer karma was rocking hattiesburg as it’s #1 rated computer store for many years, i was helping it’s owner (brandon) out occasionally as a silent contractor. in fact, i help out with several other places around this area as a silent contractor. each place may have different things that i specialize in that they may not want to work on in-house. so, they make the call to me, i show up, do the job and turn it back over to them. the customer never knows the difference. i’m happy, the repair shop is happy and headache free and in the end customer is happy, because the device is repaired and repaired in a timely manner. a win, win, win. so if you need some device repair done and want to be an affiliate, we invite you to contact us and tell me what it is that you may need for me to help facilitate your job.

as many of you know, brandon and abby exited their successful computer repair business because of the time drain that was being taken by their other very successful business – the lucky rabbit.

brandon and abby have quite a large collection of antique things, many for sale and some not for sale. one of brandon’s price possessions is his addam’s family pinball machine. this pinball machine was the best selling pinball machine of all time. if it’s still there, you can play it when you visit. (and i highly encourage you to visit – it’s quite an experience. they really put a huge effort into this venture).

we’ll, there was a problem with this machine and brandon (always the repair guy) tracked it down to the part of the machine where the batteries had leaked onto the machine’s motherboard. this thing is certainly very interesting to look inside of – wires everywhere… kind of daunting. but i did believe that brandon was on the right track. he was able to pull the motherboard (one of several) and took it back to my shop to clean and evaluate.

the motherboard in question was located behind the scoreboard and the problem area was to the bottom left side of that area, right behind lurch.

this is what brandon had found. the brown area is a holder for 3 batteries. the batteries had leaked and corroded anything that they were touching and areas below it. especially the IC chip above the writing R43 was badly corroded and the battery holder would also need replacing.

i attempted some sort of cleaning process, but it wasn’t successful. looked better, but that was about it.

closer view.

one of the ways i like to use (on occasion) to remove oxidation, is to melt the solder and float out the impurities. and when i tried that, i noticed a large amount of corrosion coming from underneath the chip. so we cleaned some more. i eventually replaced that chip.

the chip is known as a BA10339 made by ROHM semiconductor. it is an opto comparator IC commonly used for opto switches in games to translate the opto signal into a switch signal. i ordered some in from digikey . when they arrived they were not the same package size! MUCH smaller! they looked the same when i was ordering and i did not expect this. i ended up replacing them with a compatible one known as LM339. this is commonly used to replace the BA10339, HP339N, LM339AN, LM339N, LM339NG, Williams # 5370-12272-00, Stern # 100-0377-00, Gottlieb # XO-583.

while putting together this blog post, i came upon another post where someone had also had a similar problem with a corroding battery. and here.

before eventually replacing that chip, i had to patch up some corroded traces. and when removing it, i also found another broken trace underneath.

after the touch up solder work, i then sealed up the exposed surfaces.

this above photo is the last photo i was able to get before eventually pulling that badly corroded BA10339 chip and replacing it with the fresh LM339.

and a closer look at the repaired traces.

i also pulled the old battery holder and installed a fresh one. not sure if brandon just put the batteries in the new slot like normal or used the harness below.