The Garcade has Williams Firepower, which had a Rottendog MPU327-4 that failed. despite my efforts to figure out what went wrong I was unable to find anyone that fixed pinball or even Rottendog support to help me. so I went a different way and sourced replacement original boards. by virtue of timing, weather events (a snowstorm that hit Virginia), USPS delays, and the playfield finally going out to get the parts swapped to a new one I missed the boat on getting to test the boards in Firepower. fortunately we have another Williams System 6 game on hand in Blackout, a mere board and ROM swap later and I was able to put my replacement Firepower boards to the test.
the donor System 6A MPU in all its filth (it came out of a Pompeii shuffle bowler apparently)
they may not be Scanbe sockets, but these are some Molex variety that need replacement too
the MPU after getting washed
if ever I describe solder as looking like concrete, this is what I mean — once I got it to melt it cleaned up well
I pulled the score display PIA and installed a 3M socket, sourcing one of the Rottendog PIAs to use instead
emphasis on the nasty solder here
PIA removed, I’m certain I wire brushed the pads after
header removal
CPU socket housing removed, these gold pins scare me — this got a new 3M socket as well
if you look close at the bottom you can see the jumper modules Williams used to replace the CPU buffers to make it run faster
it’s an improvement
this is probably where I washed the board a second time — it came out nice didn’t it?
the finished product MPU and driver boards ready for battle testing
driver board in Blackout, this may have been tested with the Blackout MPU first?
side by side of Blackout (left) and Firepower (right) MPU boards
while waiting for Firepower’s donor MPU I tested the driver board in Blackout first and found 8 lamps were out
the green arrow triangles for the standup targets on left and red dots in front of the middle drop targets
the big red resistor for that string was virtually open
what a healthy one should be
the lights work properly
my protip for ejecting plugs from those obnoxious white headers (not a problem with the new ones)
we’re supposed to be nearing the playfield swap’s completion, after which the MPU will require some modifications to be able to run Firepower — more to come