DIY Building New LED Displays For Our 1978 Bally Lost World Pinball Machine! THE SOLDER KING

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's classic video games back with another really cool pinball repair video for you this evening now we have been working on this sweet Bally lost world pinball machine for quite a while now and we've been filming videos of us of it as we go along so we did one where we worked on the cleaning it up and stripping down the playfield and one where we painted the playfield a lot of us been repainted and then we did one where we worked on some of the boards and things like that and we've got the thing up and running and working pretty good it still needs a little bit of work but one of the things that it needs is it needs displays the displays are missing out of it so we've got this one little test display in there and the problem with well one of the problems with the Bally displays was that if they if the solenoid board acted up it would start sending too much voltage to this to the displays and they would get burnt so you end up with that darn right and so that kills most of the Bally displays eventually and the problem is inside that glass there and cannot be fixed it's a vacuum-sealed piece of glass so the only way to fix it is to replace it with a new glass that costs I think 50 $60 now because I believe all of them are new old stock they don't even make them anymore it's a 1977 technology right and you know me I'm old school I love old school stuff but this just can't abide people I can't be paying 50 bucks just for the glass part of the display that's not counting the rest of the thing right I can't do that so they make or a couple places make new LED displays now I've told you in the past that I'm not a big fan of putting LEDs on the older games on the play field I just don't like the look of them but on the displays you've got a couple things going on one the LEDs are less expensive than the originals two they last a lot longer right and three they look almost identical to the original ones to the untrained eye people would not even know that they're any different so there's there's several options but what we're going to do today is we there's this cool kit that you can get from I think it's wolf pack in industries Wilson we'll see here in a minute when we go through it but they make a new LED display that you can build yourself now why would you want to do that because it saves you a little bit of money and it's kind of cool how how the things are put together it uses all kind of old-school through-hole parts instead of surface mount stuff so all you really need is a soldering iron and some solder and you can build your own displays you buy the little kit and there you go and that has different colors you can get red and orange like these original ones you can get green and blue and the gentleman that runs that company makes them for Williams pinball machines we did a set of the Williams ones before and then he makes them for these Bally and stern ones and several other types of machines so on the Bally's though in particular the displays get burnt right so what we're going to do is we're going to look and see what's in the kit build it and then put it in this machine and see how it ends up so let's check out what came with it so this is the box that came in we'll check them out well I got that haven't done this valley one ballet for all you rich people Wolfpack technologies battle Eastern six digit display kit version one when assembled this display will replace to Valley snoring six digit display used on many solid state pinball machines from 1977 to 1986 for the complete list of compatible machines see the list at the end of the instructions part list printed circuit board a there's one printed circuit board B there's one IC ul in 2003 IC 74 hcto 4:04 IC CD 45 43 I went there one of each of those now on the original Bally display there was just one IC transistor 2 in 4403 six of those capacitor 0.1 UF micro farad marked 104 there's two of those resistor 1000 ohm marked is it our own there go get me on that one armor I think its own only a few people have told me I was wrong about that one 1000 ohm mark brown black black brown brown six of the female header two eight position straight so two rows eight positions there's two of those Mel header two eight position right angle there's two of those Mel header 20 positions straight 20 positions straight shipped his two pieces for one of the connectors seven-segment LED display or six places for six of them resistor 100 ohm mark brown black black black brown or resistor under 50 ohm marked brown green black black brown those are for the seven positions that would be I guess for the segment's and a foam bezel assembly instruction for complete assembly instructions for you French people Kota Wolfpack tech comm and click on the link assembly instructions and select download Bali stern six digit kit revision one assembly instructions tools soldering iron a small to medium power soldering iron of 25 Watts 25 to 50 watts with a small tip preferably temperature-controlled is recommended wire cutters a set of diagonal or wire cutters intended for cutting electronic component leads alcohol isopropyl alcohol denatured alcohol or flux remover to use to be used for cleaning the board after assembly solder used only solder designated for electronic component assembly either lead-based or lead-free flux core solder are both acceptable use of solid core acid core or plumbing solder is not acceptable and will void the warranty all soldering should be done on the bottom non printed side of the boards this kit uses old-school through-hole components requiring only basic soldering skills to assemble however if you have never soldered before or are unsure of your skill level I'm unsure of my skill level I don't know if I'm great epic or supernova it is recommended that you first practice soldering on a scrap board before beginning to assemble this kit i'm supernova we know that there are many references on the internet which can help you learn how okay so this looks very cool and it was telling us for one display but I'm doing several displays I need to do it in tighter an entire machine I hope there's enough in here let's see shall we they blowing me up people all right very nice that's very cool there's the phone very cool looking on the main board very cool even even sounds great those connectors for one display connectors and stuff for another display stuff for a third display fourth display 50 display second display boards third display boards fourth display boards fifth display boards and finally the coup Dave what's what is it how do you say the cool thing an entire bucket load of these cool little display LEDs which are the same I guess that were on the Williams or probably or maybe not but boy they look cool just put that back so it's very safe and put it back in its sleeve okay so I'm gonna print out the instructions just so we can check them out because if I'm doing a video showing you how to do it I should probably show the instructions right so I'll print those out and look over those alright folks we have printed out some of the instructions but start here before starting check the components received against the parts list on page 2 if any components are missing or you have any questions regarding these assembly instructions please contact Wolfpack tech at Wolfpack tech at gmail.com there you go if you have any problems with the display after assembly you may contact us if you need to return the display to repair we will provide a prepaid return label but there are two versions of this display kit they are functionally identical but consist of different part kits these instructions are for the revision one kit if your contains us if your kit contains a circuit board March 17 20 days or the correct instructions correct correct correct if your kit contains the circuit board mark 1950 you should go and download the revision 2 instructions start with the larger PCB board PC board printed circuit board a insert you one into the board from the top side beside with the lettering so that one pin goes through each hole at the location labeled u 1 each chip is marked with a u-shaped notch on one end of the short ends will read through them just to make sure there's nothing nothing Jazze I gotta pay attention to this end should line up with the notch printed on the PC board you may find that you have to bend the legs of the chip slightly in order to get both roses to line up with the holes in the board you can do this with needlenose pliers or by lining the chip on its side with the pin of one side on a hard surface pointing away from you and gently pressing down and away on the body of the chip that's how I do it be careful not to bend the pins too far once inserted you can bend the pins at the corners from the bottom in order to hold the chip in place I usually don't do that usually it'll hold for me make sure that all of the pins from the chip are completely inserted through the holes in the board before soldering in place from the bottom repeat for u2 and u3 locate resistors r1 through our six been the been the leads of one resistor approximately 90 degrees near the body of the resistor so that it forms a u-shape do not force this Bend any closer then it will go with like finger pressure or you may damage the component so don't uh don't smash the resistors people and start the resistor in the board at the position marked r1 on the board the direction does not matter the lead should line up easily with the holes on the board once inserted through the board bend the leads slightly from the bottom to hold the resistor against the board solder from the bottom trim the excess leads from the bottom of the board with diagonal cutters leaving about a sixteenth of an inch repeat for r2 through our six locate capacitors c1 and c2 insert one capacitor at the position mark c1 on the board the direction of these components does not matter bend lead slightly from the bottom of the board to hold a place in position and solder in place trim the excess lead length to about 1/16 of an inch locate headers j2 and j-3 insert one of the black female 2x8 headers into the position Mark J to make sure that all pins are correctly inserted through the holes it is very important that j2 and j-3 are seated flush against the top of the board for this reason it is recommended that you solder only one pin on each end of the header until you can confirm that the connector is seated flush and square with the top surface of the board if not you can reheat the pin while pressing on the connector from the opposite side solder the remaining pins in place repeat for j-3 connecter j1 is shipped in two pieces note that one of the pieces is missing a pin the two halves of the connector are installed with the missing pin lined up at the position marked with a white square and arrow the connectors are installed with the friction retainer toward the outer edge of the board okay that's important the two pin the two pieces must be in line with each other for this reason is recommended that you initially solder only one pin on each of the two pieces if needed remelt the solder while pressing on the connector too short is flush with the top side of the board and the two halves are in line with each other once you have confirmed the connectors are in the correct position solder the remaining pins while soldering the exposed pins on the top side of the board will get extremely hot avoid getting burned locate transistors q1 through q4 and flat side align with the printed pattern on the top of the board bend the leads slightly from underneath to hold them in place while soldering trim the leads to about 1/16 of an inch display board B B is for me step 1 your kit will come with either a PC board marked B a PC a PC board be marked 16 10 or 16 20 they are functionally identical locate resistors are 10 through R 16 gently bend the leads of each resistor into a huge shape do the same thing you did before locate J 4 and J 5 insert one of the right angle headers into the position mark J 4 the end with the right angle bin is inserted into the board okay it is very important that the connectors are installed so that the black plastic is flush and perpendicular it gets the board and the pins on the opposite end of the connector are parallel with the PC board it is recommended that you solder one pin on each end of the connector until you can confirm they're correctly aligned before soldering the remaining pins so get them flat people 7 seven-segment leds a seven-segment leds are installed in positions 1 through 6 install 1 seven-segment LED in each position ensure that the component is installed with the period towards J 4 and J 5 and that all 10 pins are correctly seated in the holes lay the board facedown and solder one pin in each row [Music] inspect to ensure that the display is seated flush with the PC board if not reheat the pins while pressing on the display from the front of the board once the LED is correctly seated solder the remaining pins repeat for the remaining 5 LED displays the remaining 4 LEDs place final assembly wipe or rinse the board with isopropyl alcohol denatured alcohol flux remover or water depending on the type of solder used to remove the solder flux residue when the board is completely dry peel the clear plastic protective film from the front surface of each LED display I forgot to do that on one of the ones for the Williams remove the paper backing covering the adhesive from the foam bezel carefully align the openings with the LEDs and install as shown below the adhesive is very aggressive be careful when handling the bezel after removing the paper backing to avoid sticking into something you don't intend I always get it stuck in my nose and start insert board B with the LEDs into the a board line the pins from J 4 and J 5 with the holes in J 2 and J 3 with the LEDs pointing outwards press down firmly about 1/8 inch of board B should slide behind J 2 and J 3 alright so that's what we want to do so I'll set up the tripod where you can see me struggling [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay folks on my battery died in the middle of that but check it out well it looks cool oh that's nice so I haven't put the bezel on yet this little sticker goes on there to kind of make it look a little more like the original one did and there's a plastic film that you can pull up see the light shining over it you can pull off of each one of these that makes it have like a matte finish so let me let me grab a regular one let's set up and set it up here next to it so you can see the difference so this is a typical ballyhoo see the bottom board is exactly the same size the connector of course is in the same place now one interesting thing the high-voltage connects on pin 1 here on the original ones so that's a hundred and seventy-five to a hundred and ninety volts on this one if you look there is nothing connecting to the first three pins see if I can't tell for sure but them see how you don't see anything on the solder mask so on these the high voltage connected to pin 1 & 2 & 3 didn't connect anything so so essentially the high voltage is like 180 volts it's like crazy high it's what these displays the actual glass needed to run but on the new ones since it's all LEDs and stuff they're very lobes that's why I guess they run off 5 volts so they even though it still sends the power up to the connector it doesn't go to anything because that pin doesn't connect anything let's see if we can figure out the 5 volt 1 so the 5 volt test point is right there it looks like it comes from the very and other end as you can see it's still hooked up on the new one yeah yeah they did it very smartly and they also run it off the back you know what I messed up I showed you my soldering work too up close now you can all criticize it yeah pretty cool so I'm going to put the I'm gonna peel these off I'm gonna put the mask on it and then I'm gonna go plug it in because we'll need since it isolates that high voltage pin where it doesn't connect anything you can and these don't have a driver board you can you can plug these basically the MP use act against the driver board you can plug these in and mix and match them so you can have four of these and one of these in the same game but we're gonna go test that to make sure that's right if I blow mine up you know it'll save you from blowing yours up I'm pretty sure that's how it works okay so we'll we'll go try that okay folks so we're going to leave our original test the first player position and then we're gonna put this sweet freshly built Wolfpack Tech display that we've built in the second position and see how they look now whatever that was not me dropping my new display don't worry about it whenever we whenever you mess with these you have to do it with the power off it's really tempting to just unplug the thing and plug it in look the plugs right there all I got to do is plug it in you plug it in you're gonna fry crap don't do it don't do it you will fry the NPU you might fry the display bad idea to turn it off and then do it so I'm gonna turn it off slip it in the second one there and then we'll see how it fits and how it looks okay folks so you'll have to be the judge it's going to test I mean they look very similar it's really close like mmm crazy close it's a little bit off a little bit different but they're really close okay so that's one let's go let's go see if we can get some other ones ready okay folks I put the other four together a time to myself on the last one because I figured that would be when I was the fastest right and it did seem like that was the fastest one I was getting better as time went on if I keep at it I think I can build one in two minutes but as of right now it's taking me about 30 minutes to build one I'm a little slow though cuz I always double triple check everything take my time I twist it where it gets it just straight you know so it takes me a little while to do it so but it took me 30 minutes to build this last one 14 minutes for this part 16 minutes for this part and I'm dead serious that's what that's how long it took so you've got five of them it's gonna take you two and a half hours probably three hours because you'll probably be a little slower at the beginning so it's about a three hour job to do an entire set so you have to decide if that's worth your time or if you just want to buy the ones that are preassembled now you know I make good money you make good money so what's you know what's worth our time part of it is though I just like the idea of putting the thing together it's kind of cool it's kind of fun right so it's a little mini project it's hard to screw it up because everything's so well labeled and everything we've already put the one in so you saw that that worked perfect and looked great so it's it's a fairly simple thing to do I didn't run into any kind of trouble or anything the the little LEDs you have to get them just right so that they're not crooked you could actually get one a little higher and a little lower and a little twisted so you kind of got a put like it said in the instructions tack it with one on one pan with some solder and make sure that it's straight and lined up just like the one next to it you know and it's all pretty easy there's a little box on the on the board that you can use to line it up as you can see I did and if it even if you do it just all random and don't try to do that hey I'll just beat barely off you might not even notice that whenever it's on and everything's pretty self-explanatory I didn't see any errors in the and the instructions that I could tell nothing seemed like it didn't fit well or anything everything's cool so I'm gonna go out there and we'll put them in one by one and see if first try I got all five of them built properly what do you think what are the odds looking good so that's three let's try four we're looking good okay on to the next one it's almost indistinguishable of course that first one is messed up but the color - you can't you probably can't tell on the camera cause it's a little bit washed out but it's a it's a very vivid orange and it's to the naked eye the color is identical so it's you absolutely could swap one in and people wouldn't even know some of the original displays had a different look to them anyways there were about I've seen probably at least six different styles they just have a the the way the the digits look on the on the bear glass now if you look down here and so you can see the digits on the LED ones and on this one you can't but there were some that you could so it's not uncommon to get a game in an old Bally like this and have have the displays look different anyway where this one has a little bit different you can see it a little it's a different slightly different color when it's off than this one so you you literally could mix and match these just to replace one bad display no problem and if you did it where you replace like maybe the the ball match won the match and ball and play won that one looks different anyway so looking cool alright so I'm gonna put the last one in to replace that first display looks great very cool product everything worked out pretty cool looks great the color is perfect on the orange ones but we've used some of the red ones before too and they look great on certain games you know you kind of want them to have a different color because then you can tell that they're brand new and it kind of it's almost like a mod you know I'm not a big fan of mods but on this one if you're swapping them in the LED displays anyways why not use a different color it might make the back glass pop I always heard that that's what you're looking for with LEDs you want the pop right so uh through the test mode and we'll see if we can get the thing that coin up here I missed I need a dedicated pinball flipper while I'm filming all right so everything seems cool to me it's all all working as it should the display kits awesome I highly recommend them I've used them before on the Williams game so I already knew they were going to be cool but it's inexpensive too so it's wolfpack technologies go check it out now if you haven't seen the the further earlier videos that we did on this go check them out we've been working on this thing we even did some work in between the videos you might notice that the the insert lights are a lot brighter that's because I had to replace the bridge rectifier on the on the rectifier board because it had they were all dim and I was wondering why that was but then they just went all the way out the bridge rectifier was flaking out on us it tested fine but under a load it did not work so now they're nice and bright to look great everything's cool and we're up - we've got our displays done I need to work on flippers a little bit and we need to mess with the back glass a little bit and then we need to play it a little bit so it's definitely getting there so leave your comments below let us know what you think so far let us know what you think about these super sweet LED displays that we've got in here all right now if you uh if you look down below you'll see two things one you'll see a link to my brother Donny my brother Donny is my real brother Donny and he has started a little channel him and I are working on an old mobile home that we bought that's torn all to crap we're fixing it up and putting on a lot of land that we have that were renting it so when we bought the thing we thought I won't be no big deal we'll just paint it in mobile blah no folks it was a big deal all kinds of stuff screwed up on it so the whole thing was pretty funny and we filmed a lot of it and so we're uploading the videos on there go check that out I'm on there with him and then he also does a lot of like farming stuff and small engine repair and seems like he's always into something so go go check that out if you get the chance subscribe to them and I'll see you over there and the other thing you will see down below this video is we will have a link to Amazon if you shop on Amazon I do I think about everybody does especially during this lockdown that we just just now coming out of people are buying all kinds of stuff on Amazon if you shop on Amazon if you uh if you feel obliged to click our link down below you don't have to sign up for anything what it does is it it basically it puts a little teeny cookie on your computer it's very small people you won't even see it and it tells Amazon for the next 24 hours or something after you click it something like that that we sent you to Amazon so by doing that anything you buy on Amazon just regularly you don't have to sign up for anything or log in a certain way or whatever just click the link every time you buy something on Amazon it sends us 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we're not gonna do patreon because we don't we don't we don't want people to have to spend their hard-earned money to watch our videos because we know a lot of people out there are poor we were poor when we were kids so we know what it's like so we don't want you to have to spend money to watch our stupid videos about pinball machines you can watch them for free people but if you feel obliged click the the Amazon link the next time you go to buy something on Amazon and it sends us what's-his-name's cash Jeff Bezos he's got so much of it he's just giving it away so uh do that if you if you feel if you feel like you want to and give us a thumbs up for taking the trouble to film all this for you now we're not done yet but this video is done right so there will be another one really soon hey I'm going to guess it's gonna be tomorrow and we're going to show you off the back glass that we bought so we have ordered a back glass for this thing we're getting down to the dredges right so we've ordered a back glass for it and we're gonna film a little video of that and we will see you on that one hope you enjoyed it