I feel like this is the way to go too. I need to get some. I hope it works

Bad display caps you end up with a rolling effect, not one bright digit. The HV caps are likely tired if original, but I don't think they are the cause of the issue.

Since you get one digit bright makes me wonder if your 74154 that strobes the display digits is bad. That chip gets smoked when 1J2 and 1J6 get crossed as 12v input lands on a display strobe output. It happens A LOT on my replacement MPUs so much I have started including a big warning, series resistor and a zener diode to try and at least clamp and current limit the 12v that lands on the decoder pin when those connectors get crossed.

When the display should be showing stuff check 1J6 and 1J7. As the display blink on and off in display test, you should see the voltage change. Logic probe or scope is best if you have one.

That and check the display blanking at 1J3, that is the only one signal that can shutdown all the display, but since you get one bright digit, I don't think it is that.

I'm not sure I know what you mean here, but I'll see if I can decipher this. I'll check the schematics to see where 1j6 and 1j7 are and see if it says what pins are supposed to be what values.

Not sure if it's related, because it's hard to know what's happening since displays are out, but when I press the coin door service switch, it doesn't appear to do anything.
What is the normal cycle on this to get it to do lamp test, solenoid, display, etc?
If I knew the operation order, I could at least count the number of presses till I got to display test mode.

To get to display test... Set the latching coin door switch to manual down. Then It should be two pushes of the diag button to get into display test.

The computer decodes four signals into sixteen different "strobes" that lights up a digit one at a time. These strobe signals leave the MPU through connectors 1J6 and 1J7. Since you only get one digit bright and the rest always off, this is where I what I would check first. A rough check with a multimeter on volts DC can be done on those connector pins and see what you get. If it is stuck at 5v or 0v and not moving in display test, that is likely a problem with the computer board. If it is some where between 0 and 5v the MPU is likely trying to strobe the digits OK and the issue is elsewhere.

1J6 should have purple colored wires. 1J2 has white, black and gray wires. Make sure those two plugs are not crossed.

Here's another video demonstrating the benefit of the "One Shot Trigger" board for Williams System 3-11A board sets.

Happy to answer any questions you may have.

--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.ChrisHiblerPinball.com/Contact
https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisHiblerPinball
http://www.PinWiki.com - The Place to go for Pinball Repair Info

That happens on the Rottendog MPU327 combo board as well. I've fixed several by replacing the 74HCT154 on those boards due to someone getting the connections wrong.

I'd say a good percentage of people fussing about a MPU327 not working blew it up like that. If you read a lot of those posts the symptoms are similar. It was happening chronically to my replacement, the series resistor and zener diode clamp seems to save the chip as I haven't heard about it since. Boo on WMS for keying two plugs so close by the same. When you re-dress the harness people are more likely to cross those plugs. They are originally tied in a way its hard to do.

...and the system 7 plugs that can be cross connected and sometimes have the wrong color connector installed making it REALLY easy to do that. Ugh....

Rebuilt these babies in prep for drop swap. Waiting on molex and nmp boards before I swap them in.

Stickers on the drops are going to be gundam themed as I'm changing the art on the sling and center plastics as well.

I got a red set and blue set to match fire and power.

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Well @barakanl I've replaced the caps, it made no difference, but they needed to be done.
So I checked the outputs at 1j6 and 1j7 I seem to be getting signals from there just fine.
Could it be something on the display driver board itself?

IMG_7788 (resized).jpeg

I'm going to see if there's anything online about testing that board.

Testing the displays? First unplug all of the slave displays. If one of those is bad it can affect the other displays. Then check the resistors on the master display. It is fairly common to see those open up if a display was bad. Once open you will miss parts of the display. Beyond that If you have isolated it to the display then probably some of the IC's on the Master Display. A few of those chips you can get. Others pulled from parts displays. As long as the glass is ok you should be able to fix them.

That looks correct for what to expect from the digit strobe chip on the MPU.

On the master display board the digit strobes go through inverter gates. With your scope you should see the inverse from IC1, 2 3 outputs

Then the high voltage chips like IC4 take the logic level signal and bump it up to 100v level.

Also check the BL pin #7 of the 4543s (segment decoder), but a locked on bright digit sounds like a digit strobe issue to me.

Let's gooooooo!

Drop target banks are great! I'm in love.

Adding the switch matrix columns in confused me for a bit but we got there.

With the troxel drop target boards, this swap was pretty straight forward.

The last game I played with stand-ups I got 948k. Let's see how the drops treat me.

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I've never played drop targets. What I love about Firepower is the delayed counting of points sound when hitting targets. With drops, do you get that? When do the drops targets get reset, after getting one bank or both banks?

You still get the score sounds. Each bank resets itself. When the 3 are hit. They reset for each ball as well.

I really love them. They don't seem to slow the game down too much, especially when you hit the rubber band behind a dropped target.

Game play is pretty much exactly the same. I really love hitting the drop targets. This is my only pinball currently, so having the extra features in firepower is really cool.

The only negative I have found so far (and previously mentioned with gorgar) is that sometimes the pop bumpers trigger the target switches on the drops due to the NMP boards I installed. I believe adding a metal shield fixes it, I'm getting to it.

Agree, I much prefer the play with drops too.
The ball speed & trajectory from the drops feels just right to me.

I am also having an issue where the pops will cause my right drop target bank to score/ reset. (Haven't nailed down exactly which switch yet). What is the nmp board you are referring to and can you explain the issue you had and the fix?

I do like the drop targets, although I did mine as part of my initial rebuild/repair and have never tried firepower with stand ups.

Unrelated:
Just wantee to plug barakandl's system 3-7 replacement board for this game. Seems well designed/made. Easy to install. Easy to troubleshoot. I had a few playfield issues that blew up a logic chip and transistor. Easy to repair. Andrew was very helpful via email also. And it was by far the cheapest price.

Firepower claims a win for best early solid state at mgc

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I am looking at getting a Firepower that needs a playfield swap. Is there anyone doing a repro? I see CPR is sold out.

Can hope CPR reruns it or get a hardtop. I found the hardtop process for firepower pretty straightforward. The star rollover inserts were a pain..I got a little scuff on one of those. And I did a bad job of clear coating my inserts. But its not super noticable.

The NMP sensors replace the horseshoe style contacts that tends to give everyone fits.

What has been found thru extensive use is that on SOME machines, the residual magnetism from a pop number operation will cause one of the sensors on the NMP boards to think a drop target dropped. A fix has been found - basically, it’s a small metal shield that reduces the effect of the pop bumper operation on the NMP sensor.

There’s several strings about the NMP boards - do a search.

I highly recommend them as a reliable replacement for the Wms. Horseshoe contacts on their drop targets.

Stickers from stickeryou.com came in. They fit just about perfect.

These stickers are the military factions in the anime show Gundam.

I also got mylar protectors from actionpinball.com so hopefully they last a while.

I really love how the colors turned out. I think it looks great. Custom plastics are next.

Edit: Bonus Round! The magnetic shields came in from NMP sensors and they worked! Now my drops work perfect. 100% would recommend.

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Hello Firepower Pinball Fans,

I am making a Firepower Pinball Video Topper. The 4K 60fps video will be posted later today. If you like it, you are welcome to download it.
Here are some stills

Firepower Topper 1.png

Firepower Topper 2.png

Firepower Topper 3.png

Firepower Topper 4.png

Firepower Topper 6.png

This looks awesome!

Here is version 4 of the Firepower Pinball Video Topper
YouTube Link:

Very cool! What does the topper look like?

I don't understand. You have an old computer monitor on top of your machine looping this video?

Why does the monitor have to be old?
Yes, a screen is installed on top of the pinball, with some sound reinforcement speakers.
A tv would also work with built in speakers.
Certainly a media player or Raspberry Pie can be used to play the video.
Here is a video

It’s my site. I’ve never made a penny from the schematics and never will. The hosting company I used for 20+ years (Hostica) was taken over by Stablepoint. They decided to delete the Wordpress data that was the modern front-end to the original Flash site. And the backups. Long story, but you can go to the wayback machine here and get everything including downloads of schematics:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180916191317/http://blackknightpinball.co.uk/wp/

I’m in the process of recovering the whole thing, although I will have to rebuild or replace the menu system manually. Bear with me as I have had health issues, and lost my pinball mojo until recently.

If you are intrepid, and on a PC (not iPhone or iPad) you can add a Flash Player extension to Edge browser and still use the original site as it existed in 2010 here:
https://www.firepowerpinball.com/index-orig.html

I couldn’t get it work on Chrome without turning off Security settings, but Edge worked right away. Don’t you just love modern technology?!?

Regards

Richard

It resets for each bank. Personally I prefer stand up targets. It just feels faster to me like the game is fighting back without the drop targets. But to each his own.

Interestingly I used the drop target reset solenoids to trigger additional LED flashers blue & RED that go off when you complete 1-3 or 4-6 arrows. Adds a nice lightshow and even Steve Ritchie liked the idea when he saw it years ago.

Not a hard mod to add if you have standup targets. Just connect LEDs to the unused reset solenoid transitors #2 & #3, which are noted as "unused" in the manual. They ground the cathode of the hi-power LED flashers. Don’t forget to use a current limiting resistor to protect the LEDs.

Richard

Wondering if following symptoms immediately familiar to someone.
Playing Ok until next ball in play not ejected.
In solenoid test no solenoids except 9-13 (sounds) fire.
In switch test, all switches register except pop bumpers and slingshots.
Special solenoid issue?
TIA
John

Probably popped the solenoid fuse. Not isolated to special solenoids if they are all out. The activation switches for special solenoids are not part of the switch matrix only the secondary scoring switches are

Thanks and apology. I should have tested fuse first but it looked fine on visual. Anything I should look into that fuse having popped?

It’s a 2.5A Slow-blow from Factory info. You could try a 3AT (T = Slow Blo) ?
If it boots and doesn’t blow the fuse, check for a locked on pop bumper or slingshot. I’d check all the coils to see if one is locked on. Coin lock on the coin door isn’t needed in free play mode, just disconnect it and tape the wires off separately. It’s not needed for home use.

With the game off, all the solenoid power transistors on the Driver board should not show a direct short to the ground braid. You can use a meter on Ohms (or continuity) mode to check using the metal Tabs on the top of the Transistors. This may help locate the solenoid numbers (shown on the left in red):
https://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/images/d/dc/System3-7DriverBoardLayout.jpg
More troubleshooting info on pinwiki.com if it isn’t obvious what is wrong.

Richard

alienpoker Thanks so much for placing the information you put together in the public domain. I use those diagrams literally all the time. Well done.
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.ChrisHiblerPinball.com/Contact
https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisHiblerPinball - My YT Channel
http://www.PinWiki.com - The Place to go for Pinball Repair Info

Finally rolled the score over!
My previous high score was 948k.

New high score is 1,080,220. I thought it would save the truncated 080220 as the high score but it still recognizes the 948k as the high score haha.

Still feel accomplished. I even got the S lane and a mission accomplished!

Standard Firepower with drop targets, playfield protector, and no gouge balls!

The playfield protector made a world of difference in terms of play. The ball rolls so smooth over everything. Drop targets are more consistent with rebound so that's nice.

Rolling the score on this game is so satisfying

Does anyone make a reproduction lock bar receiver for this game?

When I rolled my over I also heard the mission accomplished, and I was hey that is a new sound.

Mine never said mission accomplished when I rolled it over. I was kinda disappointed. Luckily it says it when you set the high score on the machine and when you light the specials and roll those. So good.

Are williams receivers different for different eras? I'm sure you could find one that's standard williams

Yes. Williams started to modify parts and pieces here and there.
Different coin door setups added feature buttons, cabinet angle changes. Etc.

For anyone that has done the drop target conversion...where did you get the drop decals? Just curious if anyone is seeing a quality difference between vendors. I see several places have them ranging from $8 to $15, curious if there was a reason not to skimp.

Also, is there anyone that bought a CPR plastic set and doesn't need the proto plastics? I bought the set with the topper and mine didn't have them. I would purchase, or trade a normal set.

I make all my own target decals. I printed these off the firepower site I think.

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Pm me about which plastics you need. Maybe can help but not exactly sure which ones you want.

I got my drop target decals from action pinball and not happy with them(or really any of the decals I got from them). They are pink background where they should be white/off-white. The guy above did better than professionals. I still Installed them and they don't bother me.

Screenshot_20240503-195552 (resized).png

image (2) (resized).png

What kind of paper do you print on, and then are you putting mylar over it?