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Part 13: 1985 Pinstar Gamatron Project! Let there be sound!

Pinball Shenanigans·video·32m 45s·analyzed·Sep 24, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

Gamatron restoration: lamp troubleshooting solved via switched illumination bus discovery; soundboard installation successful.

Summary

Mike Dus works through electrical troubleshooting on his 1985 Pinstar Gamatron restoration project, focusing on getting controlled lamps and sound working. After systematic voltage testing, connector investigation, and consulting pin wikis, he identifies missing switched illumination bus wiring, solders the connection, and successfully restores backbox lighting. He then installs a soundboard from a Flight 2000 donor machine, carefully maps connectors using schematics, and successfully powers up audio, achieving a major project milestone.

Key Claims

  • Three controlled lamps on Gamatron were not working due to missing switched illumination bus connection from power supply to backbox lamp sockets

    high confidence · Mike discovers and traces blue wire from power supply J3 pin 6, identifies missing portions on schematics, connects with alligator clip, and verifies all three lamps illuminate in lamp test mode

  • A Flight 2000 head has two sets of soundboard brackets (one for sound, one for speech board)

    high confidence · Mike purchases Flight 2000 head for $75 from friend Mitch, removes both bracket sets, keeps one for Gamatron, plans to sell remaining components

  • The SB300 soundboard from Flight 2000 is compatible with and successfully powers the Gamatron audio system

    high confidence · Mike connects J2 and J3 soundboard connectors per Flight 2000 schematics, verifies 14V on power line, hears speaker hum and game sounds confirming operation

  • Continuity testing confirmed all three lamp socket ground connections are good, ruling out wiring breaks

    high confidence · Mike tests gray-orange to gray-red, tilt wire to gray-black connections using multimeter continuity mode with alligator clips

  • Repinning J4 connector pins 1, 2, and 11 (ground connections) did not resolve the controlled lamp issue

    high confidence · Mike researches pin wiki section 5.9.3.4, identifies ground pins, repins all three, tests in lamp test mode with no results

Notable Quotes

  • “Gamatron. Gamatron. Where the f have my controlled lamps gone.”

    Mike Dus @ 0:00-0:15 — Sets up the primary technical challenge of the episode

  • “All this craziness that I had to go through to figure this out. Ah, that is one for the books.”

    Mike Dus @ ~27:00 — Expresses relief and satisfaction after discovering the switched illumination bus solution

  • “Gamatron is effing alive, mofos. All right, so I guess this would be a good time to um end the episode on a high note, cuz you know, 95% of the refurbishment of a game is relatively smooth. It's that last 5% that really kicks you in the nuts.”

    Mike Dus @ ~42:00 — Celebrates major project milestone and reflects on restoration philosophy

  • “It's official, boys and girls. We have sound. We have Gamatron.”

    Mike Dus @ ~41:00 — Confirms successful soundboard installation and power-up

  • “Look at mine. I am missing this portion and this portion.”

    Mike Dus @ ~22:00 — Key moment identifying the switched illumination bus wiring discrepancy versus reference machine

Entities

Mike DuspersonGamatrongamePinball ShenanigansorganizationFlight 2000gameMitchpersonSB300 soundboardproductElliepersonPinball Repair Help GrouporganizationJCperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Repair Help Group provides real-time troubleshooting guidance via online forum; community knowledge base (pin wiki) critical to problem resolution

    high · Group suggests voltage testing approach; pin wiki sections 5.9.3.4 and lamp driver schematics directly inform diagnostic strategy and solution discovery

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Major restoration progress: controlled lamps and soundboard functionality achieved simultaneously, transitioning Gamatron from non-operational to functional audio/lighting systems

    high · Mike celebrates successful lamp illumination in lamp test mode and confirms audio output; describes this as 95% of restoration work complete with only final 5% remaining 'kicks you in the nuts'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Systematic electrical diagnostics combining multimeter testing, voltage verification, schematic cross-reference, and comparative analysis against reference machines to isolate root cause

    high · Mike tests voltage on lamp sockets (1.5V vs expected 6-7V), confirms continuity, consults schematics, compares Bobbyor backbox to identify missing switched illumination bus wiring, tests with alligator clips before permanent installation

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Restoration requires detailed schematic literacy across multiple machines; Flight 2000 electronics schematics used as template for Gamatron connector identification and voltage/ground routing

    high · Mike pulls Flight 2000 schematics to map J2 and J3 soundboard connectors, identifies pin functions (pin 6 = 12V, pins 2-3 = ground, pins 8-9 = speaker), applies knowledge directly to wiring task

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

0:02
Ellie, now what are you trying to do? Be a demolition kitty? A Lord of the Kitty? A Jurassic kitty? Oh, don't go on Circus Voltera. The glass is not on there. Okay. Gamatron. Gamatron. Where the f have my controlled lamps gone. Check this out.
0:23
We've got sound. I'm Mike Dus and this is Pinball Shenanigans.
0:35
All right. Did you enjoy that hourong episode of GameTron? It was a doozy, but we made some good progress. So, today I'm going to focus on trying to get the soundboard installed and working. But before that, I have to go backwards and try and get my three controlled lamps working. So, I did make a post on the pinball repair help group and they suggested that I test the voltage going to the sockets, which was a great suggestion. So, let's go do that and
1:26
We're just jumping right into this episode. No mucking around, right? Let's go to uh DC voltage. And we're supposed to have like what, six or seven volts here or something. I'm not sure really what side I'm supposed to be measuring,
1:46
Kevin
person
Vipercompany
Williamscompany
Pinstarcompany

technology_signal: Use of Flight 2000 donor machine components (soundboard, speech board, brackets) as cost-effective solution for Gamatron restoration; modular approach to sourcing compatible legacy pinball parts

high · Mike purchases entire Flight 2000 head for $75, extracts needed brackets, tests SB300 soundboard compatibility, plans component resale to recoup costs

but that gives me a whopping 1.5 volts. And if I measure the other side of the socket,
2:12
1.4. So appears as though I'm not getting voltage. and maybe just a little bit and that would explain why I'm getting the very slightest ghosting with LEDs and tiniest little bit of glow with incandescent. So, I'm trying to like look in the schematics and it's not really pointing me in any direction. So, I'm just thinking these lines are probably good. So, it must be the this other line here. I'm not sure if this is ground. Oh, wait. What's this? Oh, this is just probably for one of the other controlled lamps. Um, so is this power and then this is ground or is this ground and this power? I don't remember. But either way, this has got to be connected to something, right? So, this goes like this up to here and then goes to here. What used to be there? Is that anything or is that just Oh, that's just wear from the screw. So, that is connected to this. But this is just the U wire for this particular controlled lamp. So, I don't know, man. I this where I'm at right now. I'm just trying to figure out where I need to go. I have receated this connector cuz this or was it this one? Oh No, it's this one cuz this is all of the um power going in and data lines and all that stuff. And this is just lamps going out to various different places. I pretty much concluded that for this whole connector on the original, we're literally just using well I mean it's kind of obvious, but we're literally just using three of the original wires from this connector. The rest just go to like player one up, two up, three up, four up. Um, one can play, two can play, three can play, four can play, and obviously there's a lot of unused spots. And then a few other backbox controlled lamps that we're not using um as well, like match and maybe high score to date. So, I don't know what all these are instead of these. Are these going to the playfield now and lighting up extra inserts? Anyway, I got to do some more digging before I proceed to sound cuz sound will be exciting. this not so much. But I like to um before I do the fun stuff, I got to bang my head against the wall a little bit longer and solve the stubborn stuff. So, I'm going to work on this first. Okay, I might be on to something here. Just pulled up pin wiki and section 5.9.3.4 before no controlled lamps working says that pins 1, 2, and 11 of the J4 connector in the upper left connection on the board carry the incoming grounds for the lamp driver. So here's the schematics. This is J4 on the lamp driver. And you can see pins 1 2 and 12 all go to ground. So, is it possible if one of those are bad that that is causing my issue? Because don't these control the playfield as well? I mean, I don't really know what I'm talking about half the time. I just kind of fumble my fumble my way through just like my words. So, I guess it wouldn't hurt to repin those guys. So that's going to be um
6:16
the white, the red, and wherever pin 11 is. So I mean, they don't look great. They don't look horrible, though, either. So it's a bit of a shotgun approach. I'll uh repin those and see what happens. Okay, so I repinninned number one, number two, and number 11. There is no number 12 on this connector. And I always mark with a Sharpie the pins that I have done if I haven't done the entire connector, just so I don't re-repin anything. And we'll plug this in,
7:05
turn it on, and pray. Game over light should come on immediately if that worked. But I don't have the highest hopes.
7:20
Yep, we got nothing. Throw it into lamp test. just for SMGs.
7:30
All right, that didn't work. Okay, so Pinwiki says that uh another thing that can cause dim controlled lamps is a partially failed bridge rectifier one on the power supply. Well, because I have this funky power supply, I don't really have a BR run BR1. I've got a BR2 and a BR3. And these two guys make up BR1 technically. So, I was starting to wonder, is it possible that this guy is bad? So, I started doing some more investigation and I um with tape marked all of the lamps that are not working. And then I removed this connector and marked No, that's what I did. I removed this connector and then marked every single light that was not working. Okay. Then I plugged it back in to see what lights turned back on. So definitely they repurposed a lot of those wires for playfield lighting. So this is on J2. This this this this probably this this this guy here. This guy this guy. So that's about 10 bulbs that are functioning off of the J4 connector, J2 connector, sorry. which means that I don't think it's the bridge because if the bridge was bad then I think that would affect all of the lamps on that connector. So, what does it all mean? I'm not really sure. Maybe I just have really bad connections at all three of these points. I mean, I can test for continuity maybe, but I have proper voltages here. So, I just not really suspecting that, but definitely can confirm that the original connector came out of the head and would plug in there and that this was all for backbox lighting. So, with the conversion kit, they made that harness differently and they had it coming off of the playfield harness, plug it in there to light up all the extra lights on the playfield, and then saved a few for the back box. But, nonetheless, I still haven't solved the problem. I can't imagine it's a continuity thing for all three connectors, but I think I'll sniff up that alley next. Hey fellow shenanigans, if you are enjoying what you are seeing, why don't you click on these three dots at the bottom of any video and then find this heart. Click on that and hey, look at this. You can buy me a beer. You can use the slider to buy me 500 beers if you really like. But this is a way you can uh send thanks and I very much appreciate your support. If you do so, your comment will be highlighted and also I will give you a shout out. So, thank you for all your support. Okay, let's do a continuity test. My green orange wire, which is my tilt, and I've just got this probe kind of secured here. alligator clip going to a little nail. And um my green orange is going to gray red. Gray red is pin three.
11:28
And you can hear got continuity there. So continuity is not an issue. But we can certainly try another one here.
11:43
That wasn't tilt. This is tilt. The middle one's tilt. Okay. So that is gray black. gray. Black goes to
11:57
dark gray, which looks like it's pin one. Is that right? What the heck color is this? Straight gray. Uh, so straight gray might be down here.
12:25
Okay. Well, I think I'm going to need to use both hands to uh complete this test, but for sure this guy is good, and I imagine the others are as well. Okay, I have confirmed continuity is good for all three sockets. So, moving on. Okay, so this is my next strategy to compare this Bobbyor backbox to my Bobbyor backbox and just study every single nook and cranny to see if there are any anomalies. So, I've been doing that and lo and behold, look what I found here. Couple wires here that were tucked in to this uh wire tie. And so I traced this gray orange wire back and it just ends up here on this connector. Gray orange. So that's not used. But this thick blue wire, pretty sure that that goes back to right here on the power supply, which is like pin uh one, two, three, four, five, six. So then we head over. Oh, do you like my workbench by the way? Pretty uh pretty handy. So then we go over to the schematics and J3 bagbox pin six is switched illumination bus. So, I think I'm hope I don't want to get my hopes too high, but I think we're on to something here. So, I'm going to try and figure out where that is supposed to go. Okay, I just found something else that might be uh pertinent. Check out. I'm guessing this is what is called the switched illumination bus. So, it comes down here, goes all the way around here. Oops.
14:57
But look at mine. I am missing this portion and this portion. So I kind of feel like I need to connect this to at least this. But I could probably go from here to here and here to here and then maybe reuse these as general illumination since these are disconnected. and then connect this blue wire. Doesn't look like there was old solder on that socket. But maybe if I connect that there then maybe we're in business. So stay tuned. We'll see. Okay. So, for now, I just used an alligator clip to connect these two lines, and I uh trimmed off some of the uh insulation. I've got another alligator clip on this blue wire. And hopefully if I touch it to this, I am in lamp test. Then maybe we'll get our uh backbox lights going here. So, let's turn off the lights. Then we'll be able to see a little better. So,
16:23
okay. Can you see this? This would be wonderful if it worked. Okay. Three, two, one. Look at that, boys and girls. Can you freaking believe that? I pretty much solved that on my own. That is a sheer miracle. All right. Well, I'm going to hard wire this up then. That is fantastic. Let's clip that on there and go have a look. Holy hallelujah. Cannot believe it. All this craziness that I had to go through to figure this out. Ah, that is one for the books. All right, check it out. This thing is wired up and wired up here. I did not attach the switch illumination bus to these guys cuz then I couldn't make them general illumination in the future if I wanted to. If I want to, then I need to like tack on like a couple wires from here to here or maybe here to here. Then I can use one or two of these sockets. I probably wouldn't put four LEDs in the one corner. That might be a little overkill, but uh I just got to add a couple wires and I can uh GI those. And here we have the finished product. Got LEDs in there now. And done about 80% of our lighting now. So, just got to deal with all these whatever they are. Either sockets or terminals or SCRs or some sort of wiring. It's weird that those three are not working in a row. This one I've deemed as a flaky lamp socket. But before I go ahead and mess with that, I think it is finally time to try and get some sound. Okay, I just took a little dinner break and um now I'm back. But I'm forever adding things to my ceilings and my walls, stickers, plastics. I've got it plastered everywhere. I've got Electra Playfields. I got Creature from the Black Lagoon. Got hook toppers, pop bumper caps. I've got Indiana Jones, Biplanes, Attack from Mars, Spaceships, Getaway, Thingamajiggy, Creature from the Black Lagoon. I'm just forever, forever adding stuff. And it is fun. And I've got a lot of crap still. I just accumulate and accumulate. So, I'm going to spend a minute or two to add some of this stuff. I've got some cool Deadpool plastics from my Deadpool goodie bag. Uh, I better be careful. I'm going to be washing some of these things. I'm going to slip down the crack here. This is cool. Like all these characters. And then like Deadpool on a hammock. Got to find a cool spot for that. And then my buddy JC just bought an Avengers Infinity Quest and gave me this stuff from the goodie bag, a sticker, some extra plastics, and he also bought a Jaws 50th anniversary and gave me some other cool plastics. Stern, keychain, jaws, and then 3D glasses. So, I have to find spots for all of this stuff. Okay, I'm going to show you where I placed all of those items. And I also want to show you something else that is for the Gamatron project. So, we'll start with Avengers sticker and then stern keychain. Probably going to forget some stuff, but I'm getting to the point where uhoh
20:39
Bless me that uh I'm running out of space. So, I'm just kind of like layering now. So, I'm doing that. Ran out of thumb tacks. Oh, here's some more layering. I just did lane guide layering. And what else? What else? What else? Feel like I put something up here. that. And this is kind of cool how this turned out. Put these guys up here. Just screwed them to the uh piece of the old strange science cabinet that Kevin rebuilt from scratch. So, there's all my Deadpool guys there. And then, um Leonardo got the 3D glasses. And I think that was about it. So, thanks again JC for uh providing most of those cool things. And now, check this out. Flight 2000 head. Why do I need a Flight 2000 head? Well, I don't. I literally need two brackets for the soundboard, which I don't have in my Bobby or head. So, I remembered that my buddy Mitch had one, and I asked to see if he wanted to sell the whole thing. He's like, "Oh, sure, but I just need to steal all of the uh brackets out of the head first for my Quicksilver uh scratch build." It's like, "What do you what parts do you need from this thing?" I'm like, "Well, I actually need the brackets that you also need." But Flight 2000 has two sound boards. Well, one sound and one speech. Therefore, there are two sets of brackets. One was here and one was here. That's for Mitch. He took all the other board brackets. And look what I got. Two more brackets for my soundboard. So now I can mount it properly. And I also have all this other stuff. So I can keep what I want to keep and then I can just basically sell off. Uh the speech board. Uh it also came with the SB300 soundboard. Where did I put that? That's over here. So I can test that in the gamatron and I can sell these boards, sell the head if I need and recoup my cost. It cost me 75 bucks. So I think that was pretty fair. And then if I can sell everything for more than that, then I can help to recuperate some of my overall expenses. Otherwise, I could have just bought the two brackets off Mitch for like five bucks. But I thought, you know what? Why don't I just buy it all, have it, use what I need from it, try and sell it and make a buck or two and help to uh reduce my overall gamutron expenses expenses. So, that's the plan. And uh yeah, pretty sweet that uh Mitch had exactly what I needed. All right, here are the brackets. So, I just took my little screwdriver and I like pried out these little tines here so that they actually latch or lock in. And you know, you go like this and you go like this.
24:21
So, I'll just measure up and drill some holes, figure out the best spot to mount this, and um yeah, we'll be right back. All right, soundboard installation went pretty smooth and, you know, free from any door interference. And there's a lot of connectors along the side here, but everything has its own space to breathe. And I left room to install a knocker if I want to in the future. I've got it connected up here. I think this connector here probably looks like it wants to go here. I'll have to check the schematics and just see. But if you've been watching, then you know that this connector goes to the sound pot and the speaker. These four wires here are these four wires here. So the last thing is I got to connect these. I think this is voltage and ground. 12 volts and ground. So I got to figure out where these go and make a new connector for that. And I think that should do it. So I just got to do a little bit of research and then we're going to see if we can get some sound. Okay. I got this uh extra board here as reference. So, starting with the J3 connector, pulled up the flight 2000 schematics for electronic sounds, and we want to find the J3 connector, which is
26:11
right here. Okay. J3 right there. Pin nine speaker. Pin eight speaker. Pin four is the key. And then pin one and three external volume pot not located on PC board. So 1, three, 8, and 9. And you can see the pin start on the right. There's number nine there. So, look at that. We got pin one and three, the dark colored wires for the external volume pot, and pin eight and nine for the speaker. So, that connector should be good. Now, for the J2 connector, it's got the schematics right here. So J2 pin six is our voltage and then it says pin two and three are analog ground. So these two apparently are ground. If we turn the board over can see that they are in fact ground. and 2 3 4 5 6 is the 12 volts, but looks like five and six are actually tied together. So, in theory, connect the black wire to pin two or three and the red wire to pin six, and we should be in business. So, I'm not sure if I'll rig up a connector yet or maybe use some alligator clips, but uh let's try and connect some wires and not blow up anything. Okay, I thought I'd run a little test here. Just see if I'm in fact getting 12 volts on that wire using this as ground. I'm not sure if that is correct or not, but could probably use this as ground as well if I don't get a reading. I don't know if the CPU is going to boot up. Yep, it is. Okay, that is still happy with the soundboard not getting voltage. How do you like that? Game over light. thing is really starting to come along. Okay, now let's uh we got that there, that there. Let's turn on the multimeter. See what happens. Okay, 14 volts. All right. Well, I um guess I'll just make a connector for this and pop it on. All right. Here we go. Remove the old connector. made a new one. J2 sound, J3 sound. Plug that in.
29:28
And like I mentioned before, this is from Viper, this soundboard, and should in theory work. At some point, I'll probably tidy up this as well. Electrical tape. I don't love that. And there's a little bit more of that happening over here. kind of just zip tied up this connector, said not used on it, and zip tied this guy up. So, I'm slowly tidying up things as I go. All right, so let's zoom out and see if Gamatron is truly alive. Hear that? That was speaker hum. Oh my god, I hear dings.
30:15
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not that loud of dings. Don't need that loud of dings.
30:22
Well, nothing's blown up in the back box, so that's a good start. All right. I have no idea how loud this is going to be, but I feel like we're going to have sound.
30:43
Uh, try. I heard it. I heard it. It's just really low.
30:53
No, don't do that. That one drop target doesn't want to stay up. And going to have to deal with that. Here we go. This is our
31:03
Whoa. Come on. This speaker uh volume pod is weird. Might have to give it a spritz of contact cleaner.
31:19
Okay, it's official, boys and girls. We have sound. We have Gamatron. Let's hit some Oh, there's some background sound. That's cool.
31:42
This is um super satisfying. We pulled it off, boys and girls. That is awesome. That is probably the bulk of the uh pain and suffering that I'm going to have to go through.
32:01
But Gamatron is effing alive, mofos. All right, so I guess this would be a good time to um end the episode on a high note, cuz you know, 95% of the refurbishment of a game is relatively smooth. It's that last 5% that really kicks you in the nuts. So, looking forward to that. See you on the next episode. Hey Ellie, I don't think you made an appearance this whole episode. I'm glad to see you're down here inspecting the flight 2000 head doing your job. You're a good helper kitty.