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Part 4: 1985 Bally Cybernaut Pinball Project. LED time!

Pinball Shenanigans·video·29m 19s·analyzed·Dec 1, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

Cybernaut restoration: LED backbox/inserts, fixed display digit via resistor replacement.

Summary

Mike Dus continues restoration of a 1985 Bally Cybernaut pinball machine, focusing on LED conversion of the backbox and playfield inserts. He diagnoses and fixes a display digit issue by replacing faulty resistors (R5 and R7), converts backbox lighting from red incandescent to natural white LEDs, and installs LED inserts on the playfield. Some lights remain non-functional due to connector or lamp driver issues to be addressed in future episodes.

Key Claims

  • The drop targets in Cybernaut were upgraded from original red bullseye style targets to Flash Gordon-style targets that look more like 'guardians' as referenced in the game storyline

    high confidence · Mike Dus notes these are 'proper looking Guardians' and superior to original targets visible in reference photos

  • A faulty display digit was caused by two resistors (R5 and R7) reading lower than spec (50 ohms instead of 100 ohms)

    high confidence · Mike diagnosed issue through multimeter testing and resolved it by replacing both resistors with quarter-watt units

  • The machine preserves settings despite having no batteries, suggesting at least one NVRAM chip is present on the board

    medium confidence · Mike observes settings persist after memory wipe, speculating about which chip provides non-volatile storage

  • Natural white LEDs in the backbox are brighter and more visually appealing than the original red incandescent bulbs

    high confidence · Direct visual comparison shown in video with noticeable brightness improvement and better color rendering

  • Some playfield insert lights remain non-functional after LED conversion, likely due to connector or lamp driver board issues

    high confidence · L insert, green light near ion generator, and 270 light still not working; Mike indicates lamp driver will be addressed next episode

Notable Quotes

  • “There they are. All guardian targets down. Opens right gate. So, let's start a game here and pop these guardians up.”

    Mike Dus @ ~2:00 — Identifies and appreciates the Flash Gordon drop target upgrade as authentic guardian mechanic

  • “This is the glass side of things. So, these are the ones I first did and I just did these. I don't have a whole lot of high hopes, but then I got thinking there are resistors, one resistor for each digit.”

    Mike Dus @ ~12:30 — Shows methodical diagnostic approach to display issues through component-level analysis

  • “I basically solved the problem myself. But thank you, Pinball Repair Help Group. You guys are awesome.”

    Mike Dus @ ~15:45 — Demonstrates self-reliance in troubleshooting while acknowledging community resource value

  • “They had the red LEDs all along the cybernot text which uh I'm happy with the natural white instead lights it up brighter. And yeah, I'm very happy with that.”

    Mike Dus @ ~17:30 — Expresses satisfaction with LED backbox conversion outcome

  • “Not only is it brighter and uses less heat and power, the white LEDs look better than incandescent bulbs in all these white inserts, which make them kind of look kind of like this yellowy nicotini.”

    Mike Dus @ ~32:00 — Technical and aesthetic assessment of LED conversion benefits

Entities

Mike DuspersonPinball ShenanigansorganizationCybernautgameBallycompanyLibo's PinballpersonBeefcake 666personCoreypersonPinball Repair Help GrouporganizationFish DS9personEllieperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Repair Help Group serves as active diagnostic resource; community members (Beefcake 666, Fish DS9) provide specific technical feedback on game mechanics and lighting

    high · Multiple instances of community members identifying issues (guardian targets, dim lights) and Mike acknowledging their contributions

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Cybernaut's drop target upgrade from generic bullseye to Flash Gordon-style targets represents intentional aesthetic/thematic improvement by previous restorer, aligning targets with guardian lore

    medium · Mike notes these are 'way cooler' and 'proper looking Guardians' compared to original red bullseye style targets visible in reference photos

  • ?

    product_strategy: LED conversion of backbox and playfield inserts improves brightness, reduces heat/power consumption, and enhances visual appearance compared to original incandescent system

    high · Direct visual comparison in video showing significantly brighter white LED illumination vs yellowed incandescent; Mike confirms improved aesthetics and functionality

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

0:02
Okay, time for some more Cybernot action. Let's uh wake this guy up. He's a little sleepy. [music]
0:14
[music] Yeah, he sounds a little tired and cranky as usual. I'm [music] Mike Dus and this is Pinball Shenanigans. [music]
0:31
Okay, so on the last episode, I chopped up the playfield, cleaned it up, rubbered it, LED the general illumination, reassembled it, and it's looking good. Now, the plan is to um I think I'll start by LEDing the back box. Maybe while I'm in there, reflow the headers on this display, which is flaking out. I got a couple more incandescent bulbs I got to deal with. And then uh maybe I will go ahead and LED the inserts. Oh, uh also it was uh Beefcake 666 who says Cybernot is looking good. Mike, the guardians are the drop targets guarding the ion generator. And now I was trying to figure out the whole story line in the last episode and I couldn't find no mention of any guardians, no art of any guardians, no nothing. So I was like, this iron generator is not very well guarded. But check it out. Thanks, Beefcake, for pointing this out. There they are. All guardian targets down. Opens right gate. So, let's start a game here and pop these guardians up.
2:09
There they are. We found the guardians. And what is cool about these drop targets being these are actually Flash Gordon drop targets. These look very much more guardianish than the original drop targets that were in there, which from the photos I looked at look like just those red bullseye style targets. So, these are way cooler guardian targets than what was originally in there, which probably
Flash Gordon
game
2:41
Let's see. I'm sure I have one. I think I seen something like this in one photo. And then I think this is what they might have originally been, but they certainly weren't as cool as what is in there now. So, whoever put those in there, good call. Those are proper looking Guardians. So, there we have it. Okay. So, I'm going to um remove the back glass and uh let's uh LED it. Have a look here. Turn off some lights.
3:18
This is the before. Okay, it's time for another quick shout out. This time, I'd like to say thanks to Libo's Pinball who donated $499 as a super thanks to the channel. Thanks, Libo. Very much appreciate that. Lebo also has a YouTube channel where he does all kinds of pinball stuff. Look at that. 216 videos and uh this guy is a true professional. He definitely does not leap things up. Like look at this before and after. It's amazing. So thanks Lebo. Much appreciate it. Maybe I'll see you at Cincinnati. Who knows?
4:49
I kind of just realized after that incessant droning of the background sound for 10 minutes that I didn't actually have to listen to that. I could just end the game and yeah, but that was right when I was down to the last couple light bulbs. Anyway, that is done and I'm going to throw on the back glass. We'll check it out. See what it looks like. Actually, I got to go and lamp test here and make sure that they're all working. There we go. And the controlled lamps are flickering as usual. So, I will be getting some LED adapters off of Corey. So, whoever shot this up before me took some extra effort to put some like foam padding here to help preserve the back glass from getting scratched against the displays. Couple of the lids are popping off. So, what I'm going to do is retape these guys back down. And I'll probably cut off this extra slack here on these guys that just over time, you know, it loses its stickiness. So, don't really need to protect the sides. So, I'll snip these guys off. If any of these are loose, then I will glue them back so they don't fall off. not glue. I'll use um duct black duct tape. I've used that method before. Seems to work pretty good. Anyway, you get the idea. So, I'm going to deal with the displays first and then we'll throw on the uh back glass. Okay. I trimmed off all the uh excess dampening foam there or whatever you call that. And I added my electrical tape to four of the five displays. This one is the only one that didn't need it. So, that's all secure now. And I did add in a couple of the old school LEDs into the coin door. I'm going to remove whatever is going on here. They really don't want you sticking quarters into this side here that doesn't have a coin mech. Uh, I mean, tape probably would have been good enough, but they um stuck a piece of metal in there. So, we'll remove that. And I'm going to pull out this display and refflow the headers on it. See if I can get that uh one digit to be happy. Oh, and a quick tip. When you're like trying to swing the back box door open, don't grab the bottom side of the display. There's contacts there and they tingle. So, it's actually pretty rare on two fronts. One is that all of the original cardboard display protectors are still there. And two, they're not completely caked with dust. Oh, and a third front. All these displays still have their rubble their rubber nipple protectors except for that one. That's an exposed nipple.
8:53
You only have to learn that lesson once. Wow. This is pinball shenanigans. I might have to learn that lesson a couple more times the hard way.
9:23
There's a decent chance that may fix it, but you never know. No, it did not fix it. Okay, let's um swap player three and four displays around and see if the problem follows. Okay, I swapped the bottom two displays. If the issue moves with the display, then we know it is a display issue. If it does not, then it is probably a connector issue.
9:57
Ah, okay. Looks like it is a display issue. So, I'm not sure what that is just yet. Uh, I may put that on the back burner for now. Okay, moving on from the display digit for now. But, I noticed something odd. Well, two things really. The main oddity is that look at the high score to date. It ends in a three. Can you actually get single points on this game? I highly doubt it. So, I'm going to go through the memory and clear it out. The other thing is that it does save settings, but obviously there's no batteries. So, one of these must be an NV RAM, right? And that's the only thing that would make sense to me, but I'm not sure which of those would be an NV RAM. So, do you know which one? Like, is that NV RAM? What is that? 6116. That could be. Anyway, it does preserve settings even though there's no batteries. So, I am going to uh go through all the settings
11:20
and I'm going to wipe everything clean just like so. I won't bore you with this, but hey, look in display test. No, that digit is still a little glitchy.
11:38
Could be the glass. I don't know. Maybe. Anyway, oh, that's just saying switch 8 is closed.
11:49
What the hell is that? 8 million. We know that's not the highest score to date. So, in order to clear that, I wonder if I can On some games you can use the coin switch to clear the memory like on hot dogging, for example. Let's see if this works. No, did not work. So, it's going to have to be a reset button somewhere. This is it. Clear here. So, let's hit that and see if that went away. All right, I'm just going to rinse and repeat for every single setting. All right, I wiped the memory clean and we'll see. Uh, you know, I'm sure it doesn't hurt to do that. don't think it's going to really improve or change anything. It is weird that sometimes when I drain it doesn't seem to register that I drained even though I'm pretty sure I scored and or hit a switch. So, there's some weird ball count things still potentially happening. But, uh let's just get rid of this crap here.
12:58
Get some maybe gooone or rubbing alcohol to get rid of the adhesive. and
13:09
get rid of this metal piece. I guess it's a somewhat clever way to prevent insertion, but uh I highly doubt some kid with their quarter in the arcade is going to peel off some tape, stick in their money knowing that they could lose it. But you know what? I got u these alcohol wipes and they're great. Thank you, shiny boy. I think he got these from uh Tim Hortons when he used to work there. And he gave me a box full of boxes. And I'm like getting down to nittygritty cuz they are very handy, especially for cleaning rubbers and target faces, etc. But that's better. And I did check this decal here is actually original. Was wondering if someone added that on after the fact, but it is OG. All right, that is done. Okay, pulled out this display again and thought for SMGs aka shits and giggles that I would reflow all these pins. This is the glass side of things. So, these are the ones I first did and I just did these. I don't have a whole lot of high hopes, but then I got thinking there are resistors, one resistor for each digit. And usually if a digit is out, it is because there's a bad resistor. But I thought, well, it shouldn't be a resistor cuz it's either going to work or it's not going to work, right? Well, I don't know. Look what I discovered. If I recall, the resistors are like R1, R3, R5, R seven, R9, and then for seven digit displays, uh, gets a little wonky. It doesn't go, I think, in the same sequence. But this is R1,
15:28
and we got 100 ohms. are three 90 9 100. Okay, this is where things get interesting. R5,
15:50
that's only 50. So maybe the resistors got heated up quite a bit or is just starting to fail. But I think that might be a problem. R seven. Wait a minute. No. Why is R750? I thought I was on to something. R9. There's 100. I don't know. I may be barking up the wrong tree here, but maybe not. We'll see. Okay, check this out. So, the resistors are R1, R3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 for six digits. Once you get to a seven-digit display, the next resistor is R56. I thought there was something funky about that, but uh they are 100 k ohm quarter watt resistors and it's suggested to replace them with half waters. And since two of mine are not reading right, I'm going to replace both R5 and R seven. And I have some reasonable hope that that might actually fix the problem. Okay, I got the two resistors replaced, but I don't have the half watts. I only got quarter watts. They lasted 40 years, so I think they're going to be okay. So,
17:35
I did a pretty fine job, I must say. Can't really tell except where I marked the resistors. So, I didn't cut or unsolder the wrong one. But here we go. R1.
17:54
That's good. R3. That's good. R5. That's good. R seven. Beautiful. R9. It's good. R11 is good. And here's our R56.
18:22
We're good. Okay, let's plug this in and see if it works. Oh, don't forget your high voltage cover. Don't want to zap yourself.
18:52
What do you think? Is it going to work? Place your bets. Here we go.
19:00
I made a post in the pinball repair help group. Hopefully, I solved the problem before anybody else suggested the problem. solution.
19:13
Do you see what I see? I see resolution. All right. That's awesome. That's my favorite cuz I I go to pinball repair group as a last resort for the most part cuz I like trying to figure it out on my own. There was a couple suggestions, but no one really ided the problem before I did. I basically solved the problem myself. But thank you, Pinball Repair Help Group. You guys are awesome. Hold on a minute. I cleared the memory. Why is the high score still on there? H, that's weird. Okay, I'm going to have to add that to the list. But let's throw on the back glass now that the display is resolved and see if we've got improvement in lighting. This back glass is in very nice shape.
20:29
Okay, let's slide this back in. I'd say better. Let's turn this off and see. Yeah, look at that. I'm going to turn off my flash as well.
21:03
Definitely an improvement. They had the red LEDs all along the cybernot text which uh I'm happy with the natural white instead lights it up brighter. And yeah, I'm very happy with that. So that's really shaping up.
21:28
So, I think I'm either going to wrap up this video now or I'm going to LED the inserts. I'll let you know in a second. Okay, I'll check with Cybernaut. Cybernot, what do you want to do? [music]
21:49
Uh, he sounds tired and cranky, so I think I'm going to wrap up this video and let him go to bed. But uh I actually have to go grocery shopping. So see you on the next episode.
22:05
Sorry I got the flash on. Does that brighten your eyeballs? What are y'all still doing here? I thought I told you this episode was over. Well Ellie told me I must go back to work. So, [crying] got our grocery shopping done. And the night is still young. So, I think it is time to uh LED the playfield inserts. Now, Ellie, check this out. Big fish. Not big fish. If he was playing poker at the poker table and I took all his money, then he might be a big fish. But fish DS9, if I can read properly here, says, "Maybe it's me, but the Len blast looks a little dark, as does the 270 light by the ion generator." And he also says, "Hi, Ellie." Did you get that Ellie? You like fish, right? Well, he says, "Hi. I'm not opening that window. It is freaking cold. Sorry. You can go chill there, but uh the window's going to stay closed. But yes, fish, uh good eye on that. You are correct. And that is because all these lights are still incandescent and a few of them are out, but the L is definitely uh out. And then you said 270. Well, like the two Oh, no. 200's working. 270. You say 270. Oh, good eye. Look at that. That one is also out. So, just a couple out. Maybe this guy. Or maybe he doesn't go off in a track mode. Let's hit the button and see. Ah, got a 10 out. Gate open when lit out.
24:06
And that's about it. But oh yeah, so this can be this can be your before. Pardon me. This is the before shot before the LEDs go in. [clears throat] All right. So have a look at that. Sorry, [clears throat] I'm like 97% done my cold. I got my voice back for the most part. So, I am almost good to go. But there's the before. Give me about I don't know half an hour or something and I will be back with the after. Right, Ellie? Okay. So, like I'm pretty sure I'm going to have zero issue leding these style sockets. I already tried one out here just to see. That's not going to be a problem. But I have been fighting with these other crappy sockets here. These are horrible. But then again, you know, look at the thickness of that compared to uh like this green LED here. Have a look at the difference. See that? So, anything that uses these whites, which is a lot, I'm really fighting. But I did use some greens right here and they went in no problem. One red of that style. That is easy. But I think I'm down to the last one. This guy here. And I'm going to try and show you what I'm dealing with and uh how I've been trying to uh resolve. Okay. I don't know if you're going to be able to see this very well, but this is my bulb insertion tool. And as you can tell, accessibility is uh it varies. Some are a little easier than others. But let's see if I can kind of semi show you what I'm dealing with here. I will throw on the old overhead light here and the glasses, head lampamp and glasses. So, I've got this semi dry fit in here and my fingers are raw from pressing and dry. It is dry season. So, with the help of the old channel locks,
27:05
boom. See that? You just got to grab it just right, though. But that's the kind of crap I've been dealing with. Okay. I said, uh, initially, give me about half an hour and I'll be back. That was closer to a little over an hour, but nonetheless, I'm almost done with the LEDs. And you can see that there's some flickering going on there. I'll resolve that with my LED adapters when I get those. And the L is still not working. And neither is this green light nor the gate open when lit light. So I think that's going to be connector or lamp driver related. And what do you know? The 270 light still does not work. The ion generator is looking good. Rollover lights. But yeah, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.
28:19
Much better. Much better. All you know, like not only is it brighter and uses less heat and power, the white LEDs look better than incandescent bulbs in all these white inserts, which make them kind of look kind of like this yellowy nicotini. I use I put a warm in here accidentally. So, I got to really should have put in um just natural white, but it's very awkward in there because I didn't remove the apron. So, I'm probably just going to leave that. But, uh yeah, I'm pretty happy. So, now I'm officially going to wrap it up and uh in the next episode we'll pull out the old lamp driver and uh get the rest of these bulbs going. But uh I think that was a successful and productive episode of Cybernot.