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Part 3: 1979 Bally Future Spa Garage Project! Rectification of Rectifier & more!

Pinball Shenanigans·video·31m 1s·analyzed·Jul 9, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.016

TL;DR

Future Spa restoration: rectifier board re-pinning, display swaps, and SCR failure diagnosis.

Summary

Mike Dimas continues restoration of a 1979 Bally Future Spa machine, focusing on rectifier board repair, connector re-pinning, and diagnostic troubleshooting. He successfully repins multiple connectors (including the J3 power connector), tests the machine's power-up, swaps display components to isolate issues, and identifies three failed SCR (silicon-controlled rectifier) chips as the root cause of non-functional lamps.

Key Claims

  • The Future Spa had extensive wiring hackery with non-modular connectors that needed complete re-pinning

    high confidence · Mike Dimas showed before/after photos of the original harness, describing it as 'pretty impressive hackery and burnage' and replacing all pins with modular connectors

  • A bad digit on the display can be repurposed by swapping it with the credit display, which only uses two specific digit positions

    high confidence · Mike identified that Player 3 display had a defective digit, but the credit display uses only digits 3-4, so the defective digit (on the left/digit 1) is not visible in credit display operation

  • Three lamp sockets were non-functional due to failed SCRs (Q50, Q51, Q53), not bulbs or socket issues

    high confidence · Mike used jumper wire tests to isolate the problem: jumping socket pairs to adjacent sockets restored light function, confirming the SCR was the failure point

  • The machine's drop targets were misaligned due to improper adjustment of the bottom plate/bar

    high confidence · Mike identified the issue and adjusted the bottom plate by loosening screws and repositioning it to prevent the ball from getting hung up on drop targets

  • Someone previously had replaced one lamp socket with an incorrect type, which did not solve the underlying SCR failure

    high confidence · Mike found an incorrect socket on the playfield and replaced it with an original socket, but jumper testing still indicated an SCR failure

Notable Quotes

  • “I think I have all my repinning tools here. I'm going to cut away all this crap.”

    Mike Dimas@ 0:53 — Establishes the scope of the re-pinning project and Mike's approach to cleaning up the previous hackery

  • “There's the pile of trash. So next thing I'm going to do is clean up this corner and then install the transformer and we'll start plugging things in.”

    Mike Dimas@ 8:15 — Marks the transition from connector re-pinning to physical installation and testing

  • “Hopefully it works. So I went through all this trouble. Just to go backwards in there progress, I will be very sad.”

    Mike Dimas@ 18:14 — Expresses anxiety before the critical power-up test after extensive restoration work

  • “you got to be slow and intentional when you're working on pinball machines boys and girls you try and rush and move quick things like that happen”

    Mike Dimas@ 20:46 — Reflective safety/technique advice after dropping pinball legs on his finger

  • “so that means the wiring is good through here but the SCR is not”

    Mike Dimas@ 28:34 — Key diagnostic conclusion identifying SCR failures as the root cause of three non-functional lamps

Entities

Mike DimaspersonKevinpersonJohnpersonFuture SpagameBallycompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball restoration content demonstrating technical problem-solving methodology (jumper wire diagnostics, systematic isolation of failures) to educate community on board-level troubleshooting

    high · Mike's detailed walk-through of jumper wire testing procedures to identify SCR failures, clearly demonstrating diagnostic methodology for viewers

  • ?

    technology_signal: Replacement of non-modular connectors with modular Molex-style connectors during Future Spa restoration, representing an aftermarket upgrade/modernization approach to classic pinball machines

    high · Mike explicitly states all pins were 'non-modular connector standard style' and replaced them with modular connectors, labeling them as 'a nice upgrade'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.093

0:00
I'm Mike Dimas and this is Pinball Shenanigans. Okay, back to the future spa yet again. That is where the old transformer was. She's a little bit dirty there.
0:20
And I'll give that a little vacuum before I reinstall the transformer and rectifier board. but before I go ahead and do that it's repinning time so should go pretty smoothly I can remedy this hack here and this housing is actually pretty good this one I will change and this one I'll probably change as well it's a little fugly. So I think I have all my repinning tools here. I'm going to cut away all this crap. I'm going to be a little bit short on this harness here, but I think it will be enough. I mean, this harness goes, if I have to cut a couple of zip ties even, then that's not a big deal, but should be okay to cut away all of this and get rid of that forever so it should be much better and then of course got my display that i repaired and i was thinking even if that first digit on the left is still bad i think it's actually good I'm pretty sure I could use it in the credit display because the credit display uses these two digits and these two digits I believe so if this digit is bad on player three then I can just swap these two and
1:57
That is a good remedy a few of you pointed out that When you jumper the switch and it works Blame the switch which makes sense in hindsight site so I actually have new switches but I lent Kevin my switch bin which I could go for like weeks without ever needing access to but of course as soon as I lend Kevin my bin of switch parts I need it and I don't have it but I might be going there tonight so I'll grab a new switch in the meanwhile maybe I'll give it a little spritz of this just to see what happens so we're going to try and fix that fix the display stick the mpu back in which was never a problem but didn't hurt to uh go over the board do a little bit of reflowage and when i removed it i discovered there was only one screw in there and it was not even the correct type of screw it was I don't even know if it was the right thread so it prompted me to bring some proper board screws where did I put those there we go I got a bunch of board screws these are the right kind and yeah we'll uh install a couple of those guys so no harm no foul all right so one last look at the before should hang that on my wall it's pretty impressive hackery and burnage and oh there's three wires here that are hacked i'm gonna have to make sure i have enough wire to actually cut this all the way back. I may not. So I may need to just do a better job of wire extension on these three wires.
4:15
I've got my parts, playfield parts over here, so I've got all kinds of wire. You know what I don't have, though, is my shrink tube.
4:26
So I don't love that. I've got electrical tape I think. But yeah, I didn't think to bring the shrink tube bin. So anyway, we'll see what I can do with this mess and report back. Judging by the amount of rust in this vicinity, you can see why this switch has potentially gone bad. beer spill, some pop spill, milkshake, who knows what has been spilt down this glass over the years. But you know, this is very flammable, so you want to make sure this dries 100% before powering the machine on but figure while I'm doing other stuff might as well do this first so it can dry while I'm doing the other things so I'll work that in there a little bit if it works cool if not I got a new one over at Kevin's well fortunately I have a bar stool in the garage here and I just pulled up a stool I've got a little bit of a workbench here, a little bit of a workbench here, and I am done with repinning. So this is the one that used to be this guy here. It's like a big spider. And now this is what it looks like. I'm going to zoom in a bit here. housing and I write repinned 2025 on everything I repin for future Mike in the next future spa in the fa of the sputure sputure fa anyway I think you know what I'm trying to say because I sure don't uh what's the other connector where did you go so here is your j3 connector this is the one big one that goes across the bottom so every single pin is replaced and all the ones that were in there they were the non-trifuricon style so this is a nice upgrade and i ended up just reusing the housings because they're fine a little bit of burnage there but the housing itself ain't going to fall apart it's in good shape uh i did find green and white wires over in the graveyard and i made them a little extra long because i want to come back and then cut them short and shrink tube them so i'll just twist them back off shrink tube cut them to length and uh you know It like the original colors and the original thickness not these guys which were extra thick And I guess green was the right color but gray wasn Then I noticed someone else did a little bit of work on some of these wires and changed the colors you know orange to purple red to black yellow to white but that looks like a good job. That's probably soldered and shrink-tubed and so I just left that. As for the short connector, I did clip one of the zip ties to give me a little extra length here. So that's basically it. There's the pile of trash. So next thing I'm going to do is clean up this corner and then install the transformer and we'll start plugging things in here's the other connector i didn't show this one off there's technically four connectors one two three pinned three four but these are actually technically one connector oh that reminds me i gotta put in a key plug in this guy so i'm going to do that as well all right let's uh try and clean up this corner a little bit I don't really have any water on me.
9:31
Or glass cleaner. but you know what that's a lot better so I can live with that all right I can tell by the looks on your faces that you want to see me install this thing it's not all that exciting but I may use some time lapse here but all right let's uh stick this bad boy in
11:33
Okay, I don't know if you could tell how much fun I was having installing that. It was amazing. Got these screws in the back corner here. There's three of them. Those are a little awkward. leaning over the corner here my back is just about had it another screw there screw there but then you have to align all the four standoffs with these two screws through the bridges through the heat sink into the bracket so it's a an alignment dance and i am not very good at it but I think we can plug some stuff in now and this should go here yeah that looks about right you know I should put in a key pin there too no one has bothered to do that so I'm gonna have to do that let's just kind of dry fit that should go there right is that right where does that go here I'm gonna label these connectors that goes here okay so this makes sense to it needs to just be spot onto this connector here like so and then let's see if our shorty will fit here's our shorty and do I have that in the right spot fourth pin in yes I do okay so I got a little bit of work to before i plug these in but i'm getting close okay i actually had this connector installed wrong
13:51
so a good thing i put in this key here so now we can plug everything in we do that and then i should zoom out a little bit here so we can see what's going on then this guy can go in and then I got a little arrow there to show the two where the connectors go okay this is where I gotta fight a little bit here you know what I don't like fighting I'm gonna remove this connector and just shave a little bit of the housing off between these two guys so it's not so much of a fight okay let's give it one more try here just use my little file shave down the edge a little bit on both sides and let's see if it's gonna go in happily it's pretty good and that's pretty good doesn't feel a whole lot better than it was but these connectors don't really need to come off for transportation purposes that j3 just stays on there so with another hand i'm going to try and just snug that on just a little bit better and then do the other two connectors Okay there we go That connector is on there good now I had to remove the connector and file down the little key plug because some of it was protruding out and so I took the knife to it and the file to it and made it as flush so I could get it. There we go. Finally J3 is installed. Let's do the others. What is this? That's J2. Now you can't screw this one up.
16:05
It will not go anywhere else on the power supply. And then where is J1? Where did you go? Here it looks like we're gonna have enough length oh see what I mean how that's protruding out a bit that was my problem so I'm gonna deal with that a little bit more before I stick this guy in okay it's a little better see how this goes wrong way it's always the like terminals the little slots for the terminals that side is usually up on the power supply okay that's on there good now before I forget I got these two general illumination wires I got a deal with it a future visit but see if everything else wires up now I have enough slack for everything even throw that in there all right I think we are good to go so if If everything works then I'll stick this cage back on. I've got my couple cage screws here. Operation rectifier board and re-pinning is pretty darn near finished. Let's just do the ultimate test now. Power this thing on and hope nothing is shorted together. Hopefully there's no fuses blowing, bridges blowing, smoke, fire, or any of the above. So let me clean up my mess here, and then we will give her a test. All right, moment of truth here.
18:14
Hopefully it works. So I went through all this trouble. Just to go backwards in progress, I will be very sad.
18:24
Okay, let's take a look at the back box. I'm going to power this on in 3, 2, 1 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 I must have missed one
18:53
Okay I think we're good boys and girls It was a little terrifying. You just never know when working on these things. I was trying to be uber careful to not bridge anything when putting on new headers there. These two guys, we've got to make sure they don't touch anything. We're back into track mode. see now that we think that's good let's check on this player three display hey look at that success I know the display show up all weird through the camera but okay that's resolved what else diagnostic button I don't have high helps for this but let's see if it works now boom what do you think about that little contact cleaner let's go check display test oh that bottom left digit is being a little bit wonky. Okay so I'm gonna swap the credit display with player three and see if the problem follows. So I'm gonna do that now. Okay I got the cage back on and the soundboard was missing a screw and then I also dropped some pinball legs on my my finger so I got a boo-boo just moving too quickly you got to be slow and intentional when you're working on pinball machines boys and girls you try and rush and move quick things like that happen so got to be patient so let's go back into display test now that I swapped the displays and see what happens. Okay, so it is definitely the display that is the issue, but I don't think that digit is used on the credit display. So let's turn this thing back on and in the meanwhile we'll listen to some cool tunes and find my to-do list where did that go i can't have gone too far
21:47
um i'll find it Where did you go? All right, let's see. Yeah, look at that. That digit is not used on the credit display. So I guess I didn't repair the display after all, but this is a sufficient solution. I'm happy with that.
22:07
What I do know is that we're down to the nitty gritty here. I do want to raise the drop targets. I want to fix this light.
22:18
Look at this. go into diagnostics so nice this special light this light and this light are three the only lights that aren't working I believe and then what else is there I know there's another thing or two but I gotta find my to-do list all All right, I got the hood up and it's nice to be able to work on a machine with the hood up in my basement. It's often a different story, but now we can really address things that need to be addressed. This could be a connector, could be a SCR. I doubt it's the bulb. Could be the socket. We going to have to deal with that where was the other light I think it was this guy here yeah i have to figure out that guy
23:22
also i was talking to john and he said these alligator clips are here because um he didn't have the tools to solder the wires back on i guess so i've got the tools i'll do that and The other thing is raising the drop targets just a bit.
23:44
So what I'm thinking is this may be an adjustment for that. I push up this whole plate up a little bit.
23:57
There is on this side you can see a bit of a loop. I don't think there is on the other side though. So if that doesn't work, payment pending. That's interesting.
24:11
If that doesn't work, I'll put a strip of dampening foam along the bottom side of this bar so it can't go all the way down.
24:21
And then the drop targets can't go all the way down. I think that'll solve it. Unless... You know what? think just pushing this whole bar up actually. I'd loosen these two screws, push this whole bar that away. That might be the solution. So I'll fart around with those items and see how I make out.
24:45
Okay, well I have the hood up. I gave the cabinet a vacuum, got rid of all the crusties in there, I soldered up this guy, no more alligator clips, and I adjusted the bottom plate here. I think that my drop targets are nice and flush now, so the ball won't get hung up on them. If I could only find my to-do list, I don't know where, it's a piece of paper like this and it just vanished. So I've got to find it. It'll turn up somewhere, somehow. So I'm down to three light bulbs and whatever else is on the list. Okay, I made a little jumper wire and when I jumper these two guys together, this socket with the neighboring socket, the light works. So it's not the LED, it's not the socket. either the the terminal or the SCR. I'll try and demonstrate this for you. Hey there we go. Okay
25:59
same thing for this guy here. And then the last guy I think we got a bit of a problem here. That is just wrapped around so
26:14
still that doesn't solve the problem. I'm going to solder that on. but I'll have to do the jumper test on that one too, but that is a problem. Okay, I think I figured out what's going on with this one lamp.
26:30
This is the socket that was in there, and it's not even really the right socket. I mean, it would work technically, but someone at some point replaced the socket because the bulb wasn't working. I didn't like this socket so I got rid of it and I put in a different better original used one like that's from my xenon parts play field and now when I jumper it it works so they changed the socket thinking that might solve the problem but it was never the socket again it's either the terminal or it is the SCR because now when I do this test when I did it before it was not working but now almost had it yeah just barely come on now so close there you go sockets good bulb is good so all three of the bulbs have the same symptoms now either terminal or SCR okay so connector J 3 pin 15 is spa special and I wiggled wire number 15 nothing happened so we trace this down over to Q 51 and then we use another jumper wire that I made and you ground the bottom right leg of Q51 like so and then voila we got action so that means the wiring is good through here but the SCR is not so I'm gonna rinse and repeat with the other two bulbs I'm pretty sure they're gonna be SCRs as well and if that's the case I'll bring the lamp driver home which is no biggie but that'll mean I'll have brought almost every board home with me and I guess that's not true I didn't do the solenoid driver or the soundboard or the auxiliary board so half of the boards but it's what you got to do sometimes so I'll try and find these other lamps spots letter when lit what was that what would that be called spots letter when lit so you just got to go through all of that much the other one called target scores 5,000 to see a 5,000 anywhere. Anyway, that's what I got to do. So I think that's going to be where I wrap up. One more little session and this machine should be good to go. Got to do some more play testing, of course, but we're almost there. So down to a few light bulbs and I got to write, find my to-do list on the to-do list. Okay, one last thing before I go. I finally found them. We got kickback spots letter, and that is Q53. So we go over to Q53, kickback spots letter, boom and the other one is called spa 5k and that is q50 through 46 q46 and q46 is up here and what do you know all right we got a few bad scrs so i'll see you on the next episode