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Arcade Crusade: How To Install Pinball NVRAM

The Pinball Network·video·28m 46s·analyzed·May 17, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.021

TL;DR

How-to guide for installing NVRAM on Williams WPC pinball machines

Summary

A detailed instructional video on how to install NVRAM (non-volatile RAM) on Williams WPC pinball machines. The host walks through desoldering the original RAM chip, installing a socket, and inserting replacement NVRAM to preserve high scores without relying on batteries. The guide is positioned as part of the Pinball Network's educational content series for pinball owners and technicians.

Key Claims

  • NVRAM installation is universal across all Bally/Williams games with soldered RAM chips, but WPC boards are the hardest to work on due to smaller traces

    high confidence · Host explains: 'WPC is the hardest one to do it on because the traces are a lot smaller on the MPU than they are on previous iterations. So System 11 has larger data line traces and you run less of a risk of pulling a trace when you pull the RAM.'

  • Data East and Stern games come with RAM chips already in sockets from the factory, making NVRAM installation trivial

    high confidence · Host states: 'If you have a Data East or Stern game, you won't have to do this. Actually, Data East and Stern, they put the RAM chip in a socket from the factory, so all you have to do is pop the RAM out of the socket and drop your NV RAM in.'

  • NVRAM chips typically last 10-15 years

    medium confidence · Host mentions: 'the failure rate on MVRAM, they usually last, I mean, they're supposed to last, you know, 10 to 15 years. They last quite a long time.'

  • Most WPC boards use either 6264 or 62256 RAM, and some WPC boards can accommodate both types via a jumper configuration (W3)

    medium confidence · Host explains chip specifications: 'Most of the time, as you can see right on here, This is a 6264 written right there. 6264 RAM. Some WPC boards use 62256 RAM... WPC boards, you can install a jumper. I believe it's a W3 right here. Don't quote me on that. I could be wrong.'

  • A desoldering pump is strongly preferred over a solder sucker for WPC boards due to risk of damaging traces

    high confidence · Host advises: 'I don't suggest doing NVRAM installs with a solder sucker the traces on WPC boards are very small and if you use a solder sucker you're just going to end up applying heat too long you might suck up your trace there's just too many things that you may screw up I really suggest getting a good desoldering station'

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't want to deal with batteries even remote battery holders. I just don't want to deal with it. I don't want to have to spend the money on lithium batteries.”

    Arcade Crusade host @ ~18:40 — Explains the motivation for NVRAM installation as a permanent high-score preservation solution

  • “WPC is the hardest one to do it on because the traces are a lot smaller on the MPU than they are on previous iterations.”

    Arcade Crusade host @ ~19:30 — Technical clarification on why WPC boards require more care than earlier System 11 boards

  • “If you aren't confident in your work, send the board out to someone, have them do it. There's no shame if you're too afraid to do board work.”

    Arcade Crusade host @ ~21:00 — Acknowledges the intimidation factor and offers alternative for less experienced technicians

  • “It's a little bit scary with pinball because things are a lot more expensive than they are on the arcade side”

    Arcade Crusade host @ ~21:15 — Notes the higher stakes and cost differences between arcade and pinball restoration work

Entities

Arcade Crusadeperson|content_creatorPinball Networkorganization|mediaWilliams WPCproduct|platformWhite WatergameSystem 11product|platformPin-i-Techcompany|supplierRocky and BullwinklegamePros Kit SS 331product|toolZachperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Network is producing educational maintenance content (NVRAM installation, flipper rebuild) demonstrating commitment to owner/technician education and skill-building

    high · This is the second tutorial in the series; host explicitly invites community feedback for future topics (pop bumper rebuilds, schematics walkthrough, cleaning/waxing guides)

  • ?

    technology_signal: Industry shift toward NVRAM as standard preservation method for WPC-era machines; represents move away from battery-dependent high-score storage

    medium · Host recommends NVRAM installation on 'all your games' and emphasizes personal preference for avoiding battery maintenance costs and replacement cycles

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.086

0:00
What's up Crusaders, welcome back to another episode of Arcade Crusade. Today's video is going to be another video for the Pinball Network. After we did our first video on rebuilding flippers we are going to do our second one as a quick how-to installation guide on NVRAM on a Williams WPC. This guide is for a WPC. I'm doing it on my white water, but this guide can be used for System 11. It can be used for any other Williams game that has a RAM chip that is directly soldered to the board. So what we're going to be doing is we are going to desolder our RAM chip, drop a socket in, solder it, and then put the NV RAM in, all while removing and putting the board, the MPU board, back into the cabinet. So let me get the camera set up on the tripod and we will go from there.
1:02
All right, so mainly what we're going to do here, we're going to be looking at this left board in the back box here. This board right here with the socketed ASIC, your game ROM, this board right here is your CPU board. So what I suggest you do before you go ahead and do this go ahead and take pictures of your connections to your cabinet switches down here ribbon cable connection power connection all your ribbon cable connections so I'm just gonna go through and let me make sure we can see you properly all right so I'm just gonna go through one by one and remove our connections. So I'm just going to start at the top. Alright so there's two ribbon cables out.
2:11
Alright and now just the cabinet switches that have to get disconnected. All right, and that is everything disconnected, and you can just kind of bend your connections back, get them out of the way for now. And then this has what looks to be six screws here. And on WPC boards you can actually, I think, yeah, all of them slide up and into place. So you can just loosen your screws and slide the board out. So just get your screws loose and I don't think we need to take them all the way out. Tighten that up a little bit. We'll see if we got enough play or if we need to take our screws out. It looks like these are loose enough. Yeah, we can just leave our screws in and I'm just kind of stuck on the wires here. All right, so let me, well actually you can see pretty well there. That's our entire CPU board removed. Where we're going to be looking is right under this game ROM. The game ROM here is at U6. is at U8 is our soldered in RAM. So we're going to go ahead and desolder this from the board, put a socket in, install our NV RAM. I'm going to pop this ROM out because I have an L5. This is version L4. I have L5, which is the latest one. So we're going to put an L5 ROM in. But yeah, that's it. Just loosen those six screws, slide the board out. So I'm going to take this over to the workbench. We'll get our soldering iron and desoldering pump heated up and then we can go ahead and take this ram out. All right guys, so we are back over at the workbench and one thing I just wanted to point out before we do anything at all, basically you need to look at the number on your ram that is soldered into the board. Most of the time, as you can see right on here, This is a 6264 written right there. 6264 RAM. So that is the type of MV RAM you're going to want to install.
5:05
Some WPC boards use 62256 RAM. So I would suggest getting 62256 MV RAM if you have a 62256. WPC boards, you can install a jumper. I believe it's a W3 right here.
5:22
Don't quote me on that. I could be wrong. But anyway, you can install a jumper there and you could either use a 6264 or 62256. But if you don't want to make jumper changes, just go ahead and match whatever number is written on there. So just wanted to point that out before we got started. And then the other thing I'd like to point out, in order to do this, you'll need a couple different things. And I'll zoom out. You will need a decent soldering iron to solder your socket in. I suggest getting a flux pen. And if you don't have a flux pen, you could just use solder and reflow solder on all your solder points before you desolder. But the point of this is a flux pen gets all of your solder joints. It applies flux to all your solder joints and they're going to melt a lot better with your desoldering iron than they would. And then the other thing that we're going to be using is I have a desoldering pump. so it's basically just a vacuum pump hole in the center of the soldering tip and that's that over there hole in the center of the solder tip and it sucks the solder through it. I don't suggest doing NVRAM installs with a solder sucker the traces on WPC boards are very small and if you use a solder sucker you're just going to end up applying heat too long you might suck up your trace there's just too many things that you may screw up I really suggest getting a good desoldering station if you plan on doing this I have a review video posted on the one that's right there it's the pros kit SS 3 3 1 I got it for on Aliexpress and it been great so far so we see how it does with this install but yeah you just need i suggest getting a flux pen some solder solder station desolder station and then i just have a flat head screwdriver to uh pry our chip up at the end but that that's all you'll need to do this install so let me get the camera set up we'll look at the back side of the board right here at u8 and i'll just hit it with some flux and then we will desolder that chip Alright guys, so we're set up at the bench over here and what we are going to be looking at is I got the board flipped over right above our ASIC which is our square socketed chip right here is our RAM chip and your RAM is actually a couple pins shorter than your ROM so you can't really mix them up, it's the only chip right here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my flux pen and I'm just going to come in and I'm just going to apply some flux to both sides of the pins. and what this does is it is it just allows heat to transfer and your solder to melt a little bit nicer than it would if we didn't have flux applied so we got flux applied to our pins there and i'm just going to make sure I might add a little bit there. It's having some trouble coming out. It's a little dried up. All right, that should be enough flux for what we're trying to do here. Now I'm going to take my desoldering pump, and I'm just going to come in here and pin by pin desolder this. So really, all you need to do with this is just, and I'm going to use two hands just to be steady,
9:06
but I'm just going to come pin by pin and just put it on and suck. And some people will put it on and kind of move it around, but I just put it on with some light pressure, let it sit for a second, and suck the solder.
9:30
All right, and that is an entire row of pins desoldered. I left that one corner pin still in just to keep the chip in, and now I will go to the top set of pins and just one by one just come down on it and I'm just gonna suck and make sure my nozzle is cleared up
10:25
And that's just pin by pin so we'll just get this last pin on the corner and get this last pin on the corner here. I just want to make sure we're not clogged here because those last ones didn't come out as nicely as I would have liked them to. I'm just going to closely inspect this board here.
11:22
So I'm just going to come back in and all of mine that didn't get desoddered nicely because my gun wasn't hot enough, I'm just going to come back in with my soldering iron and I'm just going to add solder to all of those pins.
11:45
And like I said, I'm just going pin by pin, just adding a little bit of solder to make our desoldering job a bit easier. Add a little more on the end there, didn't get that much. Alright, so that should make it a bit easier for this to come in and desolder these. So make sure we got good suction there, we do. And I'm just going to come in pin by pin and let me move this up a little bit. Yeah, that makes our lives a lot easier.
13:29
All right, so I'm just going to make sure my gun is completely unclogged, and then we will take a closer look at our work.
13:54
All right, my gun is completely unclogged. I'll go ahead and clean that after we're done here. But I'll set my gun in its holder. I don't know why the temperature went down. I must have hit a setting or something because it should not go down. I don't know why it did that. It must have hit a setting or something. But if you look at our socket right there I try to get it without a glare or I mean our chip you can see every single through solder joint is completely cleared of solder So we should be able to just bend this chip up on the other side of the board and it should pop right out. So I went ahead, if you ever have complications with things not coming up like I was having, the main thing that you want to do is add some new solder to that joint and then come back in with your desoldering tool and then it'll suck up all the new solder with it and it'll clear out the hole like right away. After I did that, now I have my new socket in place. So what I did is I just pushed my socket through the top side of the board and it is in place we have our notch on the right side the way it should be and we should be able now to just it's in place and actually holding pretty well where it's at and now we can just go ahead and come to the back side and just come pin by pin and add some solder so apologize if my hands in the way holding the solder but what I like to do when I start here is I like to just add solder at the four corners
16:07
And just make sure you got nice even joints on your corners here and then we will just go pin by pin and just add our solder. And just make sure you don't apply too much heat to these joints because this board has very thin traces like I said earlier. So you're just going to go pin by pin and apply your solder. Alright now I got that entire side I'm just going to clean my soldering iron off and we We will now do this side. And I'm just going pin by pin, adding new solder on our brand new socket. And if you don't have any complications desoldering, this can be a 10 minute install. Like take the board out, get it on the bench, and in 10 minutes have it all completely back together. So I'm pretty happy with this entire side. I'm going to add a little bit of solder there, but I'm happy with all those joints. And now on this side, all of these joints could just use a little bit more solder.
18:35
All right, and all of those look pretty good to me. Looks like a pretty good install with all of those. Yeah, we got nice clean solder joints, all of those, no lifted traces. Our socket is in nice and solid and our solder flowed through. So socket's in nice and solid, so we're good there. All we need to do is now put in our NVRAM. So I got a 6264 NVRAM from Pin-i-Tech. And all you want to do is just line up your leads with your socket like I'm doing right here and just give it a firm push into the socket like I just did. And now we got NVRAM installed, our new game ROM is installed, and we can now take this board and put it back into the cabinet. Alright, so now we're back over at the cabinet, we can drop our CPU board back in, and you really just want to make sure everything's out of the way as you go to put this in. And a good way to start is to get the corners on first just because the corners are a little bit different in terms of the holes and then you can go ahead and get the rest of it on. Just make sure you aren't stuck behind any wires or anything. Your biggest concern as you go to put this back on is you don't want to be stuck on any wires. Once you make sure all your wires are out of the way. Go ahead and loosen this one because we're stuck. All right, and there we go. We dropped right into place. So now we can take our screwdriver and again just double check all your wires are completely out of the way. And they are. Alright so completely out of the way we can go ahead and tighten all these up and I I just to not get them super tight but just start to get them tight You don want to crank down the corners like really bad because you'll crack the board if you tighten them too much. Just be careful at the corners. Alright so I'm just going to go ahead and tighten every screw on this board. Nice and solid there. Corner is tight enough. Alright, that corner is tight. So now we can just go ahead and hook up all of our connections. So power connection first. We'll get this ribbon cable attached. This ribbon cable ran all the way over here. Both of those ribbon cables fully on. And then the last thing is our cabinet switches and I'm just going to double check my picture before I put these on. So let me test this. Alright, yep, just this one at the bottom. Green was in the center and white was all the way on the end.
24:09
So once you get all three of those in place, double check your work, make sure you got everything right, make sure you're not off a pin, make sure all your ribbon cables are pressed down, and we should be good now. so I can just go ahead and put our DMD back in.
24:43
All right, so we'll go ahead and turn the game on, booting up with the new LH6 ROM, and we are back on nice and bright bigfoot's turning on well guys that was a quick installation guide for nvram on a williams wpc game like i said earlier this guide can be used for any bally williams game that has a ram chip soldered directly to the board and you want to install nvram i personally install nvram on all my games i don't want to deal with batteries even remote battery holders. I just don't want to deal with it. I don't want to have to spend the money on lithium batteries. And then when they go in a few years, swap them out, worry about losing my high scores. I like having my high scores on my games and you know, the failure rate on MVRAM, they usually last, I mean, they're supposed to last, you know, 10 to 15 years. They last quite a long time. So I recommend doing this on all your games, get the batteries off the board. It's just the way to do it. If you have a Data East or Stern game, you won't have to do this. Actually, Data East and Stern, they put the RAM chip in a socket from the factory, so all you have to do is pop the RAM out of the socket and drop your NV RAM in. When I had my Rocky and Bull Winkle, all I had to do was pop that chip off, put the NV RAM in, and I was done. It sucks that it's a little bit more involved with Bally Williams games, but it's universal across all of them. WPC is the hardest one to do it on because the traces are a lot smaller on the MPU than they are on previous iterations. So System 11 has larger data line traces and you run less of a risk of pulling a trace when you pull the RAM. On WPC, you got to be pretty careful. And the way that I did it by desoldering the entire chip and pulling out, you don't have to do it like that. what you could do instead you could go with a pair of flush cutters just flush wire cutters make sure they're sharp though go pin by pin and cut every pin from the chip then you can pull the chip out and all that's in the board is your pins so now you're not battling a whole chip you can go and desolder chip by chip so you can take a pair of pliers desolder pull the pin out and you can do that one by one and take each pin out and you're not battling the entire chip. So that's another way to do it. But if you're going to do this, make sure that you have the right tools. Get a good soldering iron. Get a good desoldering iron. If you aren't confident in your work, send the board out to someone, have them do it. There's no shame if you're too afraid to do board work. It took me a long time to get to this point where, I mean, it really started where I was working on all these arcade cabinets and I was just kind of in a position where I said screw it I'm going to figure out how to do this stuff and that was before I was really into pinball it's a little bit scary with pinball because things are a lot more expensive than they are on the arcade side I don't you know it's less scary to work on a Donkey Kong board than it is to work on a white water so yeah that's just a quick installation guide for this just just another video in the Pinball Network series. If you have any ideas, anything you would like to be shown through this series, you know, please reach out to us, leave a comment, email Zach, email myself, whatever you want to do, just reach out, let us know what you'd like to see. You know, we had a couple ideas. I was going to maybe walk through some schematics, show you guys how to do that. We can do a basics guide to cleaning and waxing your games, replacing pinballs, just basic care stuff. If there's anything you guys wanna see when it comes to repair and maintenance, reach out to us and we'll try to film a video on it. I wanna do one on rebuilding pop bumpers, but really all of my games right now have