9 replies to this topic

[S1500]

Atari "Middle Earth" from 1978.

Bought this from a fellow AtariAger. Need to fix things up, do some cleaning & it's ready to go. If not, it will become a widebody Hyperpin table. Heh.

Moving this into the basement was some serious liftin'. Thankfully I have nice neighbors. My next door neighbor had a fridge mover sitting outside, but weren't home. Friend & I go to a party across the street, and they have a fridge mover that we used to get it downstairs.

Fun to look at the inner workings of the machine, solenoids and all. Got 2 big PDF documents I need to read through to troubleshoot & get going again. Heh.

Edited by S1500, Sun Oct 2, 2011 11:44 AM.

[schuwalker]

Awesome! My buddy has a Middle Earth playfield, and I must say, It has to be one of the weirdest design layouts I've seen - especially the flipper arrangement!

Welcome to the Atari pin club! I have a Atari Atarians myself. Nothing screams 70's more then the Atari pins....

[opeygon]

Go to the 2 minute mark in the video that my signature links to if you want to see a Middle Earth play field. Never did get that working There is also a Space Riders pinball at the very beginning.

[Atariman]

Nice! Middle Earth is the first pinball machine I ever bought! It is by far the nicest looking pinball machine I have at the moment (and probably the only fully functional one, as well ) .

[S1500]

Really, Atariman? I might have some questions for you then.
I checked most of the fuses and they were fine on the 'meter. I fired it up and the power supply hummed for a minute, a few lights in the back of the playfield lit up, and then nothing. Damn. That power supply is not going to be fun to take out.

I'm finding some screws here & there I need to add on to it. This is going to take a while.

[schuwalker]

Atariman, on Fri Oct 14, 2011 10:17 PM, said:

Nice! Middle Earth is the first pinball machine I ever bought! It is by far the nicest looking pinball machine I have at the moment (and probably the only fully functional one, as well ) .

Atariman, do you have a Time 2000? That seems like the really rare one, as far as, Atari production pins go....

[S1500]

Tried to fire it up this weekend. The power supply hummed for about a minute. Hit the reset button. Nothing. Only the lamps in the back of the playfield lit up. Then it never hummed again.

Looks like I need to take out the power supply(which won't be easy) & have a look-over.

On my fuse block(thats removable), not all the fuse 'slots' are filled. Should they be? it looks like only half the connectors on it to the main cpu board are being used.

[keilbaca]

I'd look into a tech sheet to see if those fuses are supposed to be there.

That really sounds like a bad power supply.

[Atariman]

schuwalker, on Mon Oct 17, 2011 2:43 PM, said:

Atariman, on Fri Oct 14, 2011 10:17 PM, said:

Nice! Middle Earth is the first pinball machine I ever bought! It is by far the nicest looking pinball machine I have at the moment (and probably the only fully functional one, as well ) .

Atariman, do you have a Time 2000? That seems like the really rare one, as far as, Atari production pins go....

I wish I did! Time 2000 and Atarians are the two I have yet to acquire. I thought Hercules and Airborne Avengers were supposed to be the "rare" ones based on their production numbers, but boy was I wrong!

[Atariman]

keilbaca, on Mon Oct 17, 2011 3:56 PM, said:

I'd look into a tech sheet to see if those fuses are supposed to be there.

That really sounds like a bad power supply.

Agreed. Look at the schematics or manual first before you put in any fuses. Most of the troubleshooting I've done thus far has been on my Superman machine (a totally different beast), so take what I am saying with a grain of salt, but I would look for test points on the PCBs in the machine and see if the voltages at the points match what is (likely) silk screened on the board.

If you post your findings, we can go from there!