The restoration of a 1980's Williams Defender arcade machine
Power Supply Unit
Testing: Building a Williams Test Rig (part 2 – interchangeable power supplies)
Apr 29th
In order to keep the Williams Defender harness I have as original as possible, I don’t want to replace any of the original connectors so instead we are going to make the linear PSU and the original Williams PSU totally switchable using connectors. 1. Acquire male and female ATX connectors The number of wires used,…
Power Supply Rebuild: Installing a new 230V Power Filter, Varistor and Fuse
Oct 28th
So I did this part of the power supply rebuild a while ago, but never really documented “how” I did it, so thought adding this would be informative to complete the loop on what you need to do. Here’s the existing power filter and varistor as it arrived from the US: Power Filter = grey…
Converting the Neon marquee light for UK voltages
Oct 27th
So it turns out that not only are the US Williams machines of course rigged for 110V, but also the 110V they use has a different Hertz cycle from the 230V we use in the UK. UK 230V runs at 50Hz and the US 110V runs at 60Hz, so even with our Transformer doing the…
Power Supply Rebuild: converting the wiring harness for 240v rather than 110v
Oct 27th
I forgot to document the key part of the conversion process of taking a US Williams machine and converting it from 110V to 240V is that a jumper wire in the wiring harness needs to be moved and another removed to supply difference voltages to the transformer. Below is the default US wiring of the…
Problems with Defender / Stargate continually crashing
May 25th
So I’ve hit an issue where running the cabinet with the Stargate boardset installed, crashes with the ROM board error code 1-3-4 (the display counter flashes 1, then 3, then 4 in a repeating sequence until it reboots). According to the manuals this represents a RAM error (the one) in RAM row 3 (the 3)…
Power Supply Rebuild [complete]
May 13th
So I’ve decided to fight my fear of 240V mains electricity and put some trust in my rebuilding of the Transformer and Power Supply board and plug it in and start doing some output voltage measuring. First thing was to replace the broken bracket that holds the cut-off switch for the cabinet back-cover being removed,…
Power Supply Rebuild continues
Apr 13th
So I ordered the parts I think I need from Farnell / CPC and they have arrived so now it’s time to try and get the power supply working. First out of the box is the nice new power filter (I had to spend at least £30 with Farnell so thought I might as well…
Power Supply Rebuild begins
Apr 4th
Right – I’ve been making (slow!) progress and cleaned the whole PSU, tested all the fuses and connectivity of their mounts of the circuit board and am ready to re-assemble. Googling the ‘what I thought was a resistor soldered on the front of the Power filter’ it is a GE V130LA10AD Voltage Dependent Resistor and according to the GE…
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