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1980 Williams Firepower Pinball Restoration Project

1980 Williams Firepower Pinball Restoration Project

Welcome to this first of a series of blog posts which will hopefully document my attempts at resurrecting this corpse of a pinball machine that I purchased recently at an auction. During the COVID years, lucked into a 1978 Bally Harlem Globetrotter pinball machine that needed some work. I decided to take the chance and started my adventure down the road to pinball machine restoration. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. My love the era and the machines has grown as has my respect for what goes into the designs.

This machine is in much worse shape than that one or the 1991 Data East Phantom of the Opera machine which I purchased less than a year ago. While neither of those machines were functioning, they had not sustained the kind of neglect and damage that my current project has endured. The good news is, its one of the highest produced machines in existence, which should translate into easy access to parts. The bad news is, I’m going to need a lot of them and the superficial damage to the cabinet and playfield may well prevent it from ever landing in someone’s collection.

In this first episode, I basically document the total condition of the machine as I have received it from the auction site and my initial observations of the machine. The one glimmer of hope that I have is that the back box is not in bad shape and the electronics look to be fairly solid. I will need to go over each board and verify key solder points and chips connections, but we have at least a 30-40% chance of powering up with some basic TLC.

Enjoy the video. Please let me know what you think.

mgraphman

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Matthew Graphman is a thirty year veteran in the information technology world. He studied writing, drama, as well as computers while attending Bob Jones University in the late 80’s and early 90’s. There he met his wife, Wendy, of twenty-five years and started a family. He currently resides in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife and two children, Kathryn (Kat) and Ethan. His oldest son, Sean, is married and lives on the East Coast. Matthew has long been a fan of fantasy fiction. His first attempt at writing was brought on by his roommates in college. As a result, he wrote his first - still unpublished - fantasy novel. After graduating, Matthew continued his writing exploits, but his focus was mostly around theater. After developing a series of children's skits in the 2000's, he was encouraged to take the skits and convert them into a series of children's chapter books. To date, he has written five of the fifteen stories in the "Chel & Riley Adventures" series. Taking a break from creating children's fiction and drama, Matthew decided to reach back, at the request from his daughter Kat, and create a fantasy world that mixed all of her favorite thematic elements. This series is currently outlined to cover five volumes; however, he is convinced that there could be many more stories that evolve out of this new universe. Matthew is a recent winner of the 2016 and 2017 NaNoWriMo challenge.