Sammy/Satomi miracle arrangeball

[lotsoballs]

I just picked up this “1940’s plinko” Miracle Sammy/Satomi across the street from the Anderson County Correctional Institution here in beautiful NC. It’s a bit rough and has been stored somewhere very dank/damp as it’s obviously has lots of mildew and crud, rust, ect. It will be a miracle if it works… But, for $90 I figure it’s worth a shot in the dark at fixing it up, I’ve restored a similar rough looking Isuzu, and worst case scenario I sell it as a “project” or part it out. Plan is to clean it up decent enough to test it properly, find out if it everything works or not, if so restoration time! If not…will check around for an electronic repair guru who wants a challenge.

Huge thanks to Bowl897 for tipping me off on this lead hours after it was posted!

This one was “hidden” on FB as you had to search by “plinko” to find it

[takethecastle57]

Yep, you're gonna have to replace some of those Capacitors . and biscuits

[lotsoballs]

Yep, you're gonna have to replace some of those Capacitors . and biscuits

Ugh, I do believe you are correct, my luck has finally run out scoring working arrangeballs, just tested this one; and it’s got some major issues. I knew it was gonna be a long shot seeing all the mold/mildew growing inside the cabinet! You win some, you lose some just like pachinko/arrange ball!

When it’s plugged in, (connected with proper 100v step down transformer) the #5 light on the scoring matrix lights up (even though there’s no balls in it right now) also, the out of tokens light, that seems to be the only function actually working, it does turn off with tokens in the payout tube. I already tried pulling and reseating the connectors on the main board, no change.

However it will not reset via the red button to start the game; nor will it drop the balls via the solenoid powered trapdoor. Also, none of the other scoring matrix lights seem to be working.

Any tips on how to identify and find bad capacitors? One is obviously damaged pretty bad….

I don’t suppose anybody around here has a parts machine? This one may very well end up a parts machine if I can’t fix that board.

[emmadog]

that's the prob with arrangeball machines--finding parts. see if there's an old school tv/vintage stereo repair place nearby and see if they'll look at the boards. i've done that a couple of times with success.

[lotsoballs]

that's the prob with arrangeball machines--finding parts. see if there's an old school tv/vintage stereo repair place nearby and see if they'll look at the boards. i've done that a couple of times with success.

Thanks for the advice! Just curious; what’s the “average” cost for arrangeball board repairs in your past experiences?

I’ll have to shop around; don’t want to get ripped off and pay too much! Especially since no guarantees it will ever work.

It’s a bit over my skill level for sure; I can solder and own a multimeter but that’s about it…

[lotsoballs]

New game plan; I called a local radio and TV repair shop that works on vintage stereo equipment, guitar amps, ect. They said bring it on in; $45 is the standard fee for them to troubleshoot/diagnose it plus parts. Seems reasonable enough…

In the meantime I’ve unjammed the rusted together coin/token dispenser with some WD40 just in case they do manage to fix it…

[emmadog]

don't remember what i paid exactly but it was a couple hundred bucks for the guy to repair and go thru all the components. i had one of these machines and i don't think there's any proprietary chips as some of the later arrangeballs have. when that's the case and those types of chips are bad then the only recourse is to find a parts machine which are pretty much nonexistent.

[lotsoballs]

don't remember what i paid exactly but it was a couple hundred bucks for the guy to repair and go thru all the components. i had one of these machines and i don't think there's any proprietary chips as some of the later arrangeballs have. when that's the case and those types of chips are bad then the only recourse is to find a parts machine which are pretty much nonexistent.

Thanks! I took it to the local TV/Radio repair shop that said “bring it in” over the phone but apparently once they got their eyes on the crusty old components on the main board it scared them off, they had never seen an arrangeball before; and he said it could take 2 weeks of work and might not get anywhere. So they declined to work on it.

However, I then drove to my friends house who’s been organizing the group pachinko shipments (to pickup 2 new pachinkos ) who just happens to be deep into the vintage arcade scene and restores old arcade games, has a buddy who tinkers in repairing old arcade game boards; says the guy will replace the capacitors on the boards; for a small fee, so I removed both the boards for him to give to his buddy to take a whack at.

So once those caps are replaced; will reinstall the boards and re-test it.

I was told this was a 1974 model so hopefully no propriety chips.