Whirlwind Pinball Machine
I think System 11 machines offer the
best bang-for-the-buck as far as pinball
machines go. I think
Whirlwind is one of the best. I was happy
to find one in excellent condition.
The topper is one of the most noticeable features: a fan that blows
on you during certain parts of play.
Shopped playfield. The condition of this playfield was very
good,
and did not need much work. Very little paint wear, and inserts
are level.
Audio
Output for a Subwoofer
I have found that all pins can use enhanced bass. This can be
done by adding a internal amplifier (such as on my IJ), or by increasing the gain
on the cab speaker (TOTAN, MM),
or by using an external powered sub (Space Shuttle).
By coincidence, the Whirlwind ended up next to the Space Shuttle, so I
decided to use the same powered sub.
To enable this, I installed a mini audio jack in the same location as
the Space Shuttle. This was in one of the holes of the cab
speaker grill. The output jack is simply wired to the cabinet
speaker terminals.
The output audio jack installed in the location with the most clearance
in the speaker cone - just off center.
The powered subwoofer accepts a Left
and a Right channel input. I simply connected one pinball machine
to Right, and the other to Left. The two audio streams are mixed
together and sent to the sub. The end result was very
satisfying. When the machine now speaks "Whirlwind" in that
lowwww tone, it sounds very good. The thunder booms also sound
much fuller without being loud.
The two pinball machines that use the subwoofer.
Making
protectors
There are several places where the plastics were broken on the
Whirlwind. As with my other machines, I made protectors for those
locations out of Lexan.
This plastic is often broken on the right hand side in this
image. I made
a protector for that side, and the side over the scoop (left).
Although not broken, I also made protectors for the long thin plastics
on either side of the up/down ramp. Someone sent me a picture
of his Whirlwind that had one of these broken into half, so
I figured that it was worth it.
The other places where I made
protectors are not shown, but they include the upper corner of the
plastic that holds the right red flasher, and the slings.
When I purchased these, I appeared to have obtained the last that Bay
Area Amusement had. When I checked the next week, they all showed
out of stock.
Front
cabinet damage repair
There was a hole in the front of the cabinet that was repaired
with epoxy. The artwork was restored with acrylic paint and
waterslide graphics.
Original state of hole near "Start" button.
The hole was repaired by filling it
with epoxy using a small mixing stick as the aplicator. As the
material started to slump, I quickly put a piece of clear tape on the
lower half of the hole as a form. I then continued to fill the
hole, and finished it with a second piece covering the open area.
The result was a nice, flat repair with no sanding needed.
Hole repaired and printing replaced.
I then used acrylic paint to fill in the orange and yellow parts.
The yellow was "Ceramcoat Bright Yellow", and the orange was "Decoart
Pumpkin Orange". I have used these paints before on other
Williams cabs, and the color match is perfect.
Finally, I photographed the area, and used Photoshop to extract the
black, and filled in the missing text. I then printed the art
onto a piece of waterslide paper, and applied the "art"
lettering. The result is not perfect, but pretty good. It
is not noticeably different when viewed casually.
Power-up Knock
On a few occasions (once every 10-20 times), when I power-up the
machine, the knocker in the backbox makes a loud "Clack". This is
a fairly
common occurrence with System 11 machines, so I decided to
investigate this. Note that this knock occurs as soon as the
power switch is flipped, and way before the CPU board boots up.
Thus it is not
related to a diagnostic code report from the CPU board.
Scope trace of the knock.
Channel 1 (yellow): AC line @ F4 fuse.
Channel 2 (blue): Solenoid B+.
Channel 3 (pink):CPU 5V supply.
Channel 4 (green): Q23 base.
The knock occurs during the long high pulse of the green line.
The scope plot above shows the
occurrence of the knock on power-up. The key is the pulse on the
green line, which is the voltage on the base of the Q23 Darlington
driver transistor. When this is above about 1.2V, there is enough base
drive to forward bias the transistor, and the Solenoid B+ (blue) dives
down as the coil fires. At some point, the CPU's supply voltage
rises above about 2.25V, the green pulse is then shut off, and the coil
releases. The solenoid B+ does not recover until the other half
wave (positive on fuse F5) charges the supply back up.
When we look at the driver circuit below, we see why this is
happening. As the CPU's 5V rises, U19 has not powered up yet, and
does not ground its output. As a result, the 560 Ohm
pull-up, and the Q19 predriver, apply enough voltage to
turn on Q23. It is only when the 5V rises above about 2.25V that
U19 wakes up and pulls its output low. At that point, the knock
is terminated.
The driver for the knocker on Whirlwind is Solenoid 6.
Note that there is a short pulse on
the green line during the inital rise of the 5V in the figure
before. This occurs on every
driver transistor in addition to Solenoid 6, and is when the 5V
supply briefly passes through the region of 1.75V to 2.25V. See a
clean example below. Thus the conclusion is that all solenoids
receive a short (1 millisecond) pulse of current, but this is too
brief to activate the knocker, and we do not hear anything. As
for the long pulse, this is only noticed on the knocker due to two
reasons: 1) the
knocker's plunger is not restricted by any mechanisms, and 2) the
knocker's plunger is activating a sounding device.
A clean power-up without the knock. Note that there is still a
brief pulse
on the base drive, and this occurs on all the drivers on every
power-up.
So why does the second long pulse
(and the resulting knock) only occur seldomly? Refer to the scope
trace image of the knock above. There is a 'pause' in the rise of
the CPU's 5V. This pauses stretches the time that the driver
circuit spends in the 'On' zone. The reason lies in the way the
5V regulator is powered on the supply board. As shown below, the
voltage regulator (IC1) is powered from a half wave rectifier formed by
D1 and D5. If the machine is powered up when only a small amount
of energy is remaining on the half wave, the rise of the supply is
suspended until the next
half wave of the AC line. If this rise is suspended when the
CPU's supply voltage is in the magical 1.75V to 2.25V range, there will
be a long period when the driver transistor is enabled, and you get a
loud "Clack".
Regulator of the CPU's 5V
supply. It is powered by D1 as the rectifier.
I repeated this test on my Space Shuttle (System 9), since it has the
same
design for the Solenoid drivers and power supply. Sure enough,
just as on System 11, all
solenoids have a brief pulse on them. However, this machine does
not have a knocker, and I was not able to get a suspension of the power
supply rise in the magical zone. However, the design of the power
supply board is a different revision, and the loads are different on
System 9.
How to prevent this knock? The best way is to have a rapid and
uninterrupted rise in the power supply. However, that may not be
practical. Another way is to put a capacitor in the driver
circuit to absorb this pulse. If the capacitor is put at the
output of U19, it would have to be 10uF to produce a 5 msec time
constant. However, the current pulse into U19 when it turns on
may affect its long term reliability. Ideally, there would be a
series resistor in the output of U19 to prevent stress. Another
location is on the emitter of Q19, however the circuit impedances are
10x lower there. So we would need to increase the capacitor to
100uF for the same time constant. This represents a similar
reliability problem for Q19, and is also not desirable. In the
end, it may be best to just live with the problem with the knowledge of
exactly what is occurring.
Links
Protectors from Pinbits.com.
New ramps from
PinballInc.
Shop out/dissassembly
guide.
Log
5/2/09 - Purchased machine from Dan Heatherly.
5/24/09 - Electronics repair. There were only two items
that needed fixing. We now play and enjoy the machine.
The first was that the left flipper was weak. This was
repaired by replacing the left flipper coil.
The second issue was with the upper display bank. Segment 'e' was dark. Tracing the problem, I found that R27 was bad. Replacing this 10k resistor remedied the problem. These are normally $120 each.
6/8/09 - I took two days to do shop job of the top of the machine. Except for removing the mylar, and clearcoating, everything else was performed. Mods added were the powered sub and protectors.
6/13/09 - Repaired hole in front panel near start button.
2/20/10 - Investigated power on knock.
(c) 2009 Edward Cheung