Gottlieb Totem System 1 Repair

Introduction

Got this game in the shop as a recent buy from a customer. Customer said the game had a few problems and wanted to get it back to 100%. The first problem was the hole for the special was taped over and hadn’t been used in twelve years! I was shocked to hear this as that shot is a key shot for getting specials and bonus. I guess an easy fix is to just ignore it and play the rest of the machine😂 . The other problem was the vari-Target was not working.

First Look

The owner brought the game into the shop and help set it up with me. We couldn’t get the game to start initially as the game was wired with a door bell. Touching the two wires for a period of time would coin-up the game. I noticed right away the drop targets did not reset, no action on the hole or the vari-Target. Looking under the playfield, and noticed the fuse was blown. Could it be as simple as a new fuse to get everything working…nope! After putting in a circuit breaker, the targets did reset, but the other two problems stayed the same. The vari-Target had two wires that were disconnected and the coil had broken on the solder tab. The kicker for the hole was moving freely and didn’t have any binding issues.

A couple of issues I noticed on my first look was the original battery was still on the MPU board and sometimes the player 1 display wouldn’t work correctly. Every segment would be lit even when the game was first booting.

MPU Board and Connections

I started off by removing the battery and cleaning some corrosion around the area. I installed a CR2032 coin style battery along with a blocking diode installed on the backside of the board. The connectors on A1-J6 needed to be re-pinned due to the corrosion. Note: one of these cables connects to the outhole that was having problems. I also added a ground wiring connecting to the bottom of C16. I plugged the board back in and powered on the game and tested the outhole. The kicker did fire but stayed locked on. If I turned off the game, the kicker went back down. This proved that it was an electrically problem and not a mechanically problem. Looked at the coil and noticed someone clipped off the diode. Added a new N1004 diode to the coil, and the coil is now working!

I cleaned the rivets on the vari-Target, soldered the wires back on, and installed a new coil. I had to adjust the vari-Target, but after some adjusting the unit was now working correctly.

Next on the list was the player one display, I simply removed the connector and noticed quite a bit of saw dust was in the connection. Cleaned the connectors and PCB and the problem went away.

One last fix was to get ride of the doorbell and add free play to the game. This was done by adding a wire from the coin door credit button to one of the coin switches.

Conclusion

Glad to get this game back up and running. I still find it amazing that someone left it partial broken for 12 years. The game plays well and acts very similar an EM pinball machine. The rules are very basic, and I usually try to get all the drop targets. This lights an extra ball at the top of the playfield, and once the bonus is over 20,000 points, then I hit the outhole to collect the bonus.

The sounds make me laugh as they are boops and beeps. It was interesting to see the progression from EMs to SS with this machine. Looking at the documents and seeing how things changes from the EM era to the SS era.