Allen Schweitzer

I have a couple of AV mods for the Bally, but I don't trust them. They work great, but I want Ken to do some re-designing. There's not much room for them inside the console. They work, but when you put the console back together, they short out. I think a piece of gorilla tape under the line filter will solve this problem, but I haven't tried doing that yet. So, I have a few, but I'm not happy with them. Hopefully, a better design will be coming along soon.

Bally Arcade Service Manual (OCR).pdf (ballyalley.com) See page 24 of 26

YES. That is the data chip! I would like to retract my statement to use Gorilla Glue. I now use a thermal paste. I believe that will allow thermal transfer to the heat sink better. Also, a note of caution about using these heat sinks. They are large. If you have the "card stock" on your keypad it may not fit correctly into the keyboard. If you have only wires, you should be fine. The one in the foreground has the "card stock" and the other has just wires. I will have to use the low profile heat sink on the one with the card protecting the wires.

You would think after contacting them 4 times about this I would have a refund. My coercion through harassment is not working, but they got my money!

I have to pay for a return shipping label. After the buyer sends the broken PS4 back to me, I call e-bay, and they refund me for the cost of the shipping label under seller protection. Then, my funds will be released to me and the case will be elevated to deal with the false claims made by the buyer.

UPDATE!!! E-bay has resolved the issue. The buyer is NOT ELIGIBLE for a refund and I have won my case. My listings will be going back up on E-bay eventually! There is more to the story, but that's it in a nutshell. THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!!!!

The buyer hasn't left any negative feedback...yet. One of the e-bay employees told me to send them a return label. She got me most of the way through the process, then told me that the transaction didn't "qualify" for me to send them a return label because the buyer had opened a case against me. Another employee told me to report the buyer (which I did) and then wait until the case closed and file an appeal that I would most certainly win. We'll see. Honestly, I'm ready for the whole process to be over, and the buyer keeps harassing me with messages on e-bay. If I win the appeal, I'll sell on e-bay again. If not, I'm sure there are other people who will work on Bally's - probably not as cheap as me, but I'm sure there are others!

I have to wait until the 16th, then call e-bay and begin an appeal. I hope that's right. I seem to get a different answer every time I call them. If they find in my favor, my 39-40 listings will go active again...plus a couple more, maybe. I have some Bally consoles to move, I just need to get them cleaned up, recapped, and the controllers gone through. I feel sorry for the guy selling a console right now that I had a bid on. I explained the situation to him, and he understood and cancelled my bid for me. I will place the bid again, if e-bay finds in my favor. If they don't, I may swear them off for life like I did Amazon about 5 years ago. Then it will just be harder to find a Bally repair person. Assuming anyone is looking.... HA! There's just no way I'm going to do anymore business on there if this is how they treat people who get scammed. It's not worth the risk for a hobby that doesn't put food on my table. I spend and sell thousands of dollars worth on their site every year, and they'll be fine without me. I buy all my parts and tools there, including the Bally consoles I fix up. If they decide they would like to keep me as a customer - buying and selling - that's up to them. E-bay will NOT allow ANY seller to leave negative feedback on a buyer. That's a new policy from about a year ago. All the seller can do is "report a buyer" and/or block them. What he doesn't have is reading comprehension skills. I wonder if I would have actually spoken to him and told him 3 times that it didn't work that would have sunk in? It was in the listing 3 times that it didn't work, but it obviously didn't matter.

It was a PS4. Here is the user name: pacqra67

I am currently not selling on e-bay for any of you who were watching my multiple posts. I will sell items through here, if any of you are interested. I had a buyer purchase an item that had the condition listed as "for parts or not working". The title of the listing said the item was "for parts or repair". The description stated that it needed repair. It was sold as-is, no returns. The buyer who purchased the item initiated a return because the item did not work when they received it. E-bay is using my funds to refund the buyer for the full purchase price and making me pay for return shipping. As a result, I ended ALL of my listings. I apologize for any inconvenience to all who were watching any of my listings.

TV's are both LCD's. yep I tried that too. The 8 RF pins were all reflowed, as were all the pins on the data chip. I think if this were the issue, it wouldn't display correctly on the TV downstairs, but what do I know?!?!?!? Keep the suggestions coming! In the meantime, I am probably going to pack it up and ship it off for a 2nd opinion. I hope it "doesn't work" for the lucky recipient, or he may not be able to figure it out either.

Has anybody ever run into anything like this before? If so, please send me some suggestions. I hope this posts like I want it to, because it's just putting the picutres down at the bottom while I'm typing this, and not inserting them into the body of this message. I was going to list a Bally for sale. Here is a picture of it working on my downstairs TV. Now, here is a picture of it working on my UPSTAIRS TV: And unplugging ONLY the board from the PSU and RF box and cable, here is another working board on my UPSTAIRS TV: It's not the data chip! Any ideas?

The red would look super cool on an older unit with the red RESET and silver EJECT button. It would also stand out on a more common later console. Heck, I never thought about painting those letters, but I might give that a try on one. I love the gold pin striping on the keyboard and console top.

I'd love to see a picture of that if you can find it! That's VERY COOL!

I believe he did paint over the gold trim. I bought some "limestone" paint once to try to make a "faux" whitey. The paint had a rough texture, which was actually kind of cool, but after applying about 18 coats, I finally gave up. I was never happy with it, but I didn't do much prep work on it before I started. The wood grain was messed up, and the gold trim was 1/2 gone, so I was out (I think) 2 cans of fairly expensive spray paint! Still that black one looks pretty bad-@$$ to me.

Hi-Res Astrocade 002.jpg (2288×1288) (ballyalley.com)

"ballyalley", it's always in the last place you look. Like George Carlin said, OF COURSE IT IS! After you found it, why would you keep looking? And thanks, wongo!

Bally Astrocade - refurbished, recapped, with a brand new Ulti-Multi | eBay Let me know if you're interested. We can probably work out a deal, if you're still looking?

I know a lot of people think that Bally's are very expensive, and the truth is - THEY ARE. I'm not a fan of that. This post got me ruminating some old thoughts I've had for a while, now, and I decided to just put them here so maybe they'll be off my mind. (FAT CHANCE) It agitates me that people are listing consoles at the same price I try to sell mine for. It shouldn't, but it does.... Most of these consoles are untested, and yes, I'm sure some of them don't work. These people pick them up somewhere for probably very cheap, and try to make a quick few hundred bucks with a quick flip on e-bay. Many of them sit there for a very long time "untested". That doesn't really affect my feelings of disdain. What irks me, is that so many sellers price their items at or above what I try to sell mine for. Lately, I've just decided to raise my prices to meet theirs. And why not? Why would I spend $400 on an untested Bally (or even a working one, for that matter) to put my time into it and break even or lose money? I'm willing to bet that most of the Bally's that sell on e-bay have not been full taken apart and cleaned. I clean the keyboard, EJECT and RESET buttons, console top and bottom in warm water with Dawn dish soap and a hard bristled toothbrush, or a nylon brush. I don't wash the outside of the bottom of the console case, as water and serial number stickers don't get along with each other, but I do use water and a brush inside to get out the dust. Do these other people take over their wives' kitchen sink to do this? Do they let all of the components air dry for 24 hours under a ceiling fan on their family's dining room table sitting on fresh paper towels? Do they clean the keypad with a q-tip and Everclear to get 40 years of dead skin cells and dirt scrubbed off? Do they blow air on the motherboard to remove dust particles? Do the replace all the old capacitors in the board to help keep it running another 40 years? Do they glue a monster heat sink onto almost every data chip to help prevent it from failing? Do they wipe the RF cable and power supply cord with warm water and a paper towel? Or do they just throw everything in a box, and pass it on to the next guy? Too many times, I've seen a power supply with the plugs bent after it gouged the console top and/or scratched or broke the plastic top that sits over the cart storage area during it's joyful, bouncy trip to my doorstep. Do they use an 18K Gold Krylon leafing pen to touch up the gold trim on the console? RESET button? EJECT button? Keyboard? Controller badges? Do they make sure every game has a decent label on it, or even attempt to test the games? And how about the controllers? Do they take the controllers apart, and use a nylon brush on them to get the gunk out of the texture on the handles? Do they test the functions of the controllers? Do they repair issues with broken wires? Probably not. That's a 30-40 minute job, if you do it right. Do they use electronic contact cleaner on the shaft to free up the pots? Do they take every pot apart CORRECTLY, and clean the resistor plates with Everclear and Goo Gone, and put just the right amount of a 50-50 mix of white lithium and di-electric grease on the pots to keep them working correctly for years to come? I put a TON of time into every unit I refurbish and sell. I probably average 5 hours per console (and all the components)...maybe more. The sad part is, I probably put more time into the cosmetically deficient ones than I have to the nice ones, and they don't bring as much. I try to get them as close to what they were new, and as clean inside and out as I can. I kind of feel sorry for the buyer when I see some Bally's sell for a lot of money. It's fine if someone doesn't buy one from me, but I try to give every one of my buyers as close to a "new Bally out of the box on Christmas morning" experience as I can. I want them to know what the Bally was to me when I was a kid. I've bought "working" Bally's that arrived at my house with broken pieces, or not working. Try finding a listing on a Bally that offers returns. Even I don't do that. BUT if you have any problems with a Bally or controller, game, UM, LWR... whatever you buy from me, you will have my attention until I can get the situation resolved to your satisfaction. No, I do not accept returns, but I have occasionally had items shipped back to me if something was damaged during shipping, or some other issue arose. And so far, I've never charged to look at or fix anything for anybody I've sold to. Good luck getting that level of service out of the "Estate Find" sellers. I did replace a bad chip on a unit I sold once...2 years after the guy bought it from me, and it failed. I'm not sure I'll feel any better about submitting this after I do, but I do wish the best of luck to every Bally buyer out there, whether they buy from me or not. Earlier this year, I started a collection of items removed from consoles. I wish I would have started doing this long ago. There are no guarantees in life, but I would like to think I can guarantee I won't be shipping someone a Bally with 1/2 of a bean, a random loose screw, a fake fingernail, a Monopoly house or any other piece of junk inside of it. p.s. If the Monopoly house is your, p.m. me.

I'm assuming you are taking about the jumper at the bottom left of the board next to the TIP 31. Page 24, next to Q1. https://ballyalley.com/documentation/misc_hardware_docs/Bally/full_size/bally_service_manual.pdf Only the earlier 15V systems had that jumper wire. The later 12V versions (more common) had a 24 Ohm 1/2 W resistor installed there.

Very sorry to hear about this. I know the name very well, but sadly, I never knew the man. He was for certain one of the legends in the Bally community! I repair Bally system's, and build some external hardware for the system (Lil' WHITE RAM and Ulti-Multi). I will try to answer some questions: There is no security chip. The zif socket just allows you to change games without switching cartridges. That is correct. It is one of 3 (or 4 if you count the ROM) custom chips in the system. This is the I/O chip, and mostly controls things like hand control movements. It also has data lines and "controls" audio. If I'm not mistaken, GORF uses 2 of these. The other 2 custom chips are 115XX (Address) and the 116XX (Data). I would be interested in all of them, working or not. If you end up with a nice looking system that works, you would be better off selling it to someone other than me. I cannot offer too much for several systems. But I would be able to restore any that need cleaned up, and likely repair any that are not working. I would want someone else to determine a value for you. I absolutely hate pricing someone else's stuff. Get some opinions, and I'll decide if I'm willing to pay your asking price. As far as I ever knew, he was the father of this game. It was 100% developed/programmed, and finished by him, and if I'm wrong, someone can correct me! Again, I didn't know the man, but wish I would have. He took a wealth of knowledge with him. Were there any interviews done with him that may have been recorded?

Send me a PM.

Sale of this item must be completed through Atariage for this discount.

I will not be able to check messages on here until next Friday, 8-21-2020.

I'll take $50 my e-bay price for my Atariage friends if anybody is interested in this. Shoot me a PM if interested. https://www.ebay.com/itm/184395873468?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649