To Hell with the Mods

We’re almost ready to start soldering. First, take your switch and figure out where you want to mount it on your system. We recommend putting it on the back panel next to the AV port, because it’s out of the way, and because if something goes wrong with the drilling you can replace this plate and not have a big hole in your system.

Drill a hole big enough for the switch head to fit through, put a washer and nut on and tighten. Now is a good time to attach the wires to the switch. You don’t want to skip this step and solder the wires to the main board first, and then to the switch. The board is very delicate and if you pull too hard, you might rip the trace right off the board (very bad). For now, cut two 4-inch lengths of wrapping wire and strip the ends with your knife. Strip about half an inch on the side that will go to the switch, and only a quarter of an inch on the side that will go to the board. Wrap one wire end around the center post on the switch, and another to either of the two other posts. Solder the wires to their corresponding terminals on the switch, and cover them up with electrical tape when you’re done.

Here comes the tricky part. Locate the points near the back of the main board, next to Flipper. There are six tiny points just chillin together. The points you want are the two in the middle; when these two are joined the system will play U.S. games. You will be hooking these up to the switch in such a way so it connects these points when you have the switch one way, and disconnects them when you flip it the other way. One point on the board is labeled R6, the other point is directly opposite. Take the wire that you connected to the center post on your switch, and solder the other end to R6. Now solder the pin opposite of R6 to your other wire. Take a couple of strips of electrical tape and tape down your wires to take the stress off the joints. You can check to see if you did everything correctly with a multimeter. Place the meter’s test leads on the switch terminals, and set the meter to measure resistance (ohms). The multimeter should beep or show “0.0” when you flip the switch one way, and it shouldn’t beep or read “OL” when you flip it the other way. If this doesn’t happen, check your soldering and the switch to make all the wires are connected properly. When you’re satisfied that things are working as they should, you’ll be ready to test the system and put it back together. On to part three…