Restoring Cleopatra
Cleopatria is a digital pinball cabinet produced by D. Gottlieb & Co. in 1977.
Many many years ago, my dad was given one of the cabinets as a birthday present, and it was kept in his basement where it was used for many years. When his parents moved from that house and my father was no longer living there, they gave the cabinet to a family friend who had it in his basement for years collecting dust.
Over Thanksgiving break 2018, we went to get the pinball machine back from them only to find it was no longer operational. So, I set off on a quest to restore it to its former glory.
November 25th, 2018
About the cabinet
Cleopatra was a pinball machine produced by D. Gottlieb & Co. in 1977, and only roughly 7,300 cabinets were produced.
There were two versions of the cabinet, a solid state version and a 4 player electro mechanical version.
This pinball machine is run off of Gottlieb's signature System 1 board. The System 1 board is shared between many of Gottlieb's cabinets, and each copy of the board is the exact same.
In order to tell the System 1 board what game it is attached to, a set of Dip switches on the board must be set to a certain number.
November 24th, 2018
Picking up the machine
We picked up the pinball machine today. Getting it into the car was no easy feat.
Given the size of the machine we had to remove the legs from the base and remove the top section of the machine from the base. This also gave me a chance to get a good first look at what I'd be working with.
The top section contains all the processing boards for the cabinet, and in order to remove the top of the cabinet, all the cables connecting it to the base must be disconnected. All the circled connectors on the picture above are the ones that had to be disconnected in order to remove the base.
Once the top was disconnected the base was more easily transportable.
