Eclipse (Gottlieb, 1982): faults and System 80 replacement boards

June 25, 2026

Is your Eclipse by Gottlieb (1982) refusing to start, showing dim or missing displays, resetting mid-game or sitting there completely silent? On a Gottlieb System 80 machine the cause is almost always the same short list: a leaking NiCad battery on the CPU board, oxidised connectors, floating grounds, and a power supply whose 5 V has drifted. Eclipse adds a few problems of its own, because it is one of the rarest games Gottlieb ever shipped and it was built to a budget. Here is what actually goes wrong, and which System 80 replacement boards fit.

About the Eclipse (Gottlieb, 1982)

See it: full photo gallery for Eclipse on IPDB (#756) — backglass, playfield, cabinet and flyer scans.

Eclipse was released in August 1982 and only 193 machines were produced, which makes it one of the scarcest solid-state Gottliebs you are ever likely to meet. It is game number 671 in Gottlieb's numbering.

The design is credited to Adolf Seitz Jr. and John Buras. If the playfield looks familiar, it should: Eclipse is essentially a single-level version of Black Hole, the same wide-body layout without the lower playfield underneath. The rules, the sounds and the music are its own, though, and owners consistently describe it as the harder game of the two — busier, with a multiplier ladder and an ordered target progression that punishes sloppy shooting.

The reason so few exist is the interesting part. Eclipse was mostly sold as a conversion kit fitted into an existing game rather than as a machine in its own right. Operators who already owned a Time Line or a James Bond 007 could buy the Eclipse playfield, backglass, boards and ROM and convert the machine on site. When Gottlieb did build complete cabinets, it reportedly ran out of Eclipse cabinets and finished the run in leftover James Bond 007 cabinets — which is why a genuine Eclipse quite often turns up in someone else's artwork. That matters for you as an owner, and we come back to it below.

One more budget decision shapes the repair picture: while its 1982 stablemates Black Hole and Haunted House used the newer MA-216 sound board with VOTRAX speech, Eclipse went back to the older, cheaper MA-55 sound board — the same one the 1980 System 80 games used. That is why Eclipse has no speech, and it changes which sound faults you should expect.

Manufacturer: D. Gottlieb & Co.
Release date: August 1982
Production run: 193 units (IPDB / Pinside archive)
Gottlieb game number: 671
Game design: Adolf Seitz Jr., John Buras
Electronic system: Gottlieb System 80 (CPU + Driver + power supply)
Sound board: MA-55 (6503 CPU + 6530 RRIOT) — no speech synthesis
Cabinet: wide body, 4 players, manual plunger, digital (VFD) displays
Playfield: 4 flippers, 16 drop targets, 4 pop bumpers, spinner, 2-ball multiball, no ramps, single level
Theme: space / eclipse
Variants: factory kit for an existing cabinet, and complete machines — some finished in James Bond 007 cabinets

A note on the system label: IPDB and the Pinside archive both catalogue Eclipse as System 80. Its game number (671) sits right next to Devil's Dare (670), which is a System 80A title, and some parts suppliers file Eclipse alongside the 80A games. The sources genuinely disagree here. In practice it makes no difference to your board choice — the replacement boards below cover System 80, 80A and 80B — but it is worth knowing if you are ordering a manual or a ROM by system rather than by game number.

Eclipse pinball machine, Gottlieb 1982 — Eclipse (Gottlieb, 1982): a single-level take on the Black Hole layout.

First job: work out what you actually have

Because Eclipse was largely a kit, the cabinet on your Eclipse may not be an Eclipse cabinet, and the boards in the backbox may be the donor game's boards. Before you order anything, check three things:

The game ROM. The CPU board's game PROM should be an Eclipse part (671). If it says 658 you are looking at a James Bond 007 ROM in an Eclipse cabinet, or a conversion that was never finished.
The sound board. Look for an MA-55, not an MA-216. An MA-216 in an Eclipse means the donor game's sound board is still fitted and the game sounds will be wrong.
The cabinet and backglass. A James Bond 007 or Time Line cabinet with Eclipse artwork on the playfield and backglass is normal for this title, not a red flag. It affects value, not function.

Getting this straight first saves you buying the wrong ROM or chasing a "fault" that is really a mismatched board.

Common faults on Gottlieb System 80

These apply to every System 80 machine, Eclipse included, and they are where you should start:

Leaking NiCad battery on the CPU board. The battery sits on the board and, four decades on, has usually vented. The electrolyte creeps along the traces and eats them from underneath, where you cannot see it. This is the number-one cause of dead System 80 CPU boards. Remove the battery before you do anything else, whatever else you decide to do.
Floating grounds. System 80 relies on the connectors to carry ground between boards, and they are not up to the job. The result is resets, phantom switch reads and displays that flicker. The community fix is the well-known ground mods: run proper ground wires between CPU, Driver, power supply and sound board.
Oxidised and burnt Molex connectors. Especially the power supply connectors and CPU A1-J1. Re-pinning these is unglamorous and fixes an enormous number of "dead board" complaints.
Power supply drift. The large filter capacitor and the regulator circuit age badly. A tired 10,000 µF cap gives you an unstable 5 V rail and random resets.
Tired logic. RIOT chips and the CPU clock circuit fail with age and take the whole boot sequence down with them.
Displays. Missing segments or whole missing digits, often just a dirty J2/J3 connector rather than a dead display.
Spurious slam tilt. A dirty or maladjusted slam switch locks the game out at power-up.

Battery corrosion on a Gottlieb System 80 CPU board — Typical NiCad corrosion on a System 80 CPU board: the first thing to deal with.

Eclipse-specific issues owners report

On top of the System 80 baseline, these come up again and again on Eclipse and on the other MA-55 games:

No sound, or a continuous random tone. On the MA-55 the usual culprit is the electrolytic capacitors. Owners on Pinside warn that these boards are prone to traces being eaten through by capacitor electrolyte underneath the radial caps, where you will not see it — the board can look perfect and still be open-circuit. Recap first, inspect the traces under the caps second.
The 6530 RRIOT is the part you do not want to lose. The MA-55 is not hard to troubleshoot as long as the 6530 is healthy. It is a custom-masked chip (R3016-11 on MA-55 boards) containing game-specific code, so you cannot simply drop in a generic replacement. On a 193-unit game, sourcing one is the hard part — which is the practical argument for a modern sound board rather than a hunt.
Attract-mode sound that "stops working" — and isn't broken. The MA-55 firmware has a known bug: when any sound plays, the attract-mode timer reloads to 256 loops instead of 45. The attract sounds then stay quiet for over half an hour instead of returning after about six minutes. Plenty of owners have chased this as a fault. It is a ROM bug, and it is normal.
Dim displays. A known System 80 technique is to briefly run the filaments until they glow red — about five seconds, no longer — to burn off deposits. Do not exceed that; you will cook the display. If they are still dim afterwards, the problem is the supply voltage, not the display.
Never hot-plug a display. Plugging or unplugging a display with the machine powered on will destroy the display drivers. Every time. Power down first.
Controlled lamps weak at power-up, as on other System 80 machines — grounds and connectors again.
Spare parts are genuinely scarce. With 193 built, playfield plastics and original boards are very hard to find. Modern replacement electronics are often the only realistic route back to a working game.
No factory high-score initials. Eclipse does not store initials or offer a skill shot. Some owners have fitted aftermarket boards to add them — worth knowing before you conclude your game has "lost" a feature it never had.

Replacement boards compatible with Eclipse

All of these cover Gottlieb System 80, 80A and 80B, so they fit Eclipse regardless of how your machine is catalogued. Every board is tested before it ships and supported afterwards.

GottFA80_Plus (Light) — all-in-one CPU + Driver + power supply, no sound.
GottFA80_Plus (Full) — the same board with sound integrated.
Gosof — replacement sound board. The sensible answer to a dead MA-55 and an unobtainable 6530.
Godri80 — replacement Driver board.
Lisy80 — CPU board with web-based diagnostics.
GoPOP80 — pop bumper driver board (MA-922).

Installation is Plug & Play: a few minutes, no soldering, with tutorials and free support. Contact us with your board references if you are unsure which combination your machine needs.

About LISY: LISY is a free, open DIY project by an independent developer, not our work. If you want to read about the project itself or build your own, start at lisy.dev. We supply the assembled board, test it before shipping, and support it afterwards.

GottFA80_Plus replacement board for Gottlieb System 80 — Battery-free all-in-one replacement board for System 80.

Step-by-step diagnosis

Power off, look first. Find the NiCad battery on the CPU board and check for corrosion around it and on the traces nearby. Remove the battery even if the board looks clean.
Confirm what you have. Check the game ROM number (671) and the sound board type (MA-55) before ordering parts — see the section above.
Power supply. Measure the 5 V rail and confirm it actually reaches the CPU board. Suspect the large filter capacitor and the regulator if it sags or drifts.
Grounds. Apply the ground mods between CPU, Driver, power supply and sound board. On System 80 this is not optional.
Connectors. Re-pin the oxidised Molex connectors, starting with the power supply headers and CPU A1-J1.
Displays. Never plug or unplug a display with the power on. Test with a known-good display before condemning anything.
Sound. If the MA-55 is silent or droning, recap it and inspect the traces under the capacitors before suspecting the 6530.
Final test. Check boot, credits, coils, lamps and displays. If you are stuck, get in touch — support is free.

What is an Eclipse worth?

The Pinside archive currently estimates Eclipse at roughly $3,610–$4,190 for a machine in good order. Historic sale records are far more scattered — recorded eBay sales in 2012–2013 ranged from $500 to $2,250 — which tells you two useful things: values for a 193-unit game move a lot on condition and completeness, and a working, correct Eclipse is worth restoring properly. Treat any single figure as a starting point, not a price.

FAQ — Eclipse (Gottlieb, 1982)

How many Eclipse pinball machines were made?
193, according to IPDB and the Pinside archive. Most were sold as conversion kits for existing games rather than as complete machines, which is why so few survive in original cabinets.

My Eclipse will not start. Where do I begin?
Remove the NiCad battery from the CPU board and inspect for corrosion, then check that 5 V is present and stable at the CPU. Those two account for most dead System 80 machines before you go any further.

Why are my Eclipse displays dim?
Clean the J2/J3 connectors and briefly run the filaments red for about five seconds, no longer. If they are still dim, the supply voltage is at fault rather than the displays.

My Eclipse has no sound. Which board is it?
Eclipse uses the MA-55 sound board, not the MA-216 used by Black Hole and Haunted House. Recap it first and check the traces under the capacitors. If the 6530 RRIOT has failed, it is custom-masked and effectively unobtainable — the Gosof replacement board is the practical fix.

Is my Eclipse a kit fitted into another game's cabinet?
Very possibly, and that is normal for this title. Eclipse was commonly kitted into Time Line and James Bond 007 machines, and Gottlieb finished part of the run in leftover James Bond cabinets. Check the game ROM and the sound board to confirm the conversion was completed properly.

Which replacement board fits an Eclipse?
Any of the System 80/80A/80B boards: GottFA80_Plus for CPU, Driver and power supply in one, Godri80 for the Driver alone, Gosof for sound, Lisy80 for a CPU board with diagnostics. Send us your board references and we will confirm the combination.

Should I keep the original NiCad battery?
No. Remove it now, whatever you do next. A battery-free replacement board removes the single most common cause of System 80 board death.

Does a battery-free board keep the settings and high scores?
Yes. Modern replacement boards use non-volatile memory: no battery, no corrosion, and settings are retained when the machine is switched off.

Useful guides

Sources & further reading

Own an Eclipse? Send us a photo and we'll add it here with credit — get in touch.

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