Royal Flush Deluxe (Gottlieb, 1983): faults and replacement boards System 80A

Does your Gottlieb Royal Flush Deluxe shut down at random, drop its score displays while the credit window stays lit, lose its sound, or reset part-way through a game? These are the classic ageing symptoms of Gottlieb System 80A, and the original boards in your machine — CPU, Driver, power supply and the MA-309 sound board — are now well past forty years old. Most of what goes wrong is fixable, and a good deal of it is not even a chip fault. Below: what the machine actually is, what owners report going wrong on this specific game, and what to do about it.

About the Royal Flush Deluxe (Gottlieb, 1983)

See it: full photo gallery for Royal Flush Deluxe on IPDB (#2036) · Royal Flush Deluxe on Pinside

Royal Flush Deluxe is a remake. In 1976 Gottlieb released Royal Flush, an electromechanical poker game that sold extremely well and is still one of the better-liked EMs of its decade. Seven years later, with the factory now building solid-state machines, Gottlieb went back to that layout and rebuilt it in electronics. The result was dated June 1983, carried the model numbers 681 and 681A, and ran to roughly 2,044 units — a modest run by Gottlieb standards, but a real production game rather than a prototype. The flyer tagline was "Nothing Beats It!"

The design credit goes to Ed Krynski, which is worth a word of explanation: Krynski designed the 1976 original, and the credit carries across to the remake. Not every database lists a designer for the 1983 game at all. The artwork is credited to David Moore and Terry Doerzaph, and the music and sound to Craig Beierwaltes.

It is a standard-body, four-player game — not one of Gottlieb's widebodies — with two flippers, nine drop targets and a single pop bumper. There are no ramps, no spinners, no multiball. The interest is all in the drop target banks and the card hands they build, and in one detail the solid-state conversion changed: the bonus values were multiplied tenfold against the EM, while the pad targets behind the centre drops kept the same value as on the older game. That skews the strategy toward the left orbit once the drops are cleared.

• Manufacturer: D. Gottlieb & Co. (a Columbia Pictures Industries Company)
• Dated: June 1983 — models 681 / 681A
• Production: approximately 2,044 units
• Electronic system: Gottlieb System 80A
• Displays: alphanumeric, 4 players (7-digit score, 6-digit bonus)
• Sound: MA-309 sound board — no speech
• Design: Ed Krynski (credit carried from the 1976 original) · Art: David Moore, Terry Doerzaph · Music and sound: Craig Beierwaltes
• Cabinet: standard body
• Playfield: 2 flippers, 9 drop targets, 1 pop bumper, manual plunger
• Theme: poker / cards
• Predecessor: Royal Flush (Gottlieb, 1976), electromechanical

Two ROM revisions, and why it matters to you

This is the detail most owners never discover, and it directly affects what you order if you replace the CPU board. Royal Flush Deluxe shipped with two different game ROM revisions:

• 681/1 — the earlier set. Checksum16 02B5, CRC32 2D6B3729. Rarely seen in the field.
• 681/2 — the common set, and the one almost every surviving machine runs. Checksum16 0026, CRC32 0B048658.

The rules are identical between the two. The difference is sound: Gottlieb added two sound calls in 681/2 that had been left out of 681/1, so on the earlier revision two of the game's sounds simply never fire. A 681/1 machine is fully playable — it is not a fault, and you may spend a long time chasing a "missing sound" that was never programmed in. If you have a machine that plays correctly but seems oddly quiet in places, read the numbers on your PROMs before you start on the sound board.

What one is worth

Royal Flush Deluxe sits in the affordable end of collectable solid-state. Pinside's marketplace data puts the estimated value at roughly 1,200 to 1,400 US dollars, from eleven tracked listings with a median asking price around 1,300 dollars. It is a game people buy to play rather than to speculate on, which is the right frame of mind for spending money on boards for it. Prices move; treat that as a sense of scale, not a quote.

Common faults across System 80A

Royal Flush Deluxe runs ordinary System 80A electronics, so the family fault list applies exactly as it does to any Gottlieb of 1981–83.

The NiCd battery on the CPU board is the first thing to check, every time. It was soldered straight to the board, it leaks with age, and the electrolyte creeps along the traces and into the nearby IC sockets — the area around the 5101 CMOS memory is where the damage concentrates. Left in place it eats the copper, and the job turns from "remove a battery" into "rebuild a board". Take it off before you power anything up, whether or not the machine currently works.

The 6532 RIOT chips — combined I/O and RAM devices — do the day-to-day work and fail with age. On System 80 they divide up neatly: U4 reads the switch matrix, U5 drives the displays, and U6 handles coils, lamps and sound calls. That split is useful diagnostically. A machine that boots but ignores a whole section of switches points at U4; one that boots with dead displays but working coils points at U5. The game program itself lives in 2716 EPROMs, and a corrupt image announces itself with a 7641-X error on the displays, where X is 1 or 2 depending on which PROM failed its checksum.

Grounding is the single biggest cause of resets, and it is a design problem rather than a wear problem. Gottlieb chained the board grounds in series through Molex connectors, so one tired connector takes down the ground for everything downstream of it. The fix collectors call the "ground mods" is to run a separate ground wire from each board to a common point on the power supply — on 80 and 80A, the power board's mounting screw, with the coating abraded off first so the screw actually makes contact. A related mod runs a jumper from the negative lead of the big filter capacitor to the regulator's metal frame, and a second wire from that frame out to cabinet ground.

Power supply. The 5 V logic rail needs to arrive at the CPU board at a genuine 5.0–5.1 V under load — measure it there, not at the supply. The same board also produces +8 V and +60 V for the displays and ±12 V for sound, and the big orange filter capacitor in the bottom of the cabinet is thirty-odd years old and should simply be replaced.

Displays. Missing segments or whole missing digits are, in the large majority of cases, the edge connectors — not the display and not the CPU. Clean and reseat first; re-pin to fix it properly. Never plug or unplug a display with the machine powered on.

The reset board (A24, MA-980). System 80A onwards carries a small board whose job is to watch the CPU's digit strobes and restart the processor if they stop, so a locked-up CPU cannot sit there with a coil energised. The electrolytic capacitors on it dry out, and when they do the board itself causes boot failures and mid-game resets. Its traces lift very easily, so go gently if you recap it. If you remove the board entirely, the CPU needs a 3.3 kΩ pull-up between pins 7 and 11 of the TC1 connector to hold the Read/Write line properly at power-up.

Finally, spurious slam tilts. The slam switch on the coin door works outside the switch matrix, and a dirty or bent slam contact will reset the machine or throw it out of a game for no visible reason.

Royal Flush Deluxe-specific issues (from the forums)

Owner reports on this particular game are not plentiful — two thousand machines built, and a quiet, well-liked game does not generate long repair threads — but the ones that exist are instructive, and one of them is a textbook case.

The random shutdown, in detail. The best-documented Royal Flush Deluxe fault on Pinside runs like this: the machine boots and plays, then after one to five minutes the score displays drop out while the credit and match display stays lit; next the sound stops; then some coils stop working. Switch off, wait fifteen minutes, and it comes back — then does it again. The owner had already replaced the capacitor in the bottom of the cabinet, fitted a replacement power supply and inherited ground mods from the previous owner, and it still happened.

That symptom order is a gift, because it rules things out. The credit/match display is fed separately from the score displays, so when the scores die and the credit window survives, the problem is on the display supply and its wiring rather than in the CPU's display logic. And a fault that appears after a few minutes and clears after a cool-down is a thermal fault: something is heating up and going open or high-resistance. On these Gottliebs that points first at connector pins — the experienced reply to that thread was blunt that loose, dirty or broken connector pins are "super common" on System 80 machines, and heat-fatigued pins in the power supply connector will do precisely this. After that, a marginal CPU board and a flaky slam switch are the other candidates. The thread, honestly, ends without the original poster coming back to say which it was. We are not going to tell you it was definitely the connectors. But if your machine behaves this way, re-pin the power and display connectors before you buy a single chip.

Tilt noise instead of flipper noise. A second reported fault: after someone held both flippers down continuously for a long stretch, the machine began making a tilt-like sound every time the flippers were pressed. Cleaning the flipper button contacts did not fix it, and nobody answered the thread. What that symptom describes is a sound call being triggered by a switch closure, which puts the switch matrix and the U4 RIOT in the frame rather than the sound board itself — the sound board is faithfully playing the sound it has been asked for. Check the flipper button switches for a shorted or welded contact, then the matrix row and column they sit on, before condemning the MA-309.

Nine drop targets on a forty-year-old Driver board. The drop targets are this game's entire mechanic, and all of them reset via coils driven from the Driver board. A reset coil that locks on will cook itself and blow a fuse within seconds, and the usual cause is a shorted driver transistor rather than the coil. If a bank buzzes, sticks part-way, or you keep losing the same fuse, work from the Driver board outwards: transistor, then the target bank switch, then the coil.

MA-309 sound: no speech, by design. Royal Flush Deluxe uses the MA-309 sound board, which it shares with Haunted House, Spirit, Super Orbit, Goin' Nuts and Krull. None of those talk. Its 1983 stablemates Devil's Dare, Rocky, Striker, Q*Bert's Quest and Caveman do have speech, which trips people up: a Gottlieb of this vintage is not automatically a speech machine. If you are replacing the sound board, order the non-speech configuration.

Replacement boards compatible with the Royal Flush Deluxe

Electronically this is a plain System 80A, so the standard System 80/80A replacements fit. Two game-specific points: order the MA-309 non-speech sound configuration, and know which ROM revision your machine runs before you replace the CPU board.

• GottFA80_Plus (Light) — all-in-one CPU + Driver + power supply board, without sound. The all-in-one approach is a good match for the random-shutdown fault above, because it removes the original power supply and several of the connectors at the same time.
• GottFA80_Plus (Full) — the same board with integrated sound.
• Gosof — replacement sound board. For Royal Flush Deluxe, the MA-309 non-speech configuration.
• Godri80 — replacement Driver board. Worth considering on a game whose nine drop targets all reset through it.
• Lisy80 — CPU board with web-based diagnostics, which makes short work of an intermittent fault you cannot catch on the bench.
• GoPOP80 — pop bumper driver board, replacing the original MA-922 / A-19741.

The Lisy80 and Gosof designs come from LISY, an independent developer's free DIY project — credit where it is due. We test the boards we ship and we support them afterwards; installation is Plug & Play, battery-free, with tutorials and free help if you get stuck. Not sure what you have? Send us photographs of your boards and the numbers on them and we will tell you what fits, and say so plainly if we are not sure.

Step-by-step diagnosis (System 80A)

1. Powered off, visual inspection: find the NiCd battery on the CPU board and remove it before testing anything. Look for corrosion tracking away from where it sat.
2. Power supply: measure 5 V at the CPU board under load, not at the supply. Replace the orange filter capacitor in the bottom of the cabinet if it has never been done.
3. Grounds: apply the System 80 ground mods between CPU, Driver, power supply and sound boards. Do this before chasing any reset.
4. Connectors: re-pin oxidised Molex connectors — the power and display connectors first on this game, then the CPU↔Driver link.
5. Displays: clean and reseat the edge connectors. Never plug or unplug a display with the machine powered on; test with a known-good one.
6. ROM check: read the numbers on your PROMs. If you have 681/1, two sounds are absent by design and are not a fault.
7. Drop targets: test each bank's reset coil individually. A coil that locks on means a shorted driver transistor — stop before you lose another fuse.
8. Final test: start-up, credits, each drop target bank, the pop bumper, sound and displays. If anything remains, contact our free support.

FAQ — Royal Flush Deluxe (Gottlieb, 1983)

My Royal Flush Deluxe shuts down at random.
The documented pattern on this game is score displays dropping out while the credit display stays lit, then sound, then coils, after a few minutes of play — and recovery after a cool-down. That is a thermal fault, and on System 80A it most often means heat-fatigued connector pins on the power and display connectors. Re-pin those first, then look at the slam switch and the CPU board.

How many Royal Flush Deluxe were made?
Around 2,044, dated June 1983, under models 681 and 681A. It was a genuine production run, not a prototype — which means parts, documentation and other owners all exist.

What is a Royal Flush Deluxe pinball worth?
Pinside's marketplace data puts it at roughly 1,200–1,400 US dollars, with a median asking price near 1,300 across eleven tracked listings. Condition and working electronics move that figure more than anything else.

Is Royal Flush Deluxe the same game as Royal Flush?
No, but they are closely related. Royal Flush (1976) is electromechanical; Royal Flush Deluxe (1983) is the solid-state remake of it, with bonus values multiplied by ten. The design credit for both goes to Ed Krynski. If you are buying parts, be sure which of the two you have.

Which ROM version does my machine have, and does it matter?
There are two: 681/1 (checksum16 02B5) and 681/2 (checksum16 0026). The rules are identical; 681/2 added two sound calls that 681/1 was missing. It matters when ordering a replacement CPU board, and it explains a "missing sound" that is not actually a fault.

Does Royal Flush Deluxe have speech?
No. It runs the MA-309 sound board, shared with Haunted House, Spirit, Super Orbit, Goin' Nuts and Krull — none of which talk. Order the non-speech sound configuration.

My displays have missing digits.
Clean and reseat the display edge connectors first. This is the "Gottlieb curse", and the connector is usually the culprit rather than the display or the CPU. If it persists, a replacement CPU board such as GottFA80_Plus or Lisy80 makes the display reliable.

Should I remove the original battery?
Yes, immediately, whether the machine works or not. A leaking NiCd is the number-one killer of System 80A CPU boards, and battery-free replacement boards remove the problem for good.

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 and scores survive being switched off.

See also

• Goin' Nuts (Gottlieb, 1983) — same year, same MA-309 sound board, ten machines built.
• Krull (Gottlieb, 1983) — also MA-309, also cancelled.
• Super Orbit (Gottlieb, 1983) — also MA-309.
• Q*Bert's Quest (Gottlieb, 1983) — a speech title, by contrast.
• Amazon Hunt (Gottlieb, 1983)
• Rack 'Em Up (Gottlieb, 1983)
• Jacks To Open (Gottlieb, 1984)
• GottFA80_Plus: the all-in-one board for System 80/80A/80B
• GoPOP80: pop bumper driver board (MA-922 / A-19741)

Sources & further reading

• IPDB — Royal Flush Deluxe (#2036)
• OPDB — Royal Flush Deluxe (June 1983, alphanumeric, 4 players, IPDB #2036)
• Pinside — Royal Flush Deluxe details: 2,044 produced, Ed Krynski, Moore/Doerzaph art, standard body, 9 drop targets
• Kineticist — Royal Flush Deluxe: models 681/681A, Craig Beierwaltes music, tenfold bonus change
• Pinside forum — "Royal Flush Deluxe Shutting Down Randomly" (the thermal display/sound/coil dropout)
• Pinside forum — "Gottlieb Royal Flush Deluxe sound issues" (tilt sound on flipper press)
• Pinside forum — "Gottlieb ROYAL FLUSH DELUXE - ROMS versions" (681/1 vs 681/2 checksums and the two missing sounds)
• Pinside forum — Gottlieb reset boards: what the A24 board does, failed electrolytics, the 3.3 kΩ TC1 pull-up
• Multibille wiki — Gottlieb System 80 repair: RIOT U4/U5/U6 roles, ground mods, supply rails, 7641-X ROM error
• Flippers.com — System 80 tips: cabinet filter capacitor, regulator ground jumper, display recharging
• PinWiki — Gottlieb System 80 repair guide
• LISY — GOSOF80 user manual (MA-309 game list: Royal Flush Deluxe is not a speech title)
• Museum of the Game — Royal Flush Deluxe census
• Pinside — Royal Flush (Gottlieb, 1976), the electromechanical original

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