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    ðŸĪŠ Insanity log: Stop the Clock (Leisure & Allied Industries, ~2000s)

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    A mate of mine sent me this photo of some bulk waste on the side of the road for council pickup 🚚 A full arcade cabinet included! This might seem nuts, but the machine wasn't in working condition... it had been partially parted-out already. Plus, it was a very basic ticket redemption machine. In no way was it a valuable machine to start with. But the more retro equipment you repair, the more you realise how wasteful we are as a society when we just throw these things onto the kerb 🗑ïļ


    Of course I headed out there to check it out, at midnight of course. Most of the "valuable" parts had already been taken (display, coin door parts). However there were still a bunch of circuit boards, transformers, wiring, etc. left behind. I grabbed the transformer, speakers, a bunch of bulbs, CPU board, sound board, lamp driver boards, amplifier board, and the entire wiring harness 🔌


    The transformer is useful on its own. The CPU board runs a Z80 processor. These were discontinued a couple of years ago and will soon be impossible to find. There's a perfectly usable 6264 RAM, as well as some EPROMs. Plenty of lamp driver triacs, amps, and other bits and pieces on the other boards, too. I'm always rebuilding wiring harnesses so the wiring will come in handy as well.


    So, think about this next time you throw something out onto the kerb. Should it go straight into the garbage truck crusher? Or do you know somebody batshit crazy who works on vintage electronics from 50 years ago who may be able to use it? ðŸĪŠ


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    ðŸĶū Repair log: Six Million Dollar Man (Bally, 1978)

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    ðŸĶū This machine had sat broken and unused for over thirty years! The owner wanted to get it up and running again so he and his grandkids could enjoy it. I love helping parents and grandparents introduce their kids to pinball!


    Lots of board work needed on this one. The MPU was rooted with battery fluid all over it, so this was stripped, treated and rebuilt. The CPU and one of the PIAs also broke apart when removing them from the sockets. The ROM sockets were also flaky, so the ROMs got combined into a single 2764 with a fresh socket.


    The solenoid driver board was also shot. Two of the high voltage transistors had failed, sending unfiltered 240v to the displays. Yuck! The entire section got rebuilt with new caps, resistors, pots and trannies. But that wasn't the end of it. All of the coils locked on when powered up. The driving IC at U2 was dead, so that got replaced as well.


    Most of the displays appeared dead, or had missing digits. Reflowing the header pins got some going again. Replacing the 100k ohm resistors got a couple more going. Only one was DOA, so a new one was put in. I dialled the display voltage down to extend their life. Oh, the sound board got recapped, too.


    Fun electrical hacks on some parts of this game, too. Plenty of wire used to bypass fuses on the rectifier as well as the main playfield solenoid fuse. Luckily, these didn't appear to be hiding any serious issues. A new rectifier board was installed so all of the mess was cleaned up in one go.


    The disappearing post assembly was a disaster. Most of the parts were missing, so it didn't actually work. Looks like the down solenoid caught fire and was removed. Sourced all of the required parts and reinstalled them. Wired both of the solenoids back in. Working well now.


    Phew! Almost there. Boards back in and game was now booting up. Fresh rubbers installed, lots of new lamps, and a good check over. Drop targets needed a good service as they weren't resetting. Saucer kick out was also gummed up. Plenty of switches needed adjustment. Two pop bumper bodies were toast, so new bodies and wafers went in. New legs, new leg levellers and new leg bolts as well. New pop bumper caps to replace the old faded ones, too.


    The stand out issue in this repair was a real weird one. The tilt would register each time the left outlane was hit. Seems like a typical switch matrix diode issue, right? Wrong! After changing a few diodes and checking wiring, nothing was any better. The problem turned out to be residual moisture in the timber mounting panel for the tilt mechanism (the machine was kept in a very damp room). There was enough moisture in the timber to conduct current between the tilt bob itself and the tilt bob surround (high resistance even when the tilt contacts were apart). The MPU detected this when the outlane switch was closed for some reason, and triggered a tilt. Insulating the tilt mechanism parts from the timber backing was enough to fix the issue. This has got to be one of those one-in-a-million occurrences which I don't think I'll ever see again during my lifetime. Touch wood (lol)!


    Machine is back up and running for the first time in a long time... at full bionic power! ⚡ïļ


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    Repair log: Scared Stiff (Bally, 1996)

    1996 Bally Repair log Scared Stiff

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📎 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!


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    Scared Stiff was in for a general service after a few years of storage. After an initial check-over and first boot, the game came to life with a factory settings restored message. Lovely! This means memory is no longer being kept by the CPU board. Sure enough, the batteries had leaked. 🔋 Last replaced in 2011! Thankfully, only minor damage to the battery holder, which was replaced with a button cell.


    Now we could start a game and give things a bit more of a test. Gameplay was a bit wonky. Sometimes a switch would register in gameplay that shouldn't have. Sometimes the game would display errors about switch ground shorts. Didn't seem to be much of a pattern, until I realised that all of the affected switches were optos. Jiggling connectors on the MPU board didn't have any effect. So next port of call was the opto board under the playfield. Scared Stiff uses a lot of optos, so this is a 16 opto board. This board was RAGGED â˜Ēïļ The 470 uf capacitor had spilled it guts everywhere. First time I've actually seen electrolyte bubbling out of the capacitor when it is under load. Cool! 😎 These boards are available to buy but I was impatient and wanted it done today, so I just rebuilt it. About half of the board components removed, chemical treatment, sanding, and new components installed. All optos working as intended now!


    There were some odd display artefacts and sound effects that played when they shouldn't. Sometimes lines would appear on the display. Sometimes the display fonts would change. Totally whacky behaviour. ðŸĪŠ Since there were issues with the sound and the display, first suspect was the audio/visual board. Things checked out OK here visually, and the ROMs were good. Fiddling around with the ribbon cables revealed the problem was at the I/O connector between the CPU and the audio/visual board. Jiggling around got the display to do all kinds of weird stuff. New ribbon cable and reflowed solder on the header pins. All displaying and sounding normal now.


    Finished off with the basics. Playfield cleaned. New rubber rings. Globes replaced. Switches adjusted. Coil assemblies checked. Ready to scare again! ðŸ˜ą


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    Repair log: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Sega, 1995)

    1995 Frankenstein Repair log Sega

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📎 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!


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    💊 This Franky was an amputee! One of his arms had broken off. A shame, because his ball throw is the best part of the game, and he certainly can't do that without his arms! The shaft that his arm bolts to has a thread for a nut to secure the arm. The threaded section was sheared off. With some creative welding of a spare bolt to the shaft, the threaded section was back!


    With the arm back on, there was still a lot of adjustment to be done. First, the rest position of the arms needs to be adjusted so the hands sit just below the ramp exit points, otherwise the ball will get hung up, or it will fall off the hands. There is a "stop bracket" next to the arm shaft which you can use to fine-tune this. You can raise or lower the ramp slightly if you need more room.


    With the arms fixed, I moved onto the various lamp issues. None of the general illumination lamps on the playfield were working except for ONE! Some of them were blown, but most were still intact. However they weren't lighting up due to a lack of power. A dodgy lamp connector on the power supply was the problem. Some of the crimp terminals were making poor contact, and the solder on the rear side of the board had dried up and cracked. New connector, new crimps, reflowed solder, and the lamps were back.


    Then I moved onto the insert lamps. Most of these were not working, too, but this was just because most of them had blown. About 40 lamps later, they were all shining bright again. One lamp was troublesome, which was the red lamp above the shooter lane. This one has a connector adjacent to the ball trough which gets pulled quite tight. One of the wires had come loose from the connector, and needed to be reinserted to get this lamp working again.


    Another issue was the ball launch switch. It wasn't working. The launcher on Franky is a giant lever, which actuates a microswitch in the cabinet. The actuator on this switch was a little bent, so the switch wasn't being triggered when the lever was pulled. Bent it back with a switch adjuster and it was working fine again.


    The coin mechanism wasn't always accepting coins, either. The small solenoid that pulls inwards to direct coins to the "accept" path was puling in too slowly. This was a power issue; there was a poor connection in the screw terminal that supplied the credit board with power. This game had a weird credit board, too. Not an original Data East one. Never seen one of these before!


    A couple more switch adjustments and a good playfield clean and this machine was "alive" again! 🧟


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    Repair log: Guns N' Roses (Jersey Jack, 2021)

    2021 Guns N Roses Jersey Jack Repair log

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📎 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!

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    🔋 Had a few service calls relating to power issues on Jersey Jack games recently. The newest patient is Guns N' Roses (Jersey Jack). Primary symptom was no activity on power up. No lights, no sounds, nothing except for a very slight hum. Few things checked first including the main line fuse, power switch, and power cord. These were all good. Into the backbox we go! Here there was no activity whatsoever from the main computer. No fan spin. This is a pretty typical indicator of battery failure. Indeed, the battery was completely flat at 0.5 volts.


    Put a new one in, but still no joy when turning the game on. At this point you need to "jump start" the motherboard by connecting two terminal pins on the motherboard. This is a fiddly procedure but there are videos that guide you through the process on JJP's website in the support section. Once that was done, the game booted back up. It had lost its BIOS settings due to the battery going flat, so a keyboard was needed to set the time and confirm the BIOS settings before it could fully boot into the operating system and a game could actually start.


    Gave the playfield a clean and checked all of the coils and switches. Found a funny switch issue on the left ramp. The switch actuator wire was back-to-front, meaning it was never actually triggering the switch when a ball went up the ramp. It had been this way from the factory. Must have been a Friday afternoon job! A couple of other switches needed adjusting, too. The action button had come loose from its mount, too. 


    One complaint from the owner was that the flipper buttons kept falling out of the cabinet. This is a common problem when the plastic rim that keeps them in place wears down a little. A simple fix is to add a circlip (or similar device) to the end of the button so it can't be pushed through the hole. 


    Levelled the game, gave it a play test, and it was good to go. 👍


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    Repair log: Checkpoint (Data East, 1991)

    1991 Checkpoint Data East Repair log
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    This callout was initially to fix a non-booting issue. Simple enough; no 5 volts getting to the CPU. A connector on the power supply was dodgy. However in assessing this I noticed that the CPU board batteries had been moved to a remote battery holder. The batteries had leaked, so the holder had to go. But the CPU board was also covered in battery corrosion. It was still working, for now, but needed repair before it got much worse.


    Took the CPU board, stripped the components off (⚰ïļ RIP to another CPU), treated the alkali, recoated the board, and repopulated with new components and a button cell battery. Working well now.


    With the game now booting and working properly I could focus on the issues on the playfield. Switch in the upkicker was not responding. The actuator wire had broken off. These early Data East VUKs use very thin actuators on the switches which break all the time. Replaced with a thicker wire one.


    Right flipper switch was also being weird. High resistance even when closed. Internal switch contacts had given up the ghost. New switch installed.


    Replaced a few lamps, checked all switches and coils, and cleaned the playfield down to finish off. A fast, fun game to play. Love the speed check ramp feature! 🏎ïļ