Tags

  • Published on

    😱 Repair log: Elvira's House of Horrors (Stern, 2019)

    2019 Elvira's House of Horrors Repair log Stern

    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!


    Image description


    Let's fix this Elvira LE. This one wasn't booting up. Power switch was on but there were no lights on the playfield, no display, nothing! All fuses were OK and voltages were all present as well. To this end, the diagnostic LEDs on the CPU board are handy for determining whether it's a voltage problem or a CPU problem. LEDs were all lit except for VMA and VMB. A typical sign that the CPU just isn't booting up.


    Spike system games are notorious for problems with the game code on the SD card so this should always be the first stop. The card slot breaks, the card unseats itself, or the data on it becomes corrupted. Quickest route for troubleshooting is to replace the SD card and flash it with new game code. Stern's website has instructions on how to do so. Once the new card was in the game, it booted right up. The old card now lives in the bin!


    After some playtesting another issue revealed itself. The up-kicker in the cellar would often fire multiple times even when there was no ball in there. The opto switch appeared to work OK, but I know better than to trust a Stern opto board. The receiver side seemed OK and tested fine with an external light. So it was the transmitting side that was the issue. The transmitter board is under the mansion plastic, and can be adjusted without removing too much hardware as there's a hole in the metal bracket which you can use to loosen the board. Just remove the turret plastic (1 screw) and the main mansion plastic (2 screws). I did this and repositioned the transmitter board slightly so it would align better with the receiver opto. No more issues after that! 


  • Published on

    🦍 Repair log: King Kong LE (Stern, 2025)

    2025 King Kong Repair log Stern

    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!


    Image description


    Quick service call on a King Kong LE today. Owner had just bought the machine from someone and wanted it to have a quick check-over, as well as some mods installed. Nothing to report after the check-over, as all switches, lamps, coils and motors were working just fine. As I would hope for a one-year-old machine! 


    Helped install a couple of mods including a custom shooter rod and topper. The topper looks great but note that there is a lot of additional work involved in installing it other than mounting it to the top of the cabinet. It comes with a set of plastic characters which you have to punch out of a template and slide into the marquee to create your own message. Each character is on a different piece of plastic, and each plastic has a front and rear backing which you have to peel off before installing. The same applies to the chain links and handcuffs for Kong. Each one of those tiny chain links has backing on both sides which you have to punch out of the template, peel, and connect together. Bring a small blade or a long fingernail; you're going to need it!


  • Published on

    👾 Repair log: Arcade 1UP Virtual Pinball (1UP, 2020)

    1up Arcade 2020 Repair log Virtual pinball

    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!



    Yep, we work on all types of machines! Even the virtual ones. Even the small-scale virtual ones! A lot of people consider these 1UP machines to be irreparable, and they do have some design issues, but there are still some simple repairs that can be done. 


    One of these machines had a non-responsive ball launch. The ball launcher is a weird design, with a magnet mounted to the end of the plunger which literally smacks into the circuit board with the detection circuitry. Unsurprisingly, one of the transistors on this board had been destroyed, so it was replaced. 


    There were a couple of screen issues as well. One of them was a loose wire connecting the main playfield screen to the motherboard. Re-crimped and reinstalled. Works fine again. The other was a non-working “score display”. These are just a small LCD panel below the "backglass". There is an extremely fragile ribbon cable which feeds data to them from the motherboard. It had just fallen out of the connector. Reinserted it and secured it and the display turned on again.


    These machines are certainly not built to survive the rigors of a commercial arcade but, they’re a fun little game nonetheless. There are also options for people looking to convert these machines with updated hardware and software to run more “tables”. So even when the hardware or software does fail, there’s life left in the cabinets!