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😬 Ugh, System 80 games. A pain to repair sometimes. But if people gave up every time pinball repair got hard, pinball just wouldn't exist anymore. One of the very reasons I do what I do. Because if I don't, nobody will!


This Raven had been pulled out of storage so it could be sold. A few issues presented. First, it wouldn't start up. Nothing except for a few lamps on the playfield. Gottlieb made things hard by not installing any indicator LEDs (or any form of visual output for that matter) on any of their circuit boards. So the first step is figuring out if you even have power. The CPU only needs 5 volts to run, and this was getting to the board, so the basics were definitely OK. System 80b games have a "reset board" attached the CPU board which helps detect a CPU lock-up. This was the issue, and was preventing the CPU from starting up. Left this one disconnected for now, as you only need these reset boards if the game is to be left unattended for an extended time.


Although it was now booting up, it was having issues staying or and working normally. The game would crash occasionally, the displays and lamps were acting a bit weird, and some of the solenoids would turn on and off during attract mode. Whenever you have weird oddness on a System 1 or System 80 game, think grounding. None of the ground mods had been done to this game yet, and I discovered that one of the ground straps connecting the backbox to the main cab wasn't even connected. So, let's fix that. I attached a new ground wire to each of the boards in the backbox, and connected them to a single grounding point. With the ground mods installed, the game seemed to boot and stay powered up fairly reliably, plus the sound board began to boot and work as well. Bonus!


As soon as the game powered up, the ramp lifted up. This is not normal behaviour; it should only raise when a game is started. The coil itself tested fine in terms of resistance. Next item up the chain is the driving transistor. This is one of the coils which is driven by a lamp output, with an under-playfield transistor being the last step before the coil. This transistor had failed, with a short between the collector and emitter. New transistor (MJ2955 is a reasonable replacement) was installed. Ramp fixed!


Let's set the game to free play. There is no native way to do this on a System 80 game. Instead, you can "hack" one of the initial buttons on the front of the cabinet to work as a credit button as well. Easiest way to do this is to install a jumper between the two switches on the diode board in the cabinet. Done!


Getting some random slam tilts occurring during gameplay. On any other game system I would investigate this further, but slam tilts are such a nuisance on System 1/80 games, I just disable them. Easily accomplished by adding a small jumper above Z26 on the CPU board. Problem solved!


Getting there. The left bottom "sniper" drop target would not drop properly. These sniper targets are a cool feature, and are meant to go up and down at set intervals. This one wasn't dropping. The coils which trip these targets are tiny coils mounted to the top of the drop target assembly. You need to remove the assembly to get to them. In this case, the steel plate actuator on top of the trip coil was adjusted to make it a easier for the tiny coil to pull it in, therefore pushing the drop target off its ledge. Working consistently now.


Suddenly noticed that the speaker in the backbox wasn't producing any sound. Weird. Wiggling the wires at the speaker got the sound to cut in and out. The terminals were pretty crusty and corroded, so they were re-pinned with new crimp terminals. Sound is nice and crisp now!


One last issue. After a few minutes powered up, the display would exhibit a fault. All of the top segments of each character would lock on, which made it difficult to read the scores. This was a problem with the display itself; one of the caps on the display board was starting to fail under load. New capacitors in and display is working well again.


Phew! A day-long session to get this one up and going but now it's ready to go. Most people dismiss Raven as a cheesy attempt to capitalise on the Rambo franchise without paying the licencing fees. But the sniper target feature is quite cool, and implemented well. Plus, it's basically a budget Firepower in terms of the playfield layout, so it's quite fun to shoot! 🔫