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    πŸ΄β€β˜ οΈ Repair log: Hook (Data East, 1992)

    1992 Data East Hook Repair log

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


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    Let's get Peter Pan airborne again! Game booted up and could start a game, but plenty of things weren't quite working right. First up was confusion when a ball would drain. Sometimes the game wouldn't detect it. Other times it would kick two balls into the trough. A sure sign of trough issues. Well not one, but two of the trough switches were bad. In switch test, each switch was turning on and off repeatedly, and it wasn't just from a poor wire connection (this is common too). Both of them were replaced. Make sure you use the correct switch for this! It has to activate easily with the weight of the ball. Typical arcade and cheap microswitches require too much force to trigger the switch and they won't work here.


    Now we can tackle the lamp issues. There are lamps on the skill shot ramp which should light up depending on which hole you need to shoot the ball into for the skill shot. These lamps were not working. Turns out they are all on the same lamp column with a YEL-BLK wire. Wiggling the connector on the CPU board got them to flash on and off. The YEL-BLK wire was cut inside the CN7 connector housing. Replaced the connector and re-terminated all of the lamp outputs. Lamps were all working again. 


    Another lamp issue, this time for the general illumination. Most of the GI on the rear half of the playfield are on the violet coloured circuit. I followed this back to the connector on the playfield power board. It was very crispy. Replaced the connector and pins and the lamps came back.


    ...and another lamp issue! Some of the playfield insert lamps and lamps in the skull were not working, and the bulbs were fine. All of these lamps were on the same lamp column (col 5). We've already replaced the lamp column connector, so that wasn't the problem. Instead, it was a dead drive transistor for this column on the CPU board. Replaced it and everything lit up again.


    Drop target bank on the left of the playfield was having issues. Targets not registering consistently, and not dropping physically either. Assembly needed a clean, and the switches needed cleaning and adjustment to trigger reliably when the targets were dropped. Working a bit better now. 


    CPU board had some old batteries on it (expired in 2018). They had leaked a little but only within the battery holder. The holder was cut out and replaced with a coin cell battery. Much less likely to leak and simple to replace when needed.


    Left flipper was a little sluggish and was sticking up occasionally. The assembly was taken apart, cleaned, and a new sleeve installed. No more sticky flipper.


    Game is now playing well and ready for a birthday party next week!


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    🩺 Restoration log: Doctor Who (Bally, 1992)

    1992 Bally Doctor Who Restoration

    Restoration logs are detailed reports on the repairs and restoration activities undertaken to bring a machine back to life! Restoration logs are longer and more in-depth than our standard repair logs. Whether your machine needs minor repairs or a full-blown restoration, πŸ“¬ Contact Us to discuss how we can help!


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    Finally! I've been working on this one for a while. A full restoration including new cabinet decals, new playfield, new plastics, new ramps, colour display, circuit board work, and all of the associated madness that goes with those things! Let's dive in.


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    πŸ‘¨β€βš•οΈ Repair log: Doctor Who (Bally, 1992)

    1992 Bally Doctor Who Repair log

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


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    Plenty of fun repairs to get this Doctor Who running at full speed. First problem was an easy one. No action from the right flipper at all. Cabinet switch worked fine, but the coil would not fire. Took a look under the playfield and saw that the BLU/YEL wire had broken off the coil, as well as the power and hold coil windings. This wire is the 50 volt supply from the flipper board, and without it you'll never get any flipper action. This coil had a hard life as the lugs had all broken off at some point, but you can use the eyelets as a convenient solder point as well. Once the wire and windings were reattached, the flipper came back to life.


    Error reports indicated failures of some of the opto switches on the mini playfield opto bank. First step is to raise the mini playfield so you can activate the switches in test mode. And this was the first roadblock. The mini playfield would not move up or down at all! We will deal with that a bit later... but to get around this, you can unbolt the gearbox and cam assembly from underneath the mini playfield. Remove them, and you can now move the mini playfield by hand. Just don't drop it on your fingers!


    With the switches accessible, I found three out of five were unresponsive. Taking the target bank assembly off the mini playfield gives you access to the opto boards for inspection. The problem with one switch was obvious right away. Broken ORG/GRN wire on the receiver board. Soldered it back on and that switch started working again. Two more to go. These turned out to be dead transmitter optos. You can check these with your phone camera; a glow indicates they are working, no glow indicates they are not. These two were replaced, and all five switches were back in action.


    Back to the mini playfield movement issues. The gearbox was rooted. I could move the cam freely by hand, which is a bad sign. I cracked the gearbox open to get a better look. The problem was the gear attached to the main arbour. It was freewheeling on the shaft. A pretty common failure, particularly on Doctor Who. Off to my mate Darren who is a great welder. He silver soldered the gear and spline back onto the shaft. Greased the gears and rebuilt the gearbox. Back in the game, the mini playfield moves up and down really well now.


    Last issue (for now!). No sound effects or music at all. Game booted up and made two "bong" sounds. The sound board has its own processor, so the tones tell you its status. Two bongs means the 6264 RAM at U9 has failed. I've seen plenty of cases where a failed RAM will not trigger any unusual messages and will appear to boot normally. However U9 is usually the problem. I removed the chip, installed a socket, and plugged in a new one. Replaced the electrolytic caps at the same time for good measure. Sounds are all playing again!


    That's enough excitement for now! Hopefully that keeps this machine going for a very long... time!


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    🎣 Repair log: Fish Tales (Williams, 1992)

    1992 Fish Tales Repair log Williams

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

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    🎣 Who doesn't love Fish Tales? It's one of my favourite games to play, and one of my favourite to work on as well! This one started off as a service call to install new rubber rings, but turned into a bigger service to fix much more than that.


    First, a playfield teardown to get to all of the old rubbers and give everything a good clean. Plenty of broken lamps to replace while we're at it, too. This took a fair while due to the disassembly, but once it was back together it was looking much better!


    A cursory check of the backbox as the game was not retaining memory. The batteries expired in 2015, so that's no surprise! The original battery holder was still on the CPU board with a bit of corrosion on the lower terminals. Thankfully, no damage to the board itself, so a new lithium battery holder was installed.


    It was impossible to drop the volume down, or do much within the test menus, as one of the diagnostic switches wasn't working. No problem with the connectors or CPU board; the switch itself had died. Replaced it.


    Playtesting revealed a few more issues. The flap at the top of the playfield was taped in the up position. That's a weird mod! This gate is controlled by a coil which opens the gate on ball launch, and also when shooting the right orbit when long cast is lit. Otherwise it is meant to block balls so you can enter the pop bumpers from a right orbit shot. It appeared to be propped open because balls were not making it around the orbit on launch. But this was nothing to do with the gate. The balls were bouncing off the ball guide at the very top edge of the playfield, losing momentum, and falling into the LIE lanes. This was caused by the metal ball guide at the top right of the playfield. It needed bending to guide the ball properly towards the orbit lane. A very fiddly adjustment which needed multiple bends to get right.


    Next: the drop target was not working correctly. It has a secondary coil which pushes the target down to open the shot to the Caster's Club. This coil wasn't working. Taking a look at the assembly, I noticed the armature which pushes on the drop target to drop it was totally missing. Found it lying in the bottom of the cab. It needed a new extension spring and brass armature. Both were installed and the assembly was working as intended again.


    Lucky last. Balls landing in the eject hole at the top of the playfield were not coming back out. I could hear the coil trying to activate, but there was no movement at all in the assembly. I noticed the nylon link was broken. This is surely it! Nope, even with a new link it wouldn't move. I took it apart and realised the plunger was way too long; long enough that it was hitting the coil stop when at rest. Absolutely no space for movement of the plunger, and therefore no action from the mechanism. Replaced it with the correct size plunger and it came back to life.


    Back to catching fish and telling tales! πŸ€₯


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    🌌 Repair log: Star Wars (Data East, 1992)

    1992 Data East Repair log star wars

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

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    A service call on this Star Wars resulted in a few board repairs to get it up and running again! May the fix be with you! 🌌


    First issue: game did not appear to be booting. Voltages and fuses were all OK. But there was no display, no playfield lamps... nothing! A check of the LEDs on the CPU board confirmed that the game was, indeed, booting up. It just seemed to be getting stuck.


    The problem here was the batteries on the CPU board. Totally flat. And with no battery backup power on a Data East CPU, the game will not finish its boot up sequence unless you open the coin door. Once I opened the door, the boot sequence finished. This took a little while to figure out because normally the display will show an "open the door!" message to indicate this exact scenario... but that doesn't happen when the display is dead too! πŸ€ͺ


    Now to fix the display. Voltages going to it were a little odd... the two high voltages are meant to be around ~110 and ~98 volts. On this display, they were both measuring ~98 volts. There should always be a potential of about 12-13 volts between these two rails. Hmm. Looks like a power supply issue, so out it came for closer inspection. There is one main component which controls this voltage potential, a 13v zener diode at D10. I measured it and it was shorted. That will certainly stop it from working correctly! This diode seems to fail a lot when the high voltage components become marginal. So, I rebuilt the whole high voltage section. New resistors, new diodes, new transistors, new caps. Display is nice and bright again. While I was at it, I also abated some corrosion on the power supply from leaking capacitors. 


    Next, some lamp issues to deal with. Specifically, backbox general illumination lamps not working. This is usually because of a failed connector on the power supply, and indeed it was in this case. Connector was replaced and the terminals were all re-crimped. This helped, but the backbox lamps were still a bit dicey. They flickered on and off sometimes. Further investigation needed!


    Lamp power is also distributed to the playfield power board, fused, and then sent out to the rest of the machine. The flickering issue originated here. The original connector on the board had been destroyed, so somebody bypassed it with a larger Molex-style connector soldered to the back of the board. Not necessarily a bad hack, but the pins within the connector were failing, and were not staying in place in the housing. Time to fix this properly. I replaced the header pins on the board, as well as the pins and connector housing. Back to stock, and working as intended!


    Couple of minor things to finish up. New rubbers on the slingshots and flippers. Replaced a few burned-out lamps. Gave the machine a check-over, and all seemed fine! I'm no Jedi but I'm pretty good at fixing stuff! πŸ˜„


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    Repair log: The Addams Family (Bally, 1992)

    1992 Bally Repair log The Addams Family

    ο»ΏRepair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, πŸ“¬ Contact Us to discuss how we can help!

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    This Addams Family had a bit of a wonky bookcase assembly. It wasn't level with the playfield and was trapping balls on its bottom edge. After taking it apart, a few broken parts revealed themselves including the bookcase frame, base, and one of the actuators driven by the bookcase motor. Perfect opportunity to service the mechanism and replace all of the broken parts! New parts ordered, installed, and working great now.


    A few minor repairs were enacted on other parts of the game as well including a new battery holder for the CPU board, replacement of some lamp sockets, and installation of a strip of LED lights (had to create a small custom wiring harness for them).