Repair log - A&F Pinball Restorations

Published on: 5 August 2026

Repair log: Star Wars (Data East, 1992)

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!

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! 🤪

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! 😄

Published on: 24 July 2026

Repair log: Scared Stiff (Bally, 1996)

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!

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 ☢️ 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. 🤪 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! 😱

Published on: 20 July 2026

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

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!

💪 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! 🧟

Published on: 16 July 2026

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

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!

🔋 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. 👍

Published on: 12 July 2026

Repair log: Checkpoint (Data East, 1991)

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 (⚰️ 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! 🏎️

Published on: 30 June 2026

Repair log: The Hobbit, Smaug Edition (Jersey Jack, 2016)

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!

🤏 Lots of little fixes to be done on this machine. The first was power related. The machine wasn't booting up. In fact, there was no power getting to any part of the machine at all. We weren't even getting power to the EMI filter at the rear of the cabinet. The power cable had come loose from the socket. Even though there is a cover over the socket and plug to prevent this, pressure on the cable can put a little stress onto it, which eventually pulls it out of the socket altogether.

Now we could deal with some of the other issues. The Orc pop-up target was malfunctioning. In test mode, the Orc up switch was not registering. The switch has a roller actuator on it, which the mechanism pushes against when raised. The switch housing was cracked and the actuator was long gone. New switch needed here to get it back into operation.

The "A" drop target wasn't raising itself. All looked OK above and underneath the playfield, but looks can be deceiving! The power wire is daisy-chained to each of these coils, and heatshrunk at the coil lug. The wire had broken off the lug, which couldn't be seen under the heatshrink insulation. A bit of a tug broke it completely free. Soldered back on and back in business.

A couple of loose assemblies needed help. The cover over the LCD screen on the playfield had fallen off. Double-sided foam tape was the answer. Smaug's head was also loose. The screws which hold it together were loose and the holes were hogged out a bit. Some filler material and glue got things secure again.

Machine was back to 100% again. Ashamedly, I took the Grand Champion score while playing a final test game. Whoops! 🐉

Tags

Repair log: Star Wars (Data East, 1992)

Repair log: Scared Stiff (Bally, 1996)

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

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

Repair log: Checkpoint (Data East, 1991)

Repair log: The Hobbit, Smaug Edition (Jersey Jack, 2016)