Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, ðŽ 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. ð 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 âĒïļ 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! ð 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. ðĪŠ 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! ðą
