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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!



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A service call turned workshop repair. This Solar City (Gottlieb, 1977) was not starting properly, nor was it working quite right when it did eventually start. Lots of work to get this machine up to scratch. Solar City is an unusual game because it shares the exact same playfield as six (!) other games. They are:



Target Alpha is the game that people generally remember as more of these were made than any of the other varieties. However, the gameplay and playfield mechanisms are basically identical between them all.

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Another month, another show! In February we went to TCXPO, which was a fairly relaxed show for us. But this month, we went big! Fiona and I headed to CollectFest, which we had also attended in August last year. We were setting up a similar activation to last year, a retro arcade including seven pinball machines, a Skill Tester claw machine, and a table with various pinball and arcade related goodies.


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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!



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This machine was having switch issues. Half of the switches weren't working. Severe corrosion on the CPU board due to battery leakage was to blame. Duraleaks strike again! A new CPU board and connectors were installed and things were back to normal. Great to have Coin-Up Pinball around; an Aussie supplier of these CPU boards. A few other minor repairs and adjustments were also done. The most interesting was a lost ball which had gotten stuck in the ball trough.... it took a little while to find!


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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!



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New shaker motor installed! An awesome addition to the game which really makes you feel those shots to the crane.


Some of the early SAM system games were made with a shaker motor option available, but the cabinets were not always prepared for installation of the assembly at the factory. As a result, you may need to drill the mounting holes and install tee-nuts so you can bolt the shaker motor into place. Ensure proper alignment and fitment as this is not a mechanism that you want to shake loose!


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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!



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I've never met a Johnny that didn't have issues with the Cyberglove assembly. This one was no different. It's an awesome mechanism, but finnicky. This one was having issues with the motor that drives the hand forward and back. It would randomly lock on, sending the glove forwards or backwards until it crashed into the end of the worm drive, blowing a fuse.


So, time for a full rebuild. Disassembled and cleaned. Gearboxes cleaned and lubed. Encoder boards serviced. Turns out, the issue was faulty optical switches on one of the encoder boards. They were oddball optos that were not the correct part, and there was some hackery on the board. Installed new optos, new connectors, new transistors, and we're good to go again!


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Last weekend, Fiona and I headed to TCXPO! We attended this event last year, and had a good time! So, we decided to bring three different machines to the next event. TCXPO is focused heavily on trading cards rather than other types of collectibles, so we weren't expecting them to be the biggest part of the event. Nevertheless it's a great event to promote pinball and make it accessible to fandoms that may otherwise not have any exposure to it.

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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 couple of Stern MPU-100 boards came in for service. Both with similar corrosion damage which required significant abatement. Once the corrosion was dealt with, the boards were repopulated.


A couple of small mods were done, too. Batteries and RAM were replaced with NVRAM modules from Tangles Pin Parts. A nice product from an Aussie supplier. One of the ROM chips was damaged on the Stars board, so I combined the two 2716 ROM images into a single 2764. Some modding of the board was required to accommodate the 2764 but it works well.


Before and after photos of one of the boards below!

✍️ Blog


​Here you will find logs of pinball and arcade machine restorations, repairs, discussion about general pinball and arcade topics, as well as recounts of my random pinball adventures.


All entries on this blog are written by Alexander Visotin, unless otherwise indicated.


Check back regularly for updates!

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​Running this website is a
hobby for me (just like pinball!). I like being able to show off my restoration work so everyone can learn from it and potentially fix their own machines. If you enjoy reading the site's content or it has been helpful to you, please consider donating to offset some of the website's operating costs.