Arcade Collecting > Pinball
New pin: Lethal Weapon 3 (Update: FIXED)
shardian:
RAM Socket replaced with GOOD machine pin socket. It's nice when a chip goes in on the 1st try in a few seconds and there is no risk of bending legs...
Replaced the RAM with brand new. Relocated battery pack remotely.
Turn the thing on, and it is still dead with the weird handful of pulsing cpu controlled lights. The only thing that has been effed with is the Game PROM and its socket since it last would work intermittently, so the problem has to lie there. I am sooooo pissed about this board...
shardian:
Okay, on 3 hours sleep, I got back on this (Thanks for waking me up at 8 sweetie!!! :timebomb:)
I pulled out the crappy socket job on the game ROM, because the new issue pretty much had to be in there. It was not a fun process, but after busting up the pin strips, I was able to heat/pull each individual pin. I uncovered multiple blown solder points. Yep, that's the work of a professional alright...
I put in new pin strips - QUALITY strips from GPE. I was able to salvage a few solder pads, bridge a few more, but 2 were pretty bad. I ran a short jumper on one, which went okay. Another one had a busted trace. There was a solder pad right next to it, which made things very tight. I used an small chunk of capacitor leg to bridge the gap, and it was a real PITA to get it positioned and not touch that other solder point. After fixing a few bridged legs on the top soldering, I continuity tested - everything good. Then I tested for shorts. I found a few legs that had slight bridging. After all of that was cleared out, I reinstalled the EPROM and put everything back together. The game booted up! Something was odd though. The outhole was not working. After a ball or two, I tried to enter test mode - and it would not go into it. I also noticed the blanking light had turned off. I cycled power, and now it doesn't boot. Why? because the Blanking light is not coming on. Sometimes it comes on for a brief second, but then goes back out. I have acid damage in the blanking section, and it appears the guy might have tried to neutralize it. Unfortunately, there is no parts list for the schematic. WTF?? Does anyone have a DE CPU board parts list? How could the manual not include this??
shardian:
Problem is pretty consistent now. Cold, it will try to boot. When the relay kicks on the power supply, blanking shuts down. That makes me suspect a bad relay, but after power cycling the PIA light comes on and stays on with blanking staying off. I think I have a bad PIA chip or some other hard to trace issue. I'm about to my budgeted repair time limit, so...
I posted on Rec.games.pinball looking for a board. I've had two promising leads. One is odd though. A guy is offering to modify my Rev 2 board and add the special coil circuitry to it. He claims to have a modded rev 2 running in his Star Wars. I've never heard of this mod. Have any of you? I assume he drills holes and runs jumpers in the blank spot where the circuit would go. I can't help but be apprehensive after my last shipped repair fiasco. I'd rather just buy a working board and be done with it.
I also got a typical google groups offer, which is why I don't like that place. A guy offered to take my board in trade, and send me a working one for $250! It was worth a laugh. I kindly mentioned his price is higher than a brand new repro from rottendog. He got all uppity and said "Yeah, but do you know the crappy quality of Rottendog?". For $250, a brand new repro will be a hell of a lot better than a ticking time bomb original...
shardian:
I had an offer of $150 + shipping for a working rev. 3 board. I noticed flux on a chip in the somewhat blurry pics, and then saw the socketed replacement on the front. I asked for clearer pictures of this area, and got them. There were multiple blown solder points, but the bridge work looked like good work. More importantly, I saw considerable rework in the coil driver section in these better pictures. Much more than I was comfortable paying $150 + shipping for. Seller was firm, so I walked.
I asked explicitly in my original want post that I didn't want a board with many blown solder points - I don't care how good the repairs look. If she would have bumped her price down to $130 shipped, I would have bitten. It irritated me a bit that this rework was not mentioned up front. I would have been pissed if I would have bought and seen this once I opened the package.
ChadTower:
I'm following it but don't know that board well enough to offer any advice.
Now, when you get to a Sys7 board, give me a shout. I am learning more about these stupid Sys7 boards than I ever wanted to know.
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