I was called to look at this game in the owners home. It was in nice overall condition underneath all the dirt and grime, however it was beyond the point of being fixable in a day.
Category Archives: Repairs
Making Drop Target Decals
I’m doing some more work I’m doing on my Bally Transporter the Rescue that was previously discussed here. I needed to make new decals for the game’s drop targets.
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Making New Plastics
I picked up a Bally Transporter the Rescue that was missing a plastic piece.
Star Trek the Next Generation – upper diverter
Edit 12/9/2018
If you are having issues with the diverters on STTNG, I recommend reading through the writeup at Pinwiki found here. I especially recommend doing the modification to move the tieback wire and run it directly from the driver board to the auxiliary driver board.
As an update to the game that is discussed below, the problem with this game continued for years. The upper diverter would lock on, cook the coil, and blow the fuse. I had done everything in the Pinwiki article to no avail. The game would work for quite a while after repairs, but eventually it would lock on the diverter again. It seemed the game was possessed. It was finally determined that the issue was the ribbon cable that runs from the MPU board to the little auxiliary driver board. The game has been running trouble free for over a year after the ribbon cable issue was diagnosed. New ribbon cables can be ordered from Great Plains Electronics. Also realize that the problem can be the connectors on the MPU board and the auxiliary driver board. So keep this in mind while trying to diagnose and troubleshoot issues with the diverters on STTNG and other games that use an auxiliary driver board.
Below continues the original post regarding this issue:
I had the opportunity to work on a beautiful Williams Star Trek the Next Generation (STTNG). The game was not loading the under playfield balls correctly and was cycling the loading sequence.
Bally Strange Science
This Bally Strange Science had problems with its displays. They were displaying garbage, making playing the game not much fun.
Comet System 9 High Voltage Repair
Note: This repair was initially published on Sept. 19, 2011. I republished it with updated photos and information.
I received a call for a Comet with non-working displays. I was told that there were no blown fuses, but the displays just stopped working. No blown fuses indicates a problem with the power supply. I was hoping this was the case as troubleshooting alphanumeric display problems is not a lot of fun in my book.
Data East Sound Amp Repair
I was working on a Data East 520-5002-03 sound board that had no output to the cabinet speaker. The cabinet speaker was blown, but there was still no sound output when using a known good speaker. I now suspected that the MB3730A amplifier on the sound board had blown out. When it goes out, it can take the speaker with it.
Odd Data East power supply
I was repairing a Data East power supply for a client and started off with the typical suspects. Capacitor C2 was clearly no good, it had spilled its electrolyte on the PCB and had to be replaced. This is fairly common because C2 is located right under the large heatsink, and it gets baked to crisp and dries out. C2 in the photo below is shown as an example, it is not the suspect that leaked.
Terminator 2 CPU controlled lamps
This game had no CPU controlled lights. In other words, none of the playfield insert lights worked. So you couldn’t tell what shots to hit nor could you see your progress while playing. Not to mention you also don’t get the light show during attract mode.
Data East Power Supply Rebuild
Note: There’s usually no reason to go to the extent I did to rebuild this power supply. The only reason I replaced so many parts on it is due to its condition. If your power supply is in good shape except for some specific issue such as low 5v, bad fuse clips, etc., just fix what is wrong. Don’t replace tons of stuff like in this article.
Power supply rebuilds are pretty easy. A pinball power supply is rather simple and there are a few common components that fail. So fixing what you have usually makes more sense than buying a new replacement power supply.
Of course, sometimes you don’t have a power supply to fix. This was my situation. I debated buying a new power supply. But then this showed up on eBay:
