A vid or pin that you wanted to fix but couldnt

bottlejunkie

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Donor 2011, 2015
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We've all been there, your game took a crap so now it's time to dig in and find out what happened to it but as you dig deeper you find you are having some troubles. Mine was my Heavy Metal Meltdown pin I just couldn't figure it out, I had the board repaired because it somehow got fried when I moved the pin from one room to another but when I put the board back in from being repaired($125) it fried it again :( I went over everything(I thought) but was stumped and I got tired of throwing money at it so I sold it to a fellow KLOV'r who got it working(UGH!). apparently when I folded the head down to move it I pinched a ground wire that was causing me some major havoc. you ever sold a game out of frustration?
 
Omega Race. Got it cheap, board was corroded... I rebuilt the board from scratch... all the components, etc... Still nothing. I figured it was a power issue but I have no knowledge of power issues and it's really just out of my league.

Sold it and the guy got it working in a day... and I believe it was a power issue of some sort.

Good to know my entirely new board that I populated by hand was actually good though! I feared I made mistakes soldering stuff or something but it worked great.
 
I fought with the Joust that I have for months trying to get rid of a rug pattern that (of course) just came out of nowhere one day; I hadn't even moved the game or anything. Reflowed everything, all connectors were spot on, RAM was changed and good. After about 4 months of not being able to play it and driving myself nuts chasing my tail I just put a JROK in and a MW control panel and never looked back. No regrets! I actually ended up selling the original board because I was so frustrated with it ha. Still have the control panel though!
 
A bought a Buck Rogers pin in immaculate condition years back for $75.

Couldn't get the damned thing to work for the life of me. Sent the boards
out and were verified working but wouldn't work in my machine.

Think I sold it for double what I paid.

JD
 
Slightly on topic -> my ROTJ came to me with a corroded K7000 monitor.

I figured out some of the windings on the yoke were open and I needed to find a replacement. After rebuilding the chassis (caps, ICs, semiconductors, pots, flyback,... almost everything) I could not get it from blowing up HOTs and VRs. So, for now, I've given up on it as I put in another working chassis that proved the tube and new yoke were good.

Don't like giving up on fixing things, but this chassis has something unusual with it (including some corroded PCB traces) for which I don't have the time nor patience to figure out.

My other dotard is my Black Knight pin. It likes to reset and/or blow fuses. But I attribute that to the poor connections between the MPU board and Driver board. Will have to find the time to fix that one day too. But since this was my first pin, I won't ever sell it. Just need to fix it.
 
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#1 - I got real tired of throwing money at my DK and DK Jr boards. DK board was making that infamous background siren noise and my DK Jr had all kinds of grafix issues. Finally threw in the towl and sent them to MikesArcade.com. It made me feel a little better when he couldn't figure out the issue either. :) But Mike has a an awesome fix or swap policy so he just sent me working boards. :)

#2 - My Qbert had a smoking power supply and I'm pretty sure that when it bit the dust it took my original PCB with it. Luckily, (after my DK money waste from above) I immediately converted to a switching power supply and JROK board and never looked back.

I normally don't like giving up on fixes, but I like money and gaming more. :)
 
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I had a video glitch in Paperboy that I could never track down. I got frustrated and traded it in a lot of decent but not great games. Now that paperboy is worth more than all 6 of the games I traded, so I am down 5 games. lol
 
Gorf - Sold it working, but it had annoying glitches I could never iron out. I kind of miss the voice.

Galaga - Would only work after flicking power on/off exactly 3 times. It also had some overheating issue that I got sick of dealing with. Someone got a great deal when I sold it.
 
pretty much this. it's not worth bankrupting yourself (in so many ways) when there's someone with the knowledge and experience to apply a remedy.

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I normally don't like giving up on fixes, but I like money and gaming more. :)
 
Missile Command cabaret. I've got the machine completely restored and it looks awesome, but the board is beyond me and it's been impossible to find anyone that has the ability and/or willingness to fix it...

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QIX was my only major failure. I swapped boards, connectors, resoldered headers, and rebuilt the power supply. Couldn't get it to boot past a few words on the screen. Sold it to a local who messed with it for a day or two swapping boards and was able to get it going. I'm still not sure what he did differently from me... :)
 
God damn Defender. It had board issues when I got it. Sent em out and got them repaired and working. Game worked for about 3 hours then went sideways again. Tried literally everything in my power then finally gave in and got a JROK. That worked for about a week until I reversed the pos and ground on the coin door and screwed up the monitor. I've thrown stupid money at this game and I still can't play it properly. Luckily it was a free score. I think it's jinxed. I also think that if I get rid of it someone else will fix it in minutes and I'll go insane.
 
Sprint 2. Love that game, but it didn't feel the same. It was in excellent condition, but had board issues. Sent it to be repaired which took forever, got it back. Played 1 game, walked away and it went berserk in attract. Sent it back, got a month out of it. Sent it to another person got a few months. Sold it for cheap out of frustration, new owner got it working and it's been working for years now as far as I know. Ugh!
 
Sttng

STTNG pin. Played great for a couple years then could not get the multiball to work correctly and started shooting out balls for no reason.

Tried to fix a couple of times, got it working decent and sent it down the road.
 
The only one I can remember giving up on was an Ivan Stewart Super Off Road, but nobody can fix those so I don't feel bad.
 
Had a stargate where I replaced and repaired literally everything I could've thought to get rid of a RAM error. Only thing the RAM error affected oddly enough was the attract screen showing the stargate logo. Sold it that way, hopefully the guy got it fixed or maybe just lived with it, dunno.
 
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