Hardest Repair?

One of the ones I remember was when I first got my bally Wizard pinball machine. It played but was stuck in a constant reset loop. So while looking around inside I found these cut wires. Spent a long time looking at the schematics, looking online and even opened the bundle of wires so I could trace them better. Then I came across a random post on pinside that I hadn't seen before that mentioned that those wires were for some optional credit multiplayer thing and Bally just used one harness for those machines. So they were just never stripped from the factory
 
Hardest repair? Hmm I got to think about this. Oh I got stories laughs.

so many repairs and maybe a handful of thanks. If you know you know.
Laughs.
 
The ones that I can think of are on pinball machines.
Gilligans Island- a) Game would randomly slam tilt. I figured out it was when I had the right flipper button pressed and the right return lane switch was closed. Turned out to be a incorrectly wired right trough switch.

b) The island would stop in the wrong spot, so the ball could not make it through the path. Was not random, it would do the same behavior over and over again. Updating game to latest code helped but still had the problem. Tried a bunch of other fixes but no dice. Turned out to be the Rottendog MPU that was installed. Switched to OEM board and it worked perfectly.

Bank Shot- If any of the score reels were at 1-4 (or in other words, if the score reels took more than 1 score motor rotation to reset), the Ball Count unit would step past a rivet that it needed to be on in order for the AX Reset coil to pull in. This would cause the Ball Count to continually attempt to reset, and the game would never start. Turns out somebody added a tooth to the gear where there was not supposed to be a tooth. So the Ball Count unit would step past where it was supposed to stop which would mess the whole game up.

There have also been smaller gremlins on a few EMs that I have not been able to fix and had to give up on.
 
Tempissed.

I got stories..

Dried pcb board normally not an issue until people start pressing down hard on the socked chips. So many cracked traces. So many bridging wires to fix the broken traces. So it becomes stable. Yippee. You warn the user don't press hard on socketed chips.
Falls on deaf ears. Pcb shows up somehow back on my bench. More broken traces. Pcb repair and sent back with zero warranty.
 
I got stories..

Dried pcb board normally not an issue until people start pressing down hard on the socked chips. So many cracked traces. So many bridging wires to fix the broken traces. So it becomes stable. Yippee. You warn the user don't press hard on socketed chips.
Falls on deaf ears. Pcb shows up somehow back on my bench. More broken traces. Pcb repair and sent back with zero warranty.
Wow, never heard of that before. Does the dried out board just flex more? What PCB material?

Tell them it works better if they remove the chip and blow on the socket before replacing the chip. . 😀 But that would just lead to you replacing bent and broken pins instead...
 
Member game fixer got mine back online, but I finally ended up trading the game, a 2nd time, because the game had just lived its full life I guess.
 
Wow, never heard of that before. Does the dried out board just flex more? What PCB material?

Tell them it works better if they remove the chip and blow on the socket before replacing the chip. . 😀 But that would just lead to you replacing bent and broken pins instead...
Not all pcb boards are not made in the same way. This explains why AST research EGA CRT monitors pcb boards tend to snap.

There is a series of Atari Pcb boards that a certain combination of fiber glass and epoxy. The PCB board drys out much like Corvette fiberglass bodies. The dry pcb boards flex more but the copper traces do not. Traces crack and break when the board is flexed. When there are multiple broken traces around ic chip sockets, it not too hard to figure out that some where in this pcb boards life that the pcb was over flexed.

Replacing sockets does not cure the problem. If you over flex the pcb board new broken traces occurs even after the repairs.

Telling the owner do not do this, falls on deaf ears.
 
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