K7100, no red anymore. Bump the machine, red comes back (briefly)

[scottkeen]

i was wondering how long youd mess around before you bit the bullet and reflowed the header pins

About 3 days.

I was avoiding it because I thought it would be a lot of work to remove the chassis board. It actually wasn't hard at all.

For the record, when I reflowed the header pins on the chassis board, I also reflowed the 3 large transistors on the neck board. So, not sure what fixed it, but could have been either one, I guess.

 

[wxforecaster]

Chances are the chassis. Not sure why, but this seems to be a common failure point. Both my current Ms Pacman and the one still at my folks' house would have a flaky "red". We would do the same stuff you did (bang, jostle) the machine until I did my first cap kit. It was pretty apparent the red pin had cold solder on both games. Took longer to heat up the iron than it did to fix the problem!

Enjoy your games!

Evan