Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A Craigslist Story Part 2

Ok, so when I finally got home, I got to inspect the game closer. While away, almost all my parts had been delievered... the usual suspects.. - new pinballs - new legs - cliffy protector for the turbo hole - new rubber rings/posts - new manual - rebuild kit for the hi-voltage board assuming it was a problem due to the DMD problem I was torn if I wanted to attempt to strip it down and clean it - as it really needs it - before I even got started. But I ended up chosing just to try to get it 100% working before tearing it apart! First up.. setup! Got the new legs and cabinet protectors on. There was only minor decal issues under the legs - quite normal. Replaced a missing wing nut which holds the head to the main cabinet. Closer inspection inside the head showed nothing of major issue now that I had it home. Of course.. the DMD still didn't work.. Read up on DMD issues on Clay's site www.pinrepair.com and started checking voltages and fuses. Turns out... two fuses and magic.. DMD is back! It is driving the display high on the 62volt line.. so I'll probably have to rebuild the high voltage circuit once I get some time. But it works now! It reports some switch errors, including the flipper EOS switches on both sides.. hrmm.. not a good one to ignore. I track it down, after taking wayyy too long (I'm no pin tech) and find out its purely the wire broken off the switch at the upper flipper (they are all daisy chained). Fixed that with solder.. and no more errors! Lastly to turn to the high fail component on this game.. the LED standup targets. They were something attempted for this game and they are almost always broken and spare parts are very hard to find. Well, on closer inspection I find, 2 of the 3 have their opto interupter broken, and one the LEDs are not all lighting properly. The opto interupters are basically just a finger of plastic that break a light beam when the target is hit. This can be jerry-rigged to work once I find time for it by just attaching something to replace the part that broke off. The LED problem needs some diag - which I haven't done yet. But none of this really affects game play, so I'll get to them later. Summary? Well.. minor scratches on the translite. Only matters for the perfectionists. an 8 or better Minor scratches on the cabinet, but no real fading, that's the big thing. The scratches are minor and overall the cabinet is probably a 8+. Major components? All present and working. No wear on playfield or inserts. Hole wear on turbo within normal expectations. Drop wear on inlane from ramp will probably clean up once dirt is gone. LED Standups broken, but should be repairable. Needs a cleaning, but only to be 'home pure'... it would be clean by any arcade standard. 2 fuses, one broken wire.. and we have a perfect players game and probably a 8 or better on the 'collector scale'... and all for about HALF of what it could have been. Was quite a steal.. and made possible through great friends! My friend Brian who pointed me to it, and my friend Eric who on no notice made it possible to go get! Awesome. Check out photos of the game on my flickr set Some teasers IMG_3458 IMG_3433

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