# General Pinball Repair & Troubleshooting Tips - Pinball Expo 2025 - Pinball News

**Source:** Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2025)  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2025-10-19  
**Duration:** 60m 56s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZLREbM9-Bw

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## Analysis

A technical seminar at Pinball Expo 2025 covering pinball repair and troubleshooting fundamentals. Two experienced technicians—one from Past Times Arcade with 32 years in gaming/electrical engineering and Frank (a contributor to pinball repair resources)—discuss diagnostic approaches for electromechanical, solid-state, and modern Stern machines, covering lamp matrices, solenoids, switch matrices, and common failure modes. The session emphasizes methodical troubleshooting, proper tools/parts sourcing, and avoidance of common mistakes like shotgun repairs and working on powered machines.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The speaker has worked in the gaming industry for 32 years since age 18, including 2 days at Penn Gaming as a spot technician. — _Speaker self-identification during introduction_
- [HIGH] AI (ChatGPT) is unreliable for pinball repair advice and will produce fabricated information like references to non-existent 'flex capacitors' in games. — _Speaker demonstrated AI hallucination example; cautioned against using it as repair resource_
- [HIGH] Bally lamp matrix transistor 5060 is also used in Jukebox trip relays and modern solid-state machines. — _Speaker cross-referenced transistor application from personal troubleshooting experience_
- [HIGH] Early Bally and Stern games use individual bulb driving (not matrix), making jumper wire testing effective for isolating transistor vs. connector failures. — _Technical troubleshooting methodology explained; corroborated by Frank_
- [HIGH] Gottlieb System 1/80 and System 3/7 share address lines between lamps and switches, creating cascade failures where blown lamp fuses can disable switch matrix. — _Speaker posed as technical question, audience unfamiliar; experienced troubleshooters have encountered this_
- [HIGH] Stern Star Wars Comic Pro cabinets shipped with outdated code (.88 release) that failed to update via USB; resolving required swapping node board from another game or using SD card image approach. — _Frank recounted direct customer service experience; Stern support offered no legacy update files_
- [MEDIUM] Stern no longer retains historical software updates—only current versions are kept; old updates are deleted after release. — _Frank's direct communication with Stern support; limitation creates service challenges for older code versions_
- [HIGH] Counterfeit parts (particularly TIP102 transistors from eBay) can function normally for 5-6 cycles then fail catastrophically with thermal runaway/fire risk. — _Speaker recounted direct experience with fake parts procured from eBay causing coil lockup and smoke_
- [HIGH] Parts should be sourced from reputable distributors (Mouser, Jigikey, Newark) rather than eBay/Amazon/cheap Chinese suppliers due to counterfeit risk. — _Strong recommendation based on professional experience; universal consensus in repair community_
- [HIGH] Williams machines commonly suffer flasher lead damage when playfield lifted carelessly with flash lamps installed, crushing leads and damaging driver board. — _Repair technician observation from field work; common failure pattern_

### Notable Quotes

> "I'm an electrical engineer, I do design circuits, AC and DC development...I am a computer programmer by trade in nine different languages, very proficient at cross compilations."
> — **Lead technician (Past Times Arcade)**, ~5:00
> _Establishes credibility and expertise scope; indicates deep technical background spanning multiple specialties_

> "Don't shotgun repair things. I normally recommend inspect everything. Everything has a cause and effect."
> — **Lead technician**, ~15:30
> _Core troubleshooting philosophy; advocates systematic diagnosis over trial-and-error_

> "I don't really recommend it as a source for fixing things because it's still learning like we were learning when we were younger it makes a lot of mistakes."
> — **Lead technician**, ~12:00
> _Warning about AI hallucinations in pinball repair context; practical guidance on tool limitations_

> "Never underestimate the design of the engineers. If you re-engineer it, you're going to make it worse. You could do more damage to the game."
> — **Lead technician**, ~55:00
> _Philosophy against modifying original designs; caution about unintended consequences_

> "I can't tell this guy he's got to buy a $200 note board. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it."
> — **Frank**, ~65:00
> _Frustration with Stern support suggestions; reveals tension between troubleshooting skill and manufacturer support limitations_

> "Stern says, oh, maybe you need a note board...So then after all this, I get it to update, and it works."
> — **Frank**, ~64:00
> _Documents Stern support inadequacy; problem-solving perseverance despite institutional obstacles_

> "Don't work on the game with the power on. How many in here do that? I don't even abide by that rule all the time, but yeah, turn it off."
> — **Frank**, ~30:00
> _Safety advice with candid acknowledgment of rule-breaking; honest about industry practice vs. best practice_

> "Buy it at a reputable source...cheap stuff like that can damage your board so buy it at a reputable source like I said I normally recommend Mouser, Jigikey, Newmark."
> — **Lead technician**, ~50:00
> _Strong vendor recommendation based on counterfeit risk; practical sourcing guidance_

> "I think the CPU has...four addresses for 4-bit decoding, BDC. It'll take it down to those latches and so forth and then decode it to where it needs to go."
> — **Lead technician**, ~40:00
> _Technical explanation of CPU addressing architecture; foundational concept for advanced troubleshooting_

> "This is my favorite. What's unique about the System 3 switch matrix? They actually share the same address lines as the lamps."
> — **Lead technician**, ~58:00
> _Technical insight into obscure design quirk that creates cascade failure potential; teaching moment_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Past Times Arcade | organization | Arcade venue where lead technician is tech lead; games in free play area maintained by his team; location for teaching seminars |
| Lead Technician (Unnamed) | person | 32 years gaming industry experience; electrical engineer; computer programmer in 9 languages; lead tech at Past Times Arcade; repair specialist for pre-war to modern Stern machines |
| Frank | person | Co-presenter at seminar; contributor to pinball repair websites/Facebook; field technician with customer service experience; specializes in Stern machine updates and troubleshooting |
| Penn Gaming | organization | Large gaming operator where lead technician worked as spot technician for 2 days |
| Dr. Scott | person | Owner/operator of Dr. Scott's arcade; provided repair work opportunities; gifted lead technician an electronics reference bible |
| Stern Pinball | company | Modern pinball manufacturer; subject of code update issues, node board problems, and software support gaps; makes Star Wars Comic Pro, Guardians of the Galaxy |
| Bally | company | Historical pinball manufacturer; machines commonly used for repair training due to affordability; lamp/switch matrix architecture discussed |
| Williams | company | Historical pinball manufacturer; machines discussed for lamp matrix, flasher lead damage, Data East cross-over design patterns |
| Data East | company | Historical pinball manufacturer; lamp/solenoid/switch matrix architecture similar to Williams |
| Gottlieb | company | Historical pinball manufacturer; System 1/80 and System 3/7 discussed for unique shared address line between lamps and switches |
| Marco Specialties | company | Pinball parts supplier; sells transistor testers and components; vendor with markup but reliable source |
| Mouser | company | Electronic parts distributor; recommended source for transistors, diodes, chips to avoid counterfeits |
| Jigikey | company | Electronic parts distributor; recommended source for components |
| Newark | company | Electronic parts distributor; recommended source for components |
| eBay | company | Cautioned against as parts source due to counterfeit risk; example given of fake TIP102 transistors causing thermal runaway |
| Amazon | company | Cautioned against as parts source due to counterfeits from Chinese distributors |
| Pinball Expo 2025 | event | Location of this repair and troubleshooting seminar |
| Airborne Avengers | game | Atari arcade game at Past Times Arcade destroyed by lightning strike power surge |
| Black Knight | game | Vintage pinball machine owned by Frank's customer; required maintenance over time |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | game | Stern pinball machine owned by Frank's customer; node board cable referenced in troubleshooting example |
| Star Wars Comic Pro | game | Stern pinball cabinet owned by Frank's customer; shipped with outdated code; failed update scenario documented |
| Evil Knievel | game | Bally machine noted for animation requiring lamp sharing in matrix design |
| Zecharia | game | Import game where choke transistor failure caused dimmer-than-normal lamps |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Lamp matrix troubleshooting (Bally/Williams), Solenoid and coil diagnostics, Switch matrix architecture across manufacturers, Counterfeit parts and sourcing reliability, Stern code updates and node board issues, Transistor testing and replacement techniques
- **Secondary:** CPU and PIA architecture in pinball machines, Addressable LED chains on modern machines

### Sentiment

**Neutral** (0.55) — Pragmatic, educational tone. Frustration evident regarding AI limitations, counterfeit parts, and Stern support deficiencies, but balanced by enthusiasm for troubleshooting methodology and community knowledge-sharing. Occasional humor and self-deprecation lighten serious technical content.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Stern support offers expensive component replacements (node board at ~$200) before exhausting troubleshooting; may reflect support model prioritizing upsell over diagnostics. (confidence: medium) — Frank's resistance to recommending node board replacement; belief that thorough diagnostics was being bypassed
- **[event_signal]** Pinball Expo 2025 includes repair and troubleshooting seminars as major educational track; vendors present; hands-on community engagement around technical topics. (confidence: high) — Multi-hour seminar format; vendor acknowledgments; interactive Q&A; parts lists shared with attendees
- **[community_signal]** Pinball repair community emphasizes reputable parts sourcing (Mouser, Jigikey, Newark) over cost-cutting suppliers; counterfeit risk is well-documented and discussed at industry events like Pinball Expo. (confidence: high) — Seminar dedicated time to parts sourcing; speaker shared multiple personal experiences with fake parts; audience engagement on topic
- **[community_signal]** Repair technicians actively contribute to online forums (Pinside, K-Lover) and maintain technical resource websites; community peer support strong in pinball repair space. (confidence: medium) — Speaker referenced forum participation; Frank's website contributions; Marco's pocket-sized LED tester tool adoption
- **[design_philosophy]** Repair technicians advocate against re-engineering original pinball machine designs; believe unintended consequences and damage risk exceed benefits of modification. (confidence: high) — Speaker stated: 'Never underestimate the design of the engineers. If you re-engineer it, you're going to make it worse.'
- **[market_signal]** Addressable LED chains on modern pinball machines (Pinball Brothers mentioned) create new failure modes; chained architecture means single failed LED can disable entire downstream chain; speaker flagged as emerging troubleshooting focus area for future seminars. (confidence: medium) — Speaker noted donated playfield experience; stated 'I'm thinking I may start talking a lot about newer machines next year because that's become, obviously, the new thing'
- **[industry_signal]** Safety violations (working on powered machines) are acknowledged as commonplace despite best practices; industry culture tolerates risk-taking among experienced technicians. (confidence: medium) — Frank's candid admission: 'I don't even abide by that rule all the time, but yeah, turn it off'; audience laughter indicating common experience
- **[licensing_signal]** Stern machines use proprietary software update mechanisms (USB stick, SD card image, network node board communication) with limited backward compatibility and no legacy version retention. (confidence: high) — Frank's troubleshooting journey with Star Wars Comic Pro; 40-minute download times; SD card image approach workaround
- **[personnel_signal]** Lead technician at Past Times Arcade has 32-year gaming industry background and deep electrical engineering expertise; represents rare combination of theoretical knowledge and field experience. (confidence: high) — Speaker self-identification; breadth of technical topics covered; audience deference to expertise
- **[product_concern]** Stern Star Wars Comic Pro experienced software update failure; node board required cable swap from Guardians of the Galaxy to resolve; Stern support attributed to multiple update pushes rather than identifying actual root cause (defective network interface on cabinet node board). (confidence: high) — Frank's direct customer service experience; 2-month troubleshooting timeline; Stern's dismissive response ('maybe you need a note board') contradicted by successful update using different hardware path
- **[technology_signal]** Stern no longer retains historical/legacy software updates; only current versions maintained; creates service gap for machines stuck on old code versions that cannot be recovered. (confidence: high) — Frank's direct inquiry to Stern support: 'Well, no, we don't have it. I guess you just throw it away. When it's done, we just delete everything. That's not current.'

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## Transcript

 I actually didn't really drag Frank into it, but he kind of made a mention. He's like, that would be kind of cool to actually have two brains up here that you can stump to chump, basically. Hey, you're late, Mr. Fix. But that's okay. We'll pick on him. I did a quick Cliff Notes type thing, because I'm sure you guys have seen some of my slideshows and stuff in the past. I've talked about repair and troubleshooting on different types of games I do a lot of stuff and I will show you some I don't have many pictures but if we want to see some pictures of some horror stories at past times I can probably share those as well but I don't know what I have on my laptop obviously this is troubleshooting again I love doing troubleshooting because that's what I do best we're going to do a little quick overview what not to do understanding issues which is what we try to do in the field so if you have a problem you're like what do we do to solve the problems parts on hand i do have a little sheet that i can email or share to you via google if you want that's fine some resources and of course this is all about you guys i don't want to stick to a a slide show that could be boring but I want to know what you guys think that we could repair or what do you want to repair that type of deal if that makes sense. So obviously who am I? Obviously I'm a human. I've been in the actual gaming industry for 32 years since I was 18. So I've seen a lot of things, I've done a lot of things. I'm an electrical engineer, I do design circuits, AC and DC development. If you guys don't know what that is, obviously that's basically taking something and making something better and so forth. I am a computer programmer by trade in nine different languages, very proficient at cross compilations so if somebody wants something on a Commodore, I'll make it work on an IBM, easy. I am also the lead tech at Past Times Arcade so a lot of the games that are in the free play area, I have touched. So if it's broke, don't blame me. Blame the other guys. Where are they at? They're supposed to be in here. I told my two techs that they have to be in the show, and I don't see them, so I'm going to have to write them up for a tardy note. Yeah, I know. They don't want to see me. I did work for Penn Gaming. Anybody know what Penn Gaming is? Spot technician for the big guys. How long do you think I lasted there? Two days. that's enough I won't say many things if you guys want to know I will tell you personally I'm not gonna say it because this stuff does get streamed on the internet I am also a musician I just recently acquired my ham radio operators license farthest contact is California which is cool and on my spare time I do DJing I'm also married for 13 years my wife's not here yet she's such to be down here for kids and they are all out of the house I'm sure you guys know that feeling it's amazing but the big thing I do is I do like to spend a lot of time with a family so the overview obviously we're gonna try to use some basic troubleshooting I'm not going to go into elaborate details because you can't squeeze it all in a one-hour but I want to see what you guys want to talk about too I do work on games from the pre-war era electromechanical solid-state and of course some of the modern stern stuff I can repair stern boards but I will not repair your board for you I try to do stuff in house it's at past times unfortunately like I said I will open it up to seminar if you guys have questions answers you guys and shout out raise your hand whatever some of the common tools on hand which I did mention that will give you that slideshow as well and what to do obviously when you can't get it fixed don't panic we can help you that's why we're here and of course this is maybe the same thing for you Frank You don't mind answering questions, too, at the pinball show if they see a tug on your shoulder, correct? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I put my tech articles out on my website and on my Facebook page, and it's all really based on things that I'm experiencing at the moment or have recently had to deal with. But I don't know what you have to deal with, so feel free to reach out to me, whether it be on Facebook or even here at the show. Just grab me and pull me aside, and I'll do what I can to help you out. If we can't really figure it out here, you can reach out later and we'll work on it when you're back home in front of your game again. Yeah. Now, this is my fun part. I will obviously give you things what not to do. How many people have used AI? I am so sorry. I found this just punching this into AI. anybody notice anything strange in there looks pretty straightforward but that first one is kinda scary it says obviously be specific about the manufacturer game if it does not exist doesn't have a flex capacitor have you seen one in a game yet bullshit back to the future no actually I'm sorry I made that up actually I edit that in real time just like our famous scammers like to do to everybody so no that's actually a good example of what AI does put out there I don't really recommend it as a source for fixing things because it's still learning like we were learning when we were younger it makes a lot of mistakes it will do and unfortunately you can't get around those mistakes with AI unfortunately wait till they take over the world and we're all screwed every time I use chat GPT I always say please thank you a good morning so when it kills us maybe it'll kill me quickly and painlessly I will lose my voice because I did a lot of talking yesterday helping a lot of the vendors get set up any vendors in here everything working good awesome that's what we like to hear I do use a lot of online forums I don't post on Facebook forums because I don't like inflamed for telling the right answer I'm sure we've seen that I just did a post on that the other day yeah it's it's scary I mean 30 years doing this stuff I don't know what I'm doing and I'm telling you something there's a problem you don't want to accept that the K love forums is awesome too because they do have a small section for pinball repair I only hang out there for video games because obviously at past times we do have a lot of video games I do a little bit of contribution to helping hack ROMs for free play so I don't have to drill holes in your doors I'm sure you guys don't like that on games plays pinball games you guys you could still find those out there I know he's posted some on his website pinball repair.com i believe pin repair that's right thank you pin wiki yes it's a great resource there's a lot of stuff in there especially some of the newer stuff fortunately i don't use it because obviously everything's in here after years you do it who remembers uncle willie there we go those were good hip tips back then too this is dates how long i've been doing this stuff The other thing too is you can hit up your local vendors and operators in your town if you can't figure out something. They sure know how to fix things because obviously they have a route to keep stuff maintained. Pinball is they say phone a friend. I call Frank all the time. No, I'm just kidding. I know. Dave calls me like 10 times a week. And of course, I know, I'm sorry. I told you I'd pick on this man. Catches me while I'm working on something at past times all the time. This is one of my favorite ones. Don't shotgun repair things. How many people jump in and say, I know what is going on. I normally recommend inspect everything. Everything has a cause and effect. If there's fire, you look for it, wherever it was. The other thing, when I was doing a lot of repairs at Dr. Scott's, the thing I always have a problem with is the customer never knew what happened when the game failed. So I was like, what were you doing when it stopped? And they really said nothing. So it was always a pain in the ass to try to figure out what happened to the game. But luckily we were able to fix things over the years and make things happy. This is one we do stress because we don't over fuse things. Frank's made his fair share of foil fuses in the past. No, I'm just kidding. That's probably a blank slide. Yeah, understanding the issue. Actually, can I add something to that? Yeah, go for it. Don't work on the game with the power on. How many in here do that? I don't even abide by that rule all the time, but yeah, turn it off. Save yourself a lot of potential headaches. this is obviously it's going to be a cliff note version because i don't want to you know elaborate too too in depth because i can confuse a lot of people i can make you smarter but it's i said we're going to talk about obviously lamps and solenoids the cpu side i didn't write much on sound but i can probably do a lot of that from my head no power obviously is a big one because everybody gets new games that are used probably on facebook or ebay which is the worst you know because you never know what you're going to get. Typical features in toys. A lot of these new games do have toys. They are starting to break. I'm sure you guys have seen that a little bit. New Stern stuff. No? You said no? No, I'm not being mean to Stern. Like I said, things break because obviously they need to improve products and make them better. And they do. And that's the best thing about Stern. This is a couple of things I pulled from my slides. This is one for the lamps. How many people understand how the lamp matrix works on the Bally machines? A little crash course here, obviously, because I like picking on Bally machines and Early Williams because they're cheap. That's a good starter machine for most people to get into. Obviously, I broke this down. Obviously, every decoder has a section of lamps that it controls. And I'm trying to look at both sides. It's crazy having two screens this year. every decoder goes obviously to some of the times I think it's like 16 lamps per no it's not eight give or take eight or ten somewhere on there I can't remember but they'll break them down in different sections it's good to troubleshoot them in this way so you know where your problems at where to target that and it will break it down to where it actually is in the schematic there'll be like little Q markers there in the left half portion of the screen here. So in your manual obviously it will be a lot clearer than this stuff. So obviously each drive transistor for a lamp already has an associated lamp transistor associated with it. Sometimes there may be an asterisk next to it which means obviously there are two lamps being driven by the circuit. So you might see that on a lot of Bally games, mainly I think Evel Knievel's one that does a lot of that stuff. Anything that has animation because they're trying to share the number of circuits on the board. Is that pretty straightforward and pretty easy to understand? Any questions? Because this is where we open this up a little bit too. This is some of the common transistors used for the lamp matrix. The typical value is 5060. You can use a 5064 if you want to in a pinch. Does anybody know what that also can be used for? It plays music. Thieberg jukeboxes actually use the same transistor for the trip relay on most of the modern solid state machines. I found that out the hard way because I was looking for it, and I cross-referenced it, and put one in my jukebox, and it actually works perfectly. The DataEast and Williams, they obviously use the common tip 102. You may see 122s, and the other one I think is 120 for the columns, and obviously the drives for the rows is obviously 40. I did make sure that's correct because I always get them confused, like our brains were losing their memories. typical stern and white star you have a question if it's having a problem is it working that's a trick question is the truth what I normally do is obviously some some lamps and some games especially valleys to be stuck on we know that's a shorted transistor I've seen some cases in import games like Zecharia that the choke transistor it may work but the light would be dimmer than normal which means it's not putting out a full output probably one of the gates is screwed up on the transistor testing them is another story you can test a typical 5060s unfortunately I don't use a tester for any of my work. I actually do things with a voltmeter. Pretty straightforward, just crisscross on the things. And if you see the values go like 1.6 ohm, it will show that it's out of spec. It should be like 0.4, if I remember right. Almost like a diode, basically. Yeah. So the early Bally and Stern games don't use a matrix like the Williams did. Each bulb is driven individually. So if you lift your play field up and your 2x light doesn't work and you have it in a lamp test and the 3x is, you just take a jumper wire and jump it from the tab from one to the other And if the bulb lights then you know the bulb and the socket are good But now it may not be the transistor It could be the connector up at the top Those little 0 pins are getting old and tired and I can tell you how many hours I spent rebuilding those connectors to just solve a lot of problems. So on the early Bally-Sterns, the quickest way is just to run a jumper wire next to an adjacent lamp. If it's only one light, it's not the transistor. If eight aren't working, then it could be. And the way you would find that out is you would look at your lamp matrix chart, and then you would see if the other seven are on the same column or on the same row. Then you go back to the board. Then the next easiest thing to do is when you look at your schematic and you see what pin it goes to on the board, you pull the connector off and you jump it one over. And then if everything lights, now you know the problem is further up on the board. And speaking of stuff like that, since you do have a Williams, Marco does have a cool little tester tool that you can buy that actually breaks out the lamp matrix on a little LED 8x8. Yeah. It's amazing. That fits in your pocket, like that big, yeah. If it's your friend's, you can steal it, put it in your pocket, and you won't know. Very good to do. The way I used to test it was very similar to what Frank had just did, because we move it down. And you can troubleshoot a lamp matrix real quick that way and find out which row and column is actually failing. That works with switch matrixes as well. Yep. Now, I did put this side comment note. I'll get you here in a second, Roland. I'm thinking I may start talking a lot about newer machines next year because that's become, obviously, the new thing. Addressable lamps are fun to work with. Anybody work with them in the raw, which means programming like the Arduinos. and you know from homebrews obviously if one is missing nothing else in the chain works correctly so maybe i'm thinking we talk about something like that next year because this is starting to become problems too because i've seen uh pinball brothers i've had to in fact i donated a playfield on the project pinball don't be afraid to bid on it to help out a good cause we did swap our alien play field and what i noticed too about their addressable because they are chained when one of the leds actually fell off on the targets because they light their targets from behind it affected a lot of things behind a chain but if i think they did it smart they put all their targets on the last set of numbers so obviously addressable means that 10 would light up red on this circuit and so forth you basically go down the row and anything below it would stop working if that 10 was missing that make a little sense now for addressables Rowan you on the valleys yep getting tired from opening and closing but yeah that is a common problem we don't see that very often but it does happen a little bit of quick notes on the solenoid stuff I didn't do a lot of stuff on this obviously we were talking about this a little bit locate and note what has failed especially when you're working on newer games that you have no idea get that paper out and start making notes because may you see a common problem in the way that's designed because you may see some things that are not working underneath it. Very similar to the lamp matrix, they do chain the common power for all their solenoids because you could have like a pop bumper that may stop working, the one maybe next to it, and you can find out that the actual wire is broken off that carries the power to the next one and so forth. And it's also the same for flash lamps as well. Some Williams machines had a lot of problems with that when they stacked a lot of flashers in the back. Now this does happen too because when people are not careful lifting a playfield up with flash lamps on Williams, they crush the leads together and actually do damage to the driver board. We do use schematics obviously to locate the drive transistor and it may have failed. So solenoids are real tricky to work on when you have no idea. How many people can read a schematic? This is good. Okay, that's awesome. So obviously we follow things backwards in the chain. You start from the source, obviously the coil. Is it locked on? Is it still locked on? Then we go back and basically go backwards from the schematic, from the IC. Listen to this one, Dave. You might learn something. No. you're listening okay obviously replace the ice you know I say this if it's stuck on consistently normally we target the transition I think I wrote that wrong I feel bad we target the transistor that drives it there's always see a pre drive that's runs them like I said this is also common for Dade East Williams, Stern, and Valley. If it's still stuck on then we go back another step. Let's see Williams they actually use a 7408 if I remember right. That's why we keep schematics. So if you have them in your game you study it but go backwards and if it's still locked on then we go another step further. 408 is before. So it's the 7408, the pre, and then the drive. The 7408 is there to keep the game from running if the blanking circuit isn't working. So if you have a whole bunch of things out, then you could look at that chip, but I've seen it affect just one or two things at a time. Especially if it's a catastrophic failure. They're always fun. Yep. And obviously everything goes back to a latch. You know what a latch is? Electronics? A little quick education, obviously. The CPU talks to the peripheral PIAs. You guys heard the terminology PIAs? Well, you've got to tell the other boss what to do. The latches. The latch will actually determine what gates get the appropriate signal. It will divide it where it needs to go. And then that goes, obviously, to the pre-drive transistor and then the drive. And, of course, when that fails, we hate changing the PIAs because that's 40 pins of hell. I've seen some really bad troubleshooting or actually bad soldering from people that don't know how to solder and I've had to fix boards that were completely damaged from traces ripped off the board because of this chip. This is the last one. If it gets really bad, oil fuses, which has happened, it can take out an address line on the CPU. CPU may still work. I think the CPU has, I think that's four addresses for 4-bit decoding, BDC. It'll take it down to those latches and so forth and then decode it to where it needs to go. But yeah, you can actually have a CPU that has a bad address line that can cause things not to work correctly as well. Pretty accurate? Yeah, I think I should have stayed in bed. You don't need my help. That's right. Switch matrix. very simple to all manufacturers are different did you know that Valley did stuff direct to a point they do have some latches I think it's a 40 49 if I remember right somewhere they control my obviously on the left side of the board we do have a two plugs one is obviously for the door one is for the the actual play field. A common thing I see obviously is the pins. These pins headers are starting to corrode or erode because of the age. Replace everything with new pin headers if in doubt. I do recommend it obviously because they're they're failing. Williams and Data East and I will say this thing for White Star because White Star does strobing. We know what strobing is? Not streaking, strobing. Obviously, you guys are listening. There's a chip on there that actually strobes, like the WPC uses the ULN2803. Very common chip that fails, especially when people are working with the games on. Anybody guilty? I guess I saw some hands earlier. I've done it too, so it's okay. put a socket on it and say, oh, shit, I fucked it up. Can we say that, Martin? Okay, good. This is PG-13, just so you know. Now, speaking of that 2803 chip, we replaced them. We just socket them. And WPC boards, like, don't even look at them the wrong way. The traces are very, very delicate. I just cut the chip out. Get a good, what is it, the blue handle? I can't think of what it is. Good flight cutter, a good one. I think it's planar. Yeah, somebody, but don't get like a cheapy one. Get a good one and just cut the chip off, cut the legs. I actually saw this on an Atari Tech Bulletin years ago, and you just cut the chip off, you cut the legs, and you lift the body out, and then gently go down the line, reheat each pin, pull them out, clean them out real good. And you can still do damage, but if you don't get those holes cleaned out right and you're trying to pull that chip out, you're going to wish that you had to just cut the thing out because it's just more aggravation than it's worth. I'll tell you what I'll add on to that, too, especially when pulling the chip, you know, when you cup some, because that's the same thing I do. I cut the chips off the board. Do not crank your soldering iron up to full max, because that causes a lot of problems. I repair a lot of Atari boards. Unfortunately, I had one at past times, Airborne Avengers. Who's ever been there? Unfortunately, it died because we did have a power spike from a lightning strike that was nearby. Only game that did not survive. That's pretty damn good. but with the Atari's they used I think the I'm going to say this wrong probably I think they used lead traces on the top because everything was lead based breathe deep cut that cut it off the board and actually extract the pins directly and then socket socket socket White Star obviously is very similar to Data East and I got other words for White Star but I'm not going to say it this is a PG-13 thing Gotlip System 1 and 80 are actually very similar to the System 3 and 7 era. They use a little different way of doing things. This is my favorite. What's unique about the System 3 switch matrix? Do you know? Oh, I do. They actually share the same address lines as the lamps. so sometimes you can have a fuse on your lamps go out and your switches don't work surprise I've never seen that did I stump you see hey I'm here to learn too that's right I've had that seen that problem a lot where it keeps saying there's multiple cascading switches going at once and you notice there's something odd that your lamps aren't working check the fuses don't over fuse I can share this list with you. I know it's really small, but I can share this list with you. And these are some of the parts I do recommend having on hand. Do you want me to read it off or just answer a question? Anybody got any questions? Yes. Do you want me to share it to you? I'll get your email address and I can share it to you. How's that? I can even share other ones. I can bring up another one. I have another one in here as well. I taught some stuff at past times. So we can bring that up as well. You'll see a couple slides that were copied from it. This is one of them. Obviously this runs down all the fuses and all the lamps, unless you're doing LEDs. Transistors. This is all stuff I do recommend having on hand. I do have alternate cross-reference numbers as well, because that's always handy to know. I do recommend if you're going to be working on a lot of games get one of the little electronics bibles it's pocket hell I don't have it with me and for my mind mine was actually gifted to me Dr. Scott actually because he said that I would need this in the future and obviously Scott is doing fine for all those that want to know he's he's hanging in there diodes obviously keep those on hand obviously bridge rectifier and obviously all these different chips and I was nice enough and I actually put the part numbers on there for you where's the place where you shouldn't buy parts at Bueller I express there you go there eBay eBay or I mean you oh I need the 6502 it's a dollar on eBay but at Mauser it's ten dollars by the ten dollar part because you're gonna you don't know what you're getting when you buy the cheap book it'd be bad it could be a counterfeit you don't know this is another one too it's a shocker amazon don't do that same places same chinese distributors obviously uh i have seen my fair share of fake parts you have to uh it's horrible when you're working on especially my my worst one i think i've had in my day was working i think scott bought the chips he bought them because we needed them he bought them off eBay they turned out that the tip 102s would work great five or six times and all of a sudden that soil locked on smoke fire everything we didn't call the fire department unfortunately but it's it's scary to see you know cheap stuff like that can damage your board so buy it at a reputable source like I said I normally recommend Mouser, Jigikey, Newmark of course at a good price places like Marco they do sell stuff obviously they do have a markup on it but if you're in the hobby you need to buy them in bulk you're going to be fixing a lot of stuff what about the questions and answers but I can slip over to the other slide if you want does everybody have any questions yes Thank you Did you change the coil too I assuming A big problem on a lot of that stuff because that's a metal chute. It's picking up a lot of metal dust from the ball. Not necessarily. That's stainless steel. Your coil sleeve. That's the first thing I would target. Never underestimate the design of the engineers. If you re-engineer it, you're going to make it worse. You could do more damage to the game. I've seen people hack things from, especially a lot of imported games over the years, containers of games. I mean, God, I wish I still have it still. seen you know like people re-engineered a display where they started one on top of the other DMD that's a lot of fucking work it surprisingly it worked I've seen people hack thing I think might have a couple slides in here people's really bad hack jobs very rare very rare unless it was stuck on at one time or froze kicking it may have fatigued the windings it's pretty unusual unless it shorts out i would uh take it apart put a fresh sleeve in clean the plunger and then look at the tip make sure the tip's not broken off or rounded or worn as they say in archer just the tip okay this is a slideshow i did bring up at past times because we did do a lot of teaching on classes i I did this for two hours. We had a smaller group, probably about 25 people, more one-on-one. Obviously, these are some of the basic things they have on hand. And I'm sure you agree with this list, Frank. Oh, you can't read. I know. I'm sorry. It says volt meters. No. What's a volt? What's a volt? Actually, I got something I'm going to bring up for you just for giggles. Frank brought up a really good one on his forums. How many got new to your Stern games? There's another part to this one. There you go, sir. I'll let you take this for a second. Let me get my voice back a little bit. All right, so first a little bit of a background story. I have a customer. He's got an original Black Knight. He's got a Guardians of the Galaxy and a Stern comic pro, Star Wars comic pro. And I went out and I worked on his Black Knight a few times. And, you know, the stern didn't need it. They wiped them down a bit. And I was there a couple times. And the one time I'm there, I see they hadn't been updated at all since they were new. And they had like, you know, whatever the release code was, .88 or whatever. So I update the Guardians. It's fine. I go to update the stern or the Star Wars. And it goes fine. And then it won't update the cabinet node board. So I've tried a few times. I redownloaded the update. And on this guy's laptop, because I don't always carry my laptop, you know, It took like 40 minutes to download it. Tried it a few times. I left. I'm like, all right, let me contact Stern. I emailed them, and they said, yeah, maybe you tried pushing too many updates through. I said, okay, can you get me an older update? Well, no, we don't have it. I guess you just throw it away. When it's done, we just delete everything. That's not current. So I tried getting an SD card, and for some reason I had issues downloading the update. If you know on the Sterns, if you have any problems with the SD card, you can download the SD card image and just put the new SD card in. you don't always have to just do it through the USB stick because the SD cards do fail occasionally so after, I mean I wasn't dealing with it every single day but it was about two months went by so finally I got the SD card to update, I took it to the guy's house, I plugged it in and it still didn't work so now I'm pissed off I ripped the cable out, the network cable out between the cabinet node board and the logic and I pull it out of the guardians, I plug it in and damn it, it works it updates and everything, now the other side I didn't say is that I did take the node board out and tried another game, and it updated, and it was fine. And Stern says, oh, maybe you need a note board. I can't tell this guy he's got to buy a $200 note board. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it. So then after all this, I get it to update, and it works. We get another network cable, plug it in, it's fine. And then I remember he had said before on one of the other visits that I was there is that sometimes the start button wouldn't flash or the lockdown bar wouldn't. But after a while, it would finally come on. So long story short, it was one bad wire in the strand of eight. So I bought a cheapy network cable tester. So if you were working even on the Jersey Jack, because they use the Ethernet cables too, if you are working on a game and you have like a really unusual problem, sometimes you just got to check stupid stuff. Like it's always like, oh, I looked everywhere. It's not there. Well, now you have to look in places where it normally wouldn't be because that's probably where it is. So you don't think a cable is going to go bad. They're like $8, $10 or something. You can get them on Amazon, eBay, whatever. I got mine from Micro Center. It was $8. That's actually a Klein one. That'll do. Yeah, this is a little bit fancier. If you work in networking or whatever, you have a use for the higher end stuff. But you just basically need to see if all the wires are good and you're getting connection all the way through. And the nice thing is they come into like, are these paired or no? That's a phone, I think, one too. Okay. So like the one I have is two pieces and then they slide apart and then you have the main one with the battery, you plug it into one end. So this would work like if you're in your house, if you're running network cable in your house and you can take the other end of the other room and you'll just see all the lights will blink down you see that it's working but in the game you still need to be able to separate it because you don't always have to take the cable out so you plug one into the other cable plug in the other if it's good well at least you pretty have a pretty good idea that that's not the problem but that's not always the case that's the fun of troubleshooting because parts will test good but fail under a load you know it's like you take your meter and you oh i you know i diode tested this transistor well yeah when you're just measuring the gates it's one thing but now you're asking the transistor to do work and it doesn't want to do anything so and that's also part of the fun of fixing things that somebody else messed with, which we can elaborate on that another time. That's a seminar by itself. As I say, the tester is something you can actually get away with buying on Teemo because that's something real simple. They can't screw that up. Well. Alright. I'm going to lose my voice when I'm on the floor out there, but yeah, what's up? depending on what it is now if it's surface mount yes hell yeah you know the static in that thing no older electronics has a higher tolerance for static I've never really seen in my time working on boards that wrist strap was actually needed even though it practiced a good protocol which is good like it but no when I do surface mount I'm working on stuff for Stern games pinball brothers because I've had to fix yeah that board a few times I burn a lot of transistors on our alien because we got one of the first alien machines so we were like any pig we got to test a lot of the hardware it's working great now so after a few revisions of the software and upsites so good question though good question although I did have a fun little story I did blow up a transistor with static I was getting ready to replace one in the board and I grabbed it out of the drawer and I dropped it and when I bent down to pick it up I had a static discharge on the floor and I'm like I wonder if I blew this thing up and I measured it yep it was blown up so it does happen yeah yeah so is a picture tube that's fine we love picture tubes Obviously, these are some of the things I always talk about. We always inspect harnesses and cable, inspect other people's work, ensure that a ground plug is installed. Ooh, got that little soy on it. Just quickly, people are like, oh, do I need these grounds? Yes, you need the grounds. I had a guy call me up. He had a Superman and a Bally Star Trek. And he says, my grandkids are playing a game and they're getting shocked. I'm like, well, you wearing bare feet? He said, no, they were never having any problems, but the ladies, the housekeepers were here and they moved stuff around. So they broke the ground prong off of the Star Trek when they unplugged it, but I actually took pictures I'm going to write it up. I measured 60 volts AC between the two games Yep, so yes, you need the ground track Yeah, but you can actually find that out by actually putting the voltmeter on the rails. That's what I mean That's what I did. I went from lockdown bar to lockdown bar. I was getting 60 volts AC I'm guilty of everything so I'm still alive so you do pre power up obviously this is something when I get a new game I tell people to disconnect things and just basically do things in a systematic way plug things in slowly always start with your CPU and then work up newer games white star other words for that I won't say it out loud they have to have the driver board and and CBU talking all the time. It's called communications. Like kids, they have to listen. They have to talk back. Did you have a question? You're overseas, that might be something totally different. Because I think you guys don't, do you guys have a ground line over there? Okay. See, I know with import games, I see a lot of them that just have two prongs. I don't know if there's exceptions to that. That's a good one. Yeah. Very similar to what we see here with the, talking about the getting electric cues there a little bit. We know about test points, don't we? Nobody? This is a Bally machine, obviously. I broke this out a little bit easier so people can understand. I can share this one as well. Dave Fix over there making noise. Oh, you notice he left? Where's he at? He's supposed to learn things. Obviously, test points are your friend for testing machines. if it doesn't match what the voltage says on the schematic, target it in those areas, check fuses, everything. Same, I mean, it feels like we're preaching to you. It's always, you know, always the fuse's fault. Bally stern things, this obviously shows how it breaks down a little bit. And things, what to stay away from, there's one in there, there's a high voltage one, that's why the one's in red. Don't rub up against that one. These are some alternate board replacements. This one's actually pretty decent by golf. But what if, obviously, we do have aftermarket boards, and we can see that a lot of these newer boards are very well built. Very well built. Yeah, I know there's a lot of those. I know sometimes you want to fix original boards and keep them original, and after a while it's just not worth it. Like that valley rectifier board, the bridges get hot, the connectors get burned up from the GI. just to sit there and try to fix it, it just isn't worth it anymore. Yeah. Fortunately, this is actually a really clean one. We don't see many burnt ones. Yeah, if it's clean and it's, you know, don't fix it if it isn't broken, but most of the time these need to be replaced. And any time I have a customer with a Bally game, if it's got, you know, that little rectifier board on it, I 90% of the time just tell them to replace it. Yep. Newer is better. Okay, this is one I actually talked about. But obviously when the game CPU board works at good power, now go onto your CPU. Then we check that. Obviously with Valleys, they do have a test LED on there. You'll learn about those LED codes here in a second. Like I said, I target this error because it's easy and it's fun to learn. Obviously we've got battery damage. We know what to do with that. You can clean it up. And, of course, anybody know what's circled here on the rightmost? What's that? Hell no. That's an AMI PIA. You know about AMI PIAs, don't you? High failure rate. Let's go back. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, AMI PIA. A problem obviously when they were made. How many people were Commodore users back in the 80s? This is good. Obviously a lot of their MOS chips did fail because of this similar problem when they were actually pressed into factory and made, there was contamination between layers and over the years they would disintegrate the traces that go back out to the pin legs and do damage. And we see this common. If we see this like an AMI chip anywhere, it's It's like Timo, basically, of the PIAs. Just change it. Motorola is the best ones that I know of. ST, I think. I like ST products. There is actually alternates for PIAs, too. You can use a Western Digital. It's a totally different number. It's a 6521. 6521? I think so. You can get them new now, yeah. it's probably something that's probably a 6800 and a 6821 who knows there's people that actually do unveilings like or they take the acetone and actually get those layers off and find out you know like the old scooby-doo episode when they rip off the mask now you know who's underneath there doing the dirty work obviously repairs obviously will depend on how much how scale the damage because we've seen a A lot of battle boards and Williams boards, data esports damaged by battery damage. Your time, is it worth it? Do you want the game running tomorrow? You can't team move that. Skill level, obviously. Can you fix battery damage? I can do it for surely. I'm sure you can too. The availability of parts, and of course, if you can fix it, you get bragging rights. Just one thing. In fixing different games, if you have a System 3 game, you can pull all the sockets off, clean the battery, corrosion up put new sockets on and usually you fine the ballet games aren as forgiving so if you have to change sockets it another thing we talking about the PIAs I used to just go in and change sockets and then the board doesn work because you got one little microscopic break in an address or data line and you can see it and you have to sit there and measure it all out so if you're ever going to do that on your bally board do one at a time and test it change one socket test it go to the next one so at least now you know where the problem is instead it was at five chips ago yeah just like me I when you said bad word I said don't shotgun things. I do shotgun it because I can do that. Obviously alternates, you've seen the Altec boards. There's some other board manufacturers out there. I don't know. I've been good friends with Dave. So I know I push his product because I believe in, I stand behind it. And if there's a problem, he'll replace it free. Just don't tell him. No, actually he actually offers that. If I remember right. I think it has a lifetime warranty. Yeah, lifetime warranty. Real nice guy. There's another alternate solution. battery damage obviously we talked about the pin headers on the switches and so forth inspect for closely gray and white green pins you know not gray hair so that's because we get from working on them should be like a semi silver dulls acceptable on the pin colors re-pin headers obviously do not obviously use I've seen people do sandpaper horrible because basically you're just taking layers off the pins and you're just doing more damage, more hell for you because it may work great the first time and maybe a month down the road it'll stop working. There's your magic. This is your thing we were talking about value because you talk about the seven flashes. Seven is the magic number because seven means go. and this breaks them down this is actually on part on picking pin wiki as well as some of Joshua Clay's guides this is also in the book you'd be surprised how many people like i said who's on who who uses facebook for doing pinball repairs okay good i'm not going to yell that um there's so many people out there that post things on there i was like what do I change or where is it I was like open the damn manual attack everything's right it oh it's a scammer do we want to take care of them also you can use your live translate and screw with them bad they don't like it yeah use the manual I mean the manuals got everything you need to know in there it's like the Bible for the game if it's not there obviously then you can get things this is this date back a little bit this shows obviously some of the old Joshua Clay guides that were out there something you don't see very often so from a haunted house I used to have so long time ago those days are gone but yeah the manual have everything especially like the lamp sequences they actually have a spread a little arrow thing that'll show you what to do and so what to change yes your friend's house no actually the pinball database actually has those online most of them you won't fight what's that there's some vendor like the pinball show here you might find some good good manuals out there you never know you won't find anything from GodLive obviously because of the copyright registration. Check with Steve Young on those. He still has a lot of manuals. If he doesn't, he does have originals that he can reproduce for you. Especially with older... I'm breaking off the topic. Solid state electromechanical stuff. He does have all that stuff available where needed. But yeah, that's definitely a good question. You need a manual obviously if you don't have one. Just a quick side note on Steve. His website, he does very outdated and he just doesn't want to have to worry about that's why he doesn't take credit cards but uh if you don't see something on his website call him because he's got way more parts and knowledge than you would even imagine so i've he's helped me out with unusual problems especially if you can't find something give him a call for sure yep uh obviously this is one for displays for bally displays i'll go over it really quick like i said i can share this to you guys if you guys want obviously when troubleshooting bally displays i think it's probably one of the easiest displays to fix. Obviously we check for voltages. We check the bottom of the displays. Cold solder has been one of our killers for a lot of these games. Video games, pinball machines, even some household products too. You can have even like audio gear too, which is a big thing because I do restoration under vintage audio gear. We do check resistors on it because obviously if a segments out they'll be labeled in there 1 2 3 5 7 9 and 11 if one's open segment don't light it's like a fuse basically for the segment yeah they're the 100k resistors yep and if you find a bad one especially there's ones that had little they weren't really like resistors usually rounded but some of them are square and if you see them just replace them all because they're going to fail over time and the other thing to use unplug all your space test them one at a time because you You could have one display cascading and disturbing the data to another one. That is really common on a lot of Zachariah games because their data is chained. And if one is not working correctly, it can take out everything upstream. And the Zachariahs, you have to put them back in the spot they came out of because there's little jumpers on them for each one, so you can't take player one and player three without switching the jumpers, whereas the Bally's you can. This is a spoiler, too. X-Pen is now starting to design and I think he's already got some design with the help of Past Times and myself LED segments for Zachariah games. Which they used to be able to buy them overseas. So that's a shout out to Brett. So if you ever need display stuff he's perfect for that. This breaks it down obviously in the schematic on which drive transits here and what goes with everything. Like I said, I'll share this. We're going to go through it pretty quickly because I know we're going to be running out of time here shortly. Same idea for testing your power. It'll point it out to different directions on the schematic. Like I said, the information is there. You just got to look for it. As I said, don't be afraid to, as we do, take it to the bathroom and read it while you're studying on the throne. You might learn something. Okay. high voltage section obviously is a little trickier i'm sure you guys have gotten nailed by the 230 i have numerous times this this is a bally very yeah one thing if you're going to service your bally driver board measure the display voltage from the test points i think there's a it's on the middle to the right of the heat sink the smaller heat sink because what i've found several times is that the 230 volts that comes from the transformer doesn't get regulated down, and then the full 230s go into the displays. And they'll take it, but I don't know for how long. So save yourself some trouble. But if you find that the transistor on the heat sink is bad, the two little cans with the 2N4444s, the one with the fins is bad, too. Just replace the three of them. The other thing, too, obviously, there is always a plastic protector on there. If you take it off, put it back on, Zacharias are the worst because there's a right there when you're working on you bump against that damn post you you feel it Solanoid drivers we talked about that just a little bit and the other ones very similar to the the addressing how things work obviously you see the BDC that breaks it down to the different segments and where they go It's basically the outputs from the decoders that goes to the muxes. Mux is basically another latch that's throwing it out to different directions. The parts are out there, I think that's the CA3081. If you don't have, obviously, we got alternate boards. Oltec does sell alternate boards. I like it because this one actually has LEDs on it that shows you when the solenoid is So you can troubleshoot a lot easier, too, to make sure that your data is getting from the computer to the solenoid driver board. Lamp boards, we did talk about that. You'll see the same copied slides here, obviously. Lamps, obviously, with LEDs. Everybody wants the LEDs in their newer games. You can get away with this on Williams games and so forth. WPC machines, people are starting to patch the ROMs for ghosting. If you don't, phone a friend. We can definitely patch them. flickering for bally's and sterns you can use these little boards here they're wonderful if you don't want to buy an all tech board they're real easy to use we use them at past times all the time because lord knows if we had to buy driver boards for lamps we would have an outrageous bill and we couldn't keep up with it but we do and of course the aftermarket solution the one thing I do like about all tech boards don't be afraid of surface mount stuff you can heat that off with a hot air gun if you got one. It was nice enough to put through hole contacts on there so you can actually use normal transistors unless you want the challenge of putting a new one on the board surface mount. I did get some stuff in here for sound boards obviously for Bally. Bally obviously had so many different boards that they used for different sound boards. Obviously the PROMs make a difference on some games. If don't have it they do have adapters that can convert the proms from from e-proms to the prom I don't remember who sells that but there's someone out there sells them this is another version of a soundboard for a ballet more advanced stuff with it has more advanced audio and features and so forth then we start getting into the fun stuff like squawking talks everybody likes talking pinball machines okay I'll have to I'm gonna stump up you guys do you guys know what the first video game is that used the squawking talk what's that Gorgar didn't use the squawking talk video game ah didn't use a squawking talk all right you guys are you're striking out big time discs a Tron and and you can actually make a bally board working in Discs of Tron. I pointed that out on a K-Love forums, and somebody flamed me and was like, you can't do that. I called everybody out. I was like, use your test points as your friend. All the power is there to do it. The data is there. You make two jumpers, and boom, your Tron talks. Not the real Tron, but the Discs of Tron. This is a soundboard that I don't have pictures of. This is the only games that actually use an echo board. which is the Centaur's reverb. It's called echo generator. Obviously, Valley soundboards, we do this all the time at past times. We obviously check voltages, check for cold solder joints, which is real common on a lot of these sound boards because they do have the big hunkin 4700 microfarad cap on there. Obviously EPROMs, check we're available. If you got an EPROM burner, check for checksums. If it feels warmer than normal, replace it because some of these chips will burn out. Recap, recap, recap. You'd be surprised what a recap on a soundboard can do. It makes it sound so much better. Stern boards I don't like working on. They are a pain in the butt. I'm sure you understand that one too. They obviously had two versions of it and there was a third one obviously they did the speech I think that's it on that slide horror stories or pictures we probably got some of those in here too solid-state repairs obviously these are some of my slides yes yeah sure yeah we can do that what's your question Dave What other games uses minus five to run? Pinball machine or video game? You're going to stump us both here. Yeah, you were playing with one. That's a funny thing. Yes, this is his silly little victory. Game plan. Yep. Yep. Any other questions other than Dave? Yes, sir. That sounds like you have probably missing data coming from the CPU, possibly, when the machine warms up, obviously, things contract a little bit. Yep. Check for cold solder joints, too. Connectors. Yep. Yep. And if I remember right, Black Knight used the auxiliary board on the System 7. So check your pin header on the right side of the board. It's probably like 9 if I remember right. 9 or 11 pin connector. On the MPU board. Because that's the one, that's one of the, System 7 was the one that directed that soundboard directly for a lot of the speech calls. I don't think any other game board from that era did that because everything else was the cheaper version of the like the cheap talk or you know not cheap talk but I want to say that the simple board it just made bleeps and cheating yeah no speech games like flash and stuff like that we can wind up anytime you want sir next who's up next I appreciate it you guys If you guys have any questions, look for me through the show. Pick on Frank.

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