Frank Lindenmuth teaches systematic pinball repair diagnostics through real failure case studies.
Summary
Frank Lindenmuth delivers a technical seminar on advanced pinball repair troubleshooting, emphasizing diagnostic methodology over parts replacement. He shares case studies illustrating how previous repair attempts, component failures, and misdiagnosis compound problems, advocating for systematic testing (switch tests, coil tests, ROM verification) before swapping parts. Key themes include switch debouncing capacitors, blanking circuit protection, diode functions on coils, and the importance of isolating variables using known-good components.
Key Claims
A technician replaced every chip on a Centipede board when the actual problem was a single shorted 10-cent debouncing capacitor on a switch line
high confidence · Frank describes a personal repair case where misdirected focus on chip replacement missed the real issue; illustrates the importance of expanding diagnostic scope
The blanking circuit is a safety protection that prevents outputs (coils, lamps, displays) from working if the processor fails to reset a timer
high confidence · Frank explains blanking circuit function while diagnosing an F-14 Tomcat board where a damaged trace disconnected the blanking circuit, causing display lockout
Diodes on coils prevent reverse voltage spikes created by magnetic field collapse from damaging transistors or circuitry
high confidence · Frank uses car ignition coil analogy to explain flyback voltage and why diodes are necessary on coil lines, comparing older systems without separate PPB boards
A loose LED socket touching a switch on the same line can cause Congo start-button failures in attract mode but not during test mode because the lamp matrix isn't being pulsed during test
high confidence · Frank describes a specific diagnostic case where an LED socket interference was isolated through understanding the difference between test and attract mode behavior
On System 11 boards, a bad IC socket (748 AND gate chip) can cause coil lockup, requiring inspection of chip contact quality rather than immediate component replacement
high confidence · Frank recounts a Diner case where coil/lamp locking issues traced to a previous technician using a cheap socket with poor contact, requiring jumper wire routing
ROM burning equipment costs $130-$175 (GQ 4x4) and is a worthwhile investment for troubleshooting; bad ROMs can cause intermittent issues even when ROM checksums appear good
high confidence · Frank recommends fresh ROM burns before component replacement, citing shuffle alley sound problems often caused by bad ROM chips
A Star Wars pinball update failure required a network cable replacement after two months of troubleshooting; the cable was later identified as the cause despite the game functioning with the bad cable
Notable Quotes
“a lot of times when you're fixing a game somewhere between the what the customer tells you and what's wrong with the game is the truth”
Frank Lindenmuth @ early in talk — Establishes the diagnostic principle that customer descriptions are unreliable; technicians must verify claims through testing
“you kind of get focused you think oh it's got to be a chip this thing connect to this chip on here this is bad you replace that chip well maybe it's the one next to it couple of hours later and a bunch of parts wasted”
Frank Lindenmuth @ Centipede example — Core lesson: narrow focus on one component leads to parts waste and failed repairs; diagnosis requires expanded scope
“it just was a shorted capacitor and you just have to kind of look Beyond okay well it isn't just this chip you have to kind of expand your your uh view out of just um one thing and that's really all it was was just a 10-cent capacitor”
Frank Lindenmuth @ Centipede resolution — Key takeaway: the solution was minimal cost but required systematic thinking beyond initial assumptions
“the blanking circuit is is part of the safety protection on the game and what it does is it prevents outputs from work it's like a watchdog it's a timer that counts down and the processor has to keep resetting it”
Frank Lindenmuth @ F-14 Tomcat explanation — Technical explanation of a critical safety mechanism that novice technicians often overlook
“if you take that chip out everything's going to lock on and that's was another previous repair Tech used a lousy socket and it just wasn't making good contact”
Frank Lindenmuth @ Diner case — Demonstrates how poor repair quality (cheap socket) from previous technicians compounds diagnostics
“experience knows no substitute and that's the truth you just got to get in there and do it”
Frank Lindenmuth @ motivational closing — Core philosophy: hands-on learning is essential; no amount of reading replaces actual repair work
“I'm not going to give up said we're going to fix this thing damn it I'm going to fix it I don't care how long it takes”
community_signal: Frank demonstrates commitment to teaching new pinball technicians through Facebook posts, seminars, and video documentation of repair cases
high · He mentions posting technical articles on Facebook/No Quarters Arcade page intentionally targeting new hobbyists, not just experienced technicians; offers follow-up help to audience member with Truck Stop issue
?
design_philosophy: System 11 board design evolution visible in blanking circuit implementation and diode placement strategies across different eras (EM, pre-PPB, post-PPB systems)
high · Frank explains how power architecture changes (separate board vs integrated) affected diode necessity; shows iterative design improvements in safety systems
$
market_signal: ROM burner equipment ($130-$175) is now affordable and practical for technicians; indicates growing accessibility of advanced diagnostics tools for repair shops
high · Frank recommends GQ 4x4 burners as worthwhile investment; notes they're available on Amazon; implies growing use among technician community
?
product_concern: Previous technician repair attempts are creating cascading failures and wasted diagnostics time; indicates quality variance in pinball repair ecosystem
high · Multiple case studies: Centipede technician replaced all chips; F-14 Tomcat technician damaged blanking circuit trace; Diner technician used cheap sockets; suggests systematic quality issues in repair shops
?
technology_signal: Stern Spike platform network cable and update delivery issues suggest potential reliability problems with modern update infrastructure
Topics
Systematic troubleshooting methodologyprimarySwitch circuits and debouncing capacitorsprimaryBlanking circuit protection systemsprimaryCoil diode function and flyback voltage protectionprimaryPrevious repair damage and compound failuresprimaryROM testing and diagnosticssecondaryBoard-level component replacement techniquessecondaryStern Spike platform update issuessecondary
Sentiment
positive(0.75)— Frank is enthusiastic about teaching and problem-solving; proud of his diagnostic capabilities. Frustration directed at other technicians' poor repair practices and Stern support's initial dismissiveness, but overall tone is educational and encouraging to the audience. He expresses genuine frustration with the Star Wars case but ultimately frames it as a learning opportunity.
Transcript
youtube_auto_sub · $0.000
talk about some repair information that's beyond the basic stuff coils switches flipper stuff um disclaimer do with this information you know use at your own discretion be careful um it's not meant to treat cure or prevent any diseases so always follow the advice of your friendly local pinball repair professional does anybody here fix games for people like you go out and do repairs other than you you guys actually like just help your friends or do you go out and do service for people that'll randomly need help so you'll kind of understand that a lot of times when you're fixing a game somewhere between the what the customer tells you and what's wrong with the game is the truth a lot of times you're going to have a situation where somebody else tried to do a repair and that's usually the worst case scenario because you don't really know what happened did somebody just throw Parts at the game randomly did they try to um did they cause any damage maybe damage a trace on a board um bridge two lines together with a blob basader uh first so basically rather than get of theory I'm just going to talk about some situations I've encountered over the years and what I found when I I made the repair and if Todd remembered it's because Todd likes to do everything last minute we had a centipede we needed to go out for a rental it was about 9:30 at night we pull it out of the warehouse and it didn't work so we pulled the board out we had a couple of other boards on the Shelf they didn't work one worked and as soon as you turned it on it would start a two-player game okay should be an easy fix I pulled the board in out I look at it look at the switch section somebody replaced every single chip on the board do you remember that Todd that was a while ago so somebody replaced all the chips and it's easy to get this is where you get trapped what Dave was talking about you kind of get focused you think oh it's got to be a chip this thing connect to this chip on here this is bad you replace that chip well maybe it's the one next to it couple of hours later and a bunch of parts wasted you don't fix it it goes on the shelf and usually ends up becoming a parts board but does anybody understand um how switches work does anybody know what switch debouncing is anybody know what switch bounce is so there's a tiny little capacitor that goes on each switch line and the tech overlooked that altogether it just was a shorted capacitor and you just have to kind of look Beyond okay well it isn't just this chip you have to kind of expand your your uh view out of just um one thing and that's really all it was was just a 10-cent capacitor and the board could have ended up being scrapped for parts but I was able to save it and get the game out for the rental that had to go out in about 10 hours from when oh this game has to go out for a rental and it doesn't work what are we going to do just play two player games yeah yeah that's it pretty much um how about when somebody messes with their games and I say I don't know it just stopped working this mechanism doesn't work anybody encountered that you guys that do their service work never really had that guys tells you didn't do anything and you lift the play field up and there's plier marks all over the nuts and bolts I don't know what happened um yeah you'll encounter that you really have to look beyond what they're telling you because they're not always going to tell you either they don't know or they have a uh don't want to admit that they were messing around with it actually had the same problem with a spy hunter a guy would U had a spy hunter cockpit would randomly just ring up credits you know makes that boom sound when you drop a coin in or hit the credit button and it was just a capacitor and he thought the game was you know no good he was ready to trade it in and it's just a stupid little part um here's another previous repair I did a video on this anybody remember seeing the video I did on the F14 Tom capat board I posted it about a year ago guy a tech worked on it he repaired the special solenoid section and then he comes up to me this is Jimmy this was one of Jimmy's boards and he says I repaired the special solenoid section now the displays don't work I'm thinking to myself all right I was in the middle of something just set the board side and I'll deal with it later and he's an older guy his vision's not great and I said did you mess the board up said yeah I messed up a few traces but I I fixed them and I got the special solies work and so I set the board down I'm going about what I'm doing and I'm thinking about it for while I was like I know what the problem was I didn't even have to look at the board and know what the problem was anybody have idea what the problem could have been everything worked special s he replaced a chip now the displays don't work anybody have any idea think about it that a Trace well it was a trace but what part of the game you with the blue hat he didn't unplug it and plug it back in no he did that that didn't work anybody know what the blanking circuit is anybody know blank everybody's blank all blank come on man I thought you guys were Tech anyway so the blanking circuit is is part of the safety protection on the game and what it does is it prevents outputs from work it's like a watchdog it's a timer that counts down and the processor has to keep resetting it if it doesn't get res set it locks out the coils it locks out the lamps it locks out the displays and that's what happened he damaged the trace for the blank in circuit through the meter on it had to run a jumper wire which I hate doing if you've followed any of my work I hate running jumper wires for things um and that was what it that's what it was and I had a similar situation with a diner I had a customer Diner had a section of flash lamps and coils were locking on I go out to this guy guy lived like an hour away go out to his house he had a bunch of games and it was the um it was a diner and he had another game was a whirlwind or something had the auxiliary power board and the relay wasn't working right and I pulled the ppb board out of the other game put it in it's working fine I'm like all right great it's the ppb ordered one up week later it comes in go back out everything's working great all of a sudden the Boris uh lights locking on coils are locking on I'm thinking what the hell is going on with this thing so I swapped out the logic board with the other game worked fine put it back in worked okay then it started acting up again took the board home had it on the bench and I'm looking at it and I'm trying to figure out what's going on and if you're familiar with the system 11 boards right above all the transistors there's a couple of chips or 748s that's what they are that's part of your blanking circuit it's like an and gate it allows two things have to happen for the coils to work so if you have a table lamp in your living room that works on a wall switch the wall switch has to be on and the lamp switch has to be on or else the light's not going to work so if that chip doesn't see the signal from the blankin circuit and then the signal from the processor to fire the coil it's not going to work well if you take that chip out everything's going to lock on and that's was another previous repair Tech used a lousy socket and it just wasn't making good contact but all that time all that mess because somebody else just used a cheap part and you have to go over what everybody that's the other thing too is that somebody could use a part put a replacement part in that's bad off the shelf it's rare but it happens I've had it happen many times I've actually blown up a part I had a transistor I had it in my hand I dropped it was I was going to put on the bench and I reached down touch the floor static shock and I picked it up like you know I'm going to throw a meter on this thing I threw a meter on it it was blown up so you don't know what other people are doing when they're working on the uh when they're trying to fix a problem had a similar uh situation well this wasn't a previous repair but I had a guy with an Adams me you ever try to find a problem with your game online they'll say Adams Family resets problem solved you see this whole big pin thread and it doesn't you look at the solution you try it and it doesn't work you ever encountered that before they try to find a problem and he like well what do you do now so this guy it wouldn't always reset if you're familiar with WPC games if the bridge rectifiers are bad or the power connector on the driver board from the Transformer is bad it's going to reset usually happens when you're banging on the flippers so this game it wouldn't always reset but during gameplay it would randomly just restart so what would you do what would you what do you guys think you would do if you were to try to solve this problem on a random reset you know it's not the bridges it's not the typical things the power is good connectors are good it's only intermittently happening it's not happening every time you play the game well I would read the voltage from the power coming into the game well we know power is good okay 115 bucks and and ground we actually did try Yeah we actually did try just for Giggles we did try another receptacle in the house and I did check that but that wasn't it what do you think anybody the interconnect cable between the logic and the driver yeah no it wasn't that either so what we did was I put it into a coil test and we ran through the coils and then it would get so far and it would stop it would reset but the problem is it happened so fast I couldn't see on the display where it was stopping so I got my camera out and I recorded the screen as it happened and it would do it and I couldn't see where I could see what the last test it passed and then it would go on the test where it failed so then I had to disconnect power pull the interlock switch out step through it and saw was failing on the magnet test magnet one of the magnets was causing it to reset well something in the magnet section so at that point in time what you really need to do I mean you can unplug all the magnets or you got isolate things I isolated the magnet control board it's up on the upper left side of the Playfield then it wouldn't reset and it ended up just being a bad diode on the board next to 30 anybody know why there's diodes on the coils why do they put a diode on the coil the flow in One Direction well diodes will only allow current to flow in One Direction but there's a there's a reason why I know Dave knows but we're come on anybody take a guess is there a fly back fly back volage going the other way it you're you're thinking along the right path you're thinking along the right path Spike the computer right see what happened anybody anybody here working on cars anybody know about cars you ever wonder how your car generates that high voltage SP spark for the spark plug it's basically it's what it is it's a coil and power gets applied and taken away so every time the power gets taken away you get this big magnetic field that's what makes your plunger move when you take that magnetic field away it's got to go somewhere so it collapses and it creates a high voltage Spike and if that diode wasn't there it's going to eventually go back to the board and either blow up the transistor or go further back so if you had a friend with an old car you just put a diet across his ignition coil and his car won't start jum you're talking old cars like 60s and 70s cars but it's the same thing the magnets uh are coils too and they're going to create that same magnetic field so if you look at newer games like the newer system 11 games that have the ppb board you'll see that there's no diode on the coil it's because it's up on the ppb board and WPC and later games they're all there because the power comes in on the same side so the power and the ground side is there so you can get away with that but when you have power coming from a completely separate board going down to the coil then you need to have the diode onto the coil um so here's another guy had a guy with a Congo this game wouldn't start um start button worked in test but it wouldn't start a game wasn't credits wasn't a wiring problem obviously wasn't a ball stuck or missing anybody have any ideas State problem again so this the game it wouldn't start a game not a credit issue not a missing ball issue start button worked in test but it wouldn't work in attract mode no he put LEDs in the game and one socket was leaning over just enough to touch one of the switches on that same line and it would work in test because the computer's not pulsing the lamp Matrix so there's nothing to interfere there's nothing to interfere with it there at all um another situation when you're trying to fix say a dead logic board or a game that's not really running right it's easy to get focused on that board I had a 6803 game I forget what it was it doesn't really matter and uh anybody anybody do any kind of board repairs like getting into fixing dead boards or boards that are locked up guys usually just try another board and hope for the best um so I don't know if you're familiar with who there's a guy named Leon what's his Leon Bor guy who makes these test ROMs yeah french guy he's got a great it's free just can download it if you burn the ROMs on the website and it'll help you I really like them for the system 11 games because if you have a locked up Pia the game program won't run but Leon's program will so you can figure out which one of your Pia is bad because sometimes it'll flash a code for a Pia but it might might even be the Pia that's another thing you to always make sure you have good power make sure your power supplies are good especially in those older games recap them or try another one because I've had that happen several times you pull a board out throw it on the mention it's fine rebuild the power supply and then you're can sitting there if you've ever replaced a 40 pin Pia you can do a lot of damage if you're not careful because the newer boards get the more delicate they are and it's easier to screw something up and I actually read an Atari service manual years ago they actually recommend you cut a chip out you cut all the legs off take it out and then go by and remove all of the pins and then use a desoldering tool but if it's a hard to come by chip or you know or you're not sure and you just want to test you need to make sure you know you're not damaging the board and wasting components cuz Pia is on about 10 12 bucks a piece now you don't want to potentially throw away a good one um but I had this uh 6803 game and it it wouldn't work I put the test ROM on it thing's fine um just you know check some of the ROMs I mean that's something simple you can do if you can get a ROM burner they're only about 130 bucks for to um GQ 4x4 or something on am Amazon I think you didn't even get it with an eraser and it's only like 175 bucks it's a good investment you can download the ROMs online so even if you don't have them to compare them you know you can always check some because I've had ROMs cause all kinds of problems even when they check good a ROM can check good and cause all kinds of issues um you see that a lot with the shuffle alleys the system 11 Shuffle alley especially sound problems you get they've caused all kinds of screeching problems and just you think the amplifier is bad you think the DAC is bad and sometimes just burning in a couple of fresh bombs so before you really get into changing components on the board you really want to look at all the other easier low hanging fruit first and then sometimes the problem is going to be something what you wouldn't think it would be like I said like a simple capacitor on your switch line you know your debouncing capacitor um so if you have a board that seems to be running okay on the bench you can try it in another game if you have one or you can start isolating it isolated from the sound board and in this case it was the displays the display was bad it was dragging down the whole board and and so we just switched the display it was a player two side so I just switched the one and two so each could play the game but you know they could have spent hours and hours and hours changing parts causing damage for nothing and that's why it's really important you kind of before you start getting into the complicated stuff make sure you covered all your bases a lot of times when you're fixing things you're going to be swapping a suspected bad part with a known good one you're going to be figuring out mainly what isn't the problem more than what it is before you actually get to what the problem is um I mean I can talk a little bit about fixing some dead logic boards is anybody interested in any of that does anybody have any questions any issues or something that you're having a problem with something you might be stuck on so the guy with the switch problem let's let's go back to your so you said to me yesterday the ball doesn't kick over and you wanted to know where to get a switch from correct and so my let's let's go through the process why do you think think that the switch itself is bad is it a leaf switch or is it a micro switch I'm not as experienced as you guys that's fine we're going to get you experienced so it's the switch that um the ball rolls over when it comes down the drain and it sends the information to the ker the kicker kicks it off right so in other words the one that senses that the ball has hit correct okay but what do you know what kind did you lift up the play field and look under underneath at the switch itself is a two metal blade there a little black box with a paperclip wire it's one blade and it has a little it at the end so you're talking about the part that the ball sits on the ball rolls right but I'm talking about underneath oh no see you didn't really look at it see because if it's if it's a micro switch which is a little black box and it'll have a little paper clip thing on it that'll attach to that you know what the ball sits on they you know if usually if you hear them click sometimes you can spr a little bit of contact cleaner but that switch might not be the problem really what you need to do is what game is it uh's truck stop so you might just have you you'd have to put it into a test do you have a manual for the game uh no so you can download have it yeah so before you buy parts you need to put it into a switch test and you need to see is the game seeing the switch and you can push it with your finger and it might show that it is sometimes you put the ball in there because your finger might push it down enough for it to read but the ball might not sit on it enough you might have to bend that little wire that you see that little Loop that you see sticking up um that's really the first thing you need to do and then if it doesn't read it what you can do is you can short a little paper clip or jumper wire across the switch you know the red the green and white wires and see if it'll read cuz you might it might be the switch itself it might be the diode look at the diode there's a diode on there there make sure that that's not broken make sure you know you know pulling a little bit if it breaks if it breaks in your fingers it was going to break anyway it's not you're not going to really hurt it just giving a little bit of a wiggle or a tug um then that your switches are all in a matrix so you have columns and rows and they're all chained together so you might have a wire broken further down the Playfield you might have targets that aren't working Johnny we had that problem with your highp speed you remember that we had a uh the ball was getting stuck in The Hideout but what we didn't nobody I didn't realize it at the moment and Johnny didn't realize is that several other switches weren't so pop bumpers weren't scoring and I think it wasn't making the Rev sound on the left flipper if I remember and that ended up being a little blown transistor on the switch line on the board so the problem could go all the way back and we're going to talk more about that Todd and I tomorrow yo wake up we we're going to talk about some different things you can do little tips and tricks for uh how to figure that out you go down the line so you're going to have to look at if that's if the game doesn't say it if you press on that switch it could be the coil's not firing too you can put it into a coil test so the game might see the ball's sitting there but it can't do anything about it maybe the wire broke off the coil maybe the transistor went bad maybe the wire pulled out of the connector on the board maybe there's an interconnect plug somewhere between the Playfield and the cabinet and a pin could have just pulled out so before you buy any parts you want to check and see the game's not seeing the ball sit there or it is seeing it sit there and it can't do anything about it for whatever reason the coil itself could be bad it doesn't happen often but a lot of times the the wire can break a little red wire it connects to one pin then it winds around and connects to the other one that can break off sometimes you can get away with just unwinding it one rvel scraping some of the coating off and resoldering it sometimes it's just easier to you know just get another coil spend the 20 bucks or whatever it is but you need to go through you need to go through the process of figuring out where the problem is um before you go out and buy any parts and then this way then you'll know is it the only game you have no I have a few yeah I have a few I have Genie that I need to I just started trying to ref no that's fine it's well there was a day we all we all looked at the bottom of a Playfield and think what the hell is all of this we've all been there I was there Todd was there everybody um but you got to get in there and do it if you ever watch any of my videos I'll put a little blur up at the end that says experience knows no substitute and that's the truth you just got to get in there and do it you can go to seminars you can read books you can read pinside threads you can go through everything but until you get in there and do it you're not really going to learn it yeah until you pull that up c d where they yeah CLE the yeah I'm not I'm not sure if that uses that might be a leaf switch you don't know off hand do you Dave that might be a leaf switch truck stop truck no truck stop that's that that's that late 60 or 6803 is that late 603 yeah that might still be Leaf switches so if that's just a leaf switch you just the two little metal blades you just take a business card push the two together and clean it a really really fine piece of like you know, 1500 grit sandpaper just very gently you know pull the contacts AP you know push them together pull some paper through a few times and then that might be all it is another thing too is it could be gummed up it could be a mechanical reason that it's not kicking the ball over there could be a broken plunger or something or there could be one thing you see people do is they'll oil where they'll put WD40 on the coils there's no lubrication anywhere because it just turns it into a paste and it just gums everything up and you can clean the coils but it's just not worth it you're better off just replacing them I think that that leads to a more general idea of uh would your instinct be to suspect mechanical type issues first because I mean the ball ways enough that it can push things around you know on certain actuators and stuff I I would look at the switch first that's the first that's the simplest thing to do you like a switch test yeah put in the switch test and then you know just mechanically you know push it you reach your finger down or drop the ball down in there if I don't if that I'm not real familiar with the play field in that game of there drop targets if there's any drop targets make sure they're all reset if there's a spinner make sure it's not because if you have drop targets that are down or a spinner that's sitting in an angle you're going to just have all these switches keep popping up and you're not going to you just want nothing no switches closed except for that so this way you're not having to wait for it to cycle through a bunch of different switches that are closed for you to finally get to the that you're looking for and then I know do you follow my page on Facebook No Quarters arcade no so you can follow because I'm just curious I want to know how you make out so follow my page when you get home and then uh message me let me know what you find and then if you have any issues I'll message you back and see if I can walk you through getting it fixed it's going to be a simple problem yeah it's going to be fun I'm excited well you're going to learn something I'm trying that's what it is like if I haven't posted in a while but when I do my when I do my Facebook and my tech articles I I try to show you I don't want to say this is what it was this is what the problem was and this is what the solution was because I you understand how I think about it and it's funny because I get some people and I know they mean well and they'll post a screenshot as pinwiki oh we knew about this and I'm thinking to myself I didn't write this for you I write this for the guy that doesn't know about pin winky I wrote this for the guy that doesn't know about pinside who doesn't know anything about it just hey I just got this game my neighbor had it he said he was going to give it to me for Honor Buck she's moving I took it and it doesn't work I want to get it going again and you don't know anything you're new to the Hobby and you're learning so it's it's important to know how you got to the to the solution and usually I I won't let anything beat me I I had a guy with a he had a had Star Wars comic and it wouldn't it was a pro and he had he has he that he has the um Guardians of the Galaxy and he has an original Black Knight and I'd been out to his house a few times and went out and just you know he just wants me to come out like once a year and clean everything up and his games didn't have any updates here they had the original updates and them so I update the Guardians everything's fine go to update the Star Wars goes through and does the node boards and then stops at the cabinet noteboard now this thing had the original code in it so it was like 1.06 going to 2.78 or whatever was with The Insider connected stuff on it so it wouldn't take the update I tried it a few times I thought maybe you tried a different USB stick I tried a different download wouldn't work I couldn't stay there any longer I said all right well let me reach out to stern so I emailed Stern's text support and they said I need to see pictures of the LEDs on the boards so I sent them pictures of the LEDs on the logic board LEDs on the Node board the cabinet node board and a video of the startup he says the node board's bad I'm like okay well the guy's had the game for like maybe two years he's had no warranty can you send me a node board we can't do it it's out of warranty okay I can't tell this guy he's got to spend $200 on a noteboard when this game basically worked and he says oh maybe you were pushing too many updates through I'm like okay well can you give me maybe an older update you know maybe something that's halfway between what's current and what it came with and I can burn it to an SD card and start a fresh I don't have any of that stuff so I went back to his house I swapped the node board from the Star Wars to the Guardians of the Galaxy and it took the update and everything worked fine so I know the no board's not bad so let me try maybe the SD card because if the SD cards fail it's not often but they happen the SD card can get corrupted even if you Reb burn a new one the card itself off goes bad I couldn't download the update for like a month like it just wouldn't download so I emailed them back I said oh nobody else has any problem said well I don't know I mean I'm able to download a 4 gigabyte Jersey Jack Delta update with no problems what do you mean well you know when somebody says to you well nobody else has ever had that problem you know it's just not going to end well so I uh I waited and I was finally actually able to get the update got a new SD card put the update on it went to his house did its thing son of a it wouldn't update the node board so at this point I'm I'm just pissed off I'm pissed off I said all right you know what I'm going to grab the network cable out of the Guardians I pulled the network cable out put it into the Star Wars it updated everything was fine it was nice and happy but that doesn't make sense why would the game work with a bad Network C but just not take updates it took me two months but the guy's he's call follow me up he's like man this it's been a while I said listen I said I'm not going to give up said we're going to fix this thing damn it I'm going to fix it I don't care how long it takes we're going to get us figured out so it ended up being an $8 network cable he actually had to have happened to have one extra in his house I popped it in he was good to go but whatever the problem is it's going to be something it's going to be right there and you're going to just have to figure out what it is and it's nice when you have a second game that you can test things with especially if it's in the in the guy's house like I the guy with the diner when I had to borrow his ppb and logic board from his uh Earth Shaker it's nice when you have that you don't always have that and that's where it gets a little bit more complicated where you have to do some more research you have to do more troubleshooting um uh you know so that's that's just some of the things um I can talk a little bit about fixing some dead logic boards anybody interested in that anybody have any more questions what's your uh opinion on like U aftermarket fors like a rotten dog or if you can't fix a board anymore I don't I don't all right I don't want to impune on anybody's work I don't like rotten dog boards I've used there's a guy Cal or something he's made some sound boards ppb board the Williams auxiliary driver boards they've seem to be really wellmade um the only reason I don't like rotten dog boards is because the guy that designs the rotten dog boards takes design Liberties meaning he just changes things we had a um got leap System One driver board you're familiar with them it's a the little skinny board it's got um you know big T3 transistor and it's got a bunch of little mpsa 03s to drive the lights and there's a bunch of these little individual transistors well he decided to take uln2803 which is the switch chip Todd if you ever watched Todd's videos it calls it the fuse that we socket on the WPC boards and it's all it is is just a transistor R just any transistors so the rotten dog guy put those uln2803a in place of the MPS I mean it's great but it doesn't work the game just doesn't like it some will like it others don't so because he doesn't there's like no documentation we had a problem with a uh one of his um WPC logic boards was draining the battery and there was schematics when he changed the design from the original so anybody that sticks to the original design and there's times that you have to do it I mean especially with newer stuff now Marco has a um a new WPC logic board it's black I don't think who makes it but I've actually used a couple of them and work they work well you just got to switch over your Asic your ROM and I think maybe the the 6809 processor I mean there's times you have to do it I mean it's when they change things like there was a guy making a DMD controller WP and he has an fpga on there I mean it's nice but you know me coming from a perspective of fixing things if I can't fix it what are you going to do with it so as long as they stay true to the original design use the original components then yeah I mean it's we're at that point now where you have to do it you have games that are battery damaged or a transistor went sub critical and blew a hole in the board and yeah um just be careful which board you buy I put it I had a cyclone and I put a rotten dog in it it was it was the other one was trashed and now if I hit two flippers together while the ball is in the I guess end of wall mode it tilts and it only when it's there as soon as it goes back into the you know into the plunger everything works fine but if you hit both flippers together while it's in rest it will tilt and it works that way even through test mode if I hit both flippers together in test it'll say it'll go through it'll say left flipper right flipper yeah something recognizing yeah something's cross talking now one thing one now one thing I like about the system 11 rotten dog boards is he eliminated a lot of the components in the lamp circuit and in the coil Drive circuit so those big resistors all those other components he's got one transistor and two resistors cuz he uses mosfets that are 100 volt the problem is he put them in the switch line so those little uh two on 34 348s or whatever 394s he has 100 volt transistors in there it's nice it's beefy but what's going to happen if you send coil voltage to a switch line instead of just blowing up that little transistor it's going to go further back into a Pia or even further than that so one of the biggest issues I've had with the rotten dog system 11 boards is sand sound some games the sound so loud well they just turn it down either it won't work like I've had them in Shuffle alleys some won't work we put him in other games I've used him in 11c games just because I couldn't get the sound to work and he I don't really know why and there's no documentation he changes things from the original design you know it's just going to uh problems I would look well did it do that before you changed the cuz I really don't I mean it's possible um you can look on the board see if something maybe maybe maybe a leg is just touching something on the pi one of the lines just go over your uh look at are they on the same the Tilt does that what does that have end a stroke is in line with with the flippers okay I just when I put it in test is well that's why I'm confused because everything checks out during test are they confirms it during test are they on the same column or the same row same row yeah is the Pia socketed on that I think he socketed swap the Pia with another one just for the hell of it and just see what it does and you can reach out to me too and then let me know what you find and if you can get your hands on an original board or maybe a different aftermarket board um there's a guy I've seen them here on the um the project pinball table guy he goes by dumbass I'm not on pinside much of him but he's got a really nice looking system 11 board I've never worked with it I don't know but uh I I don't know what they cost I don't know who else is really making them I want to make one of my own eventually I figured I'll do that sometime between midnight and 6:00 a.m. during my spare time um eventually I will do it U just you know yeah I want to have them for sale but I have some money of my own customers that I've gone in the people's houses and just want to cry you know you look you open it up in the batteries the board just totally shot I actually had an F14 Tom Cat uh back on Monday the guy said he had it for 20 years I said did you change the batteries he said it doesn't take batteries you plug it in that tells you everything you need to know and I opened it up and there was a little bit of battery damage right on the right on the terminal of the battery holder and that was it and I said you know go buy a lottery ticket and if you're ever going to use regular batteries never use Dell I've seen them leak in like six weeks if you want to use keep using you know regular doublea batteries but um yeah it's a shame because there's so many games I mean figure how many games got trashed just because of battery damage but there are people making the boards and I know with everything being expensive I know you're probably looking at about 5 to 600 but if you can get your hands even if you can borrow a board from somebody and just you know swap your ROMs over and see what it does it's been nothing but problem yeah see I don't think he really changed a whole lot maybe in the sound section but I think the rest of the logic is pretty true to the original um I was originally I had music but I didn't have speech eventually then he sent me a little bridge that had to put over uh one of the connectors on the on the board I forget what you know what the exact was now and that fixed my speech yeah I had no voice yeah no call outs yeah does anybody does anybody know does he still support them or somebody bought that guy out I don't know the story behind the rotten dog guy can you even still get them uh you can on Marco they're technical I mean they'll email you back immediately they they'll try it's not like they kind of they don't try to blow you off yeah but eventually they just say you know this is all we know yeah you know and system one got Lees 91 Ford every all day long I had a guy that he lives like two hours for me and he has s Sinbad or Buck Rogers or something and I'm like I'm just bringing power supply and logic board every time and the Internet connect interconnect cable between the logic and the driver so there's times yeah you just want to use new boards don't even bother messing with they use power supplies like uh Back to the Future don't I don't even bother I don't even bother rebuilding them anymore because the caps whatever caps they bought leak almost every single time they've leaked they damage the traces in the eyelets and it's just not worth fixing them I don't know what why you know where maybe you know when the guy's brother-in-law has owned the company that sold the capacitors a guy that designed it and he got the deal to sell them but it's just not really worth it so it's a judgment call I mean you know you got people it's not it's not a 63 split window Corvette where you need matching numbers on your engines and transmission is anybody going to give you more money if it has the original boards over new on some people like new ones you know most people aren't going to Care they want to play the game Frank remember we had the uh the rotten dog WPC board and it wouldn't work in the getaway but it worked fine and the strike Master Shuffle we had that with the Gilligan Island too so we found that sometimes you have to try it in a different game that board just decides doesn't like that game we had a Gilligan Island it was it was all done think had to go out the next morning and we're just play testing we actually think we're getting ready to do a video on it and it just was losing track of the ball it was just ringing up random points it would end the ball I mean it just had no we just put a regular board and it was fine so yeah you can't deviate from the original design too much anybody else have any other questions something that's uh um not pinball related surei audio like right the same audio set I know there used to be repl for it I haven't been able to find it that thing destroy itself you mean the big black Chip with the caps on it chip the you got to take the Caps off yeah I actually I thought I posted that maybe a year or so ago I don't know you did yeah I took pictures of that and I posted it the cap values and and the orientation you just take electrolytics you got to cut the leads real short bend them over the problem is getting that black coating off if I found if you heat it you just got I Wasing maybe there some of repl like you said aftermarket not aw but there used to be available somebody was making it but it didn't have the custom chip that's mounted underneath of that ah okay yeah I don't I know you got to pull thatp apart to get to some of the stuff open yeah you just got to be you you know what you do make sure you have nothing to do for the next five or six hours and just sit down yeah have your bench ready to go make a cup of coffee or something or have a beer or whatever and just plan on being there for a while and you got to very gently because what happens if you're too aggressive and trying to take that coating off you're going to rip the Caps off and then you're going to rip those little traces off ask me how I know and then you got to run little jumper wires I did that I'm like oh it's working great but there was one channel missing so I had to go yeah I have two boards CU I got set just gave you like the whole set like I'm not using this anymore you want this to and I'm like I'm not going to sayare Parts yeah the other one is like that there's traces coming off of it and the sound doesn't work at all and I'm like well I'm not going to be able to fix this maybe I'll be able get replac now the the tracers on the top for the Caps really aren't that complicated and if you have a a working one if you have one that works and you can actually measure it all out and see I mean it might be worth if the rest of the board works I would try to save it oh the rest of the board works fine the game works great just no audio Yeah so for that one that's been hacked up yeah do yeah okay peel off the slow and steady it's answer yeah and try you know and experiment with the nonworking with the with the board that's been hacked first oh that that cuz I forget it's been it's been a while since I last did it I don't work on video games a whole lot um I didn't think so yeah no no it's fine because I have dealt with it so I can give you a real answer on that um but the problem is is just that that coating I mean it's going to take a the right amount of heat get yourself a decent heat gun heat it up a little bit because if you heat it too much you're going to pull the Caps up too you might not necessarily want to do that if you didn't if you don't have that chart handy that has the values maybe they use that El you sol yeah yeah yeah for sure anything else I got a little bit more yes what what is your Facebook page it's no quarters arcade and I have one for Instagram too but I don't really do a whole lot with it and your website too no quarters arcade.com yeah this past year I haven't really been doing well with keeping up with my tech articles um just with stuff going on with my driving the bus and I don't have the time I used to be able to have some time between my runs between schools and I could you know bang out a post a few minutes here and there and by the end of the day have something ready to publish and I just having I mean poor Johnny I did his last summer we did his Funhouse place field as anybody well I guess most you guys don't really follow my page we did a spent a week no we did it in like 3 days a play a fun house Playfield 10 days I get there on Friday I get there on Friday night the following Wednesday night at like midnight Crystal and I are working on I'm myself because I'm leaving Saturday thinking we ain't going to get this thing done but we got it done we got it done yeah we did a 2.0 kit too anybody mess with that with the fun house 2.0 kits no it's neat I like it the extra exactly Play No and updating it's not very easy either because the updates are handled on the sound board and you got to get the little tiny SD card out it's not like you can just plug in a USB stick into it like the newer games you got to get it out you got to download the file you got to image and it's not easy to get to and I think it actually sits on the back side of the board so you got to be careful when you put it back in we had a problem because it wouldn't kick the ball out out of the trough into the shooter Lane we know it was the 2.0 because the regular version worked fine and then they actually had posted that there was problem with the trough logic so it would try a couple times to kick the ball out and then it would just stop it just wouldn't do anything it wouldn't keep trying it would just not do anything so we did the update and it helped and I think it gave it a little bit more power to the coil and I guess it looked at that switch more than just once or twice to make sure that the ball was actually in the shooter Lane but yeah we did that fun that was that was an experience huh yeah playfields are uh playfields are a lot of fun anything else any other questions we got about another 17 minutes or so you can talk a little bit more about troubleshooting dead logic board you want to hear about that taking uh so I was talking about Leon's ROMs if you have a if you already know that your power is good you already know your ROMs are good uh you put your test ROM in and see if the test ROM so he has a an LED wants you to put on one of the address lines on the on the processor you don't have to do it because the relay will click if everything is working okay um but sometimes the test program doesn't run and the test program won't always check all of the address lines you have 16 address lines you have eight data lines some of those address lines are used for chip selection so if and the program won't always look for everything so that's where you have to okay well you have to take the ROM out you have to get a little bit more into it because now your standard tools aren't going to solve the problem so then you have to if you take all the program ROMs out the processor is going to look through all of the addresses for instructions that's all it's going to do and it'll do that forever so then you take that time to look at all the address lines something of all 16 of them are pulsing then you might have a problem because you have other chips on there that decode the chip selection where it looks for different P different Rams different ROMs whatever um and sometimes too I did a post a while back on fixing a fliptronics board it was locking up the logic board and there's a couple I never understood the fliptronics board I think it's a lot of crap to just make a flip or flip but whatever it's part of the thing you got to deal with it but I had a chip I had done a post before about how to check the little 74 series chips you can take your meter on diode test you put the red lead on ground and you can probe the pins and you just make sure that one's not meant to be grounded you have to look at your schematic or look at the board and you can usually find a bad check that way well I had two chips that were reading bad so rather than replace them both I had one chip that was just showing one leg as bad the other one was showing two so I threw a dart and threw it at the two because I figured well there's not going to be both chips and since the other one showing bad so the point of that whole thing is that if you have 10 different things on one line and you measure it at this chip and say oh this Chip's reading it's reading bad it could be one of the other nine things on there so you have to get into it you have to isolate that line some people some um Tech articles will tell you to cut the trace on the board to isolate I don't like doing that it's a real pain in the ass but if you desolder the leg you can kind of lift it out if you're careful you don't damage it and you can isolate it that way it's not an easy thing to do it's not really hard it's just more of a pain in the ass than anything but if you have a board that's dead and it's not battery damaged or hacked or uh blown up you know blown up you it's worth fixing it it's worth you know you want to keep it alive because as you see you know these original boards are coming harder and harder to come by and back in the day when it wasn't such an issue we would just throw it on the shelf and use it for parts out locked up it doesn't work chip sockets are another thing you got to look at them older games b games the old b games I don't even bother changing them anymore I just put an alltech board in because the problem with and I've done this you get you try to figure out why it's not working you replace a chip you replace another chip and you get pissed off and just replace them all and it still doesn't work and these older some of these boards the traces themselves are real delicate and it doesn't take much to cause a hairline fracture that you won't be able to see but it'll keep the game from running I had that problem I had a change in sock get on a board and we needed it for a game and it was working and it wouldn't work and then I just threw it on the shelf and got another game and I went back to it I actually repaired a trace I'm looking at it I back on the bench again and I'm like and I measured it and that Trace even though I repaired it with some copper foil tape it still was open I put a jumper wire in the back something I hate to do it was just mad just wanted to get it done and fixed it so if you're going to do sockets do one at a time on the system 3 through S Williams games you can do them all they're pretty be boards system 11 boards they're a little bit okay WPC board if you look at it wrong it's it's not going to work they're very delicate so you got to be real careful there's just a lot of different things I'm trying to give you some ideas things to look at without getting too technical or without being you know too much out of what you guys really understand or have dealt with before yes sir um what's that Leon what's his name Leon if you just look up Leon's test ROMs it'll come up it's on pinwiki yeah yeah that's that's and the only the only other thing with with Leon's stuff is that he I think he French so his stuff's translated from French and it can be a little bit hard to understand what he's saying um I just started dabbling with got Le system 80 boards and he's got a test ROM for that the problem with that is well there's three if you know the got Le system 80 have three different variations and some of them have the the two proms that are soldered to the board and he has some procedure for modifying the board so it doesn't address those chips and you and I was like I don't really want to mess with that because if you're testing if you're fixing one board you're just going to do these mods it's fine but when you're fixing a bunch of boards so he had plans to make a test fixture which I actually made one by hand and I tested it and it worked so I might actually produce them and put them out there if somebody wants them because those system 80 boards are really pretty simple and you can keep them going too they know there was the Fred swimmer I think did anybody who who Fred swimmer was yeah a really nice system you you know Fred right who Fred was you know who Fred swammer was now he made really nice he he had a really nice replacement 683 board and he had got Le um system 80 series board the boards the only person to a good Bo yeah yeah and yeah he had a really nice setup he passed away though unfortunately so I don't know if anybody got the rights to his stuff or any of his things would be nice if somebody could keep making them the only thing I didn't like is he used something called a zip socket it's a socket with a lead you use them yeah I mean it's good for prototyping or for testing but for a game that's going to be vibrating and you're going to be tilting it and banging on it it's not good for production but otherwise it it was a beautiful board and they worked great he put a lot of LEDs on there he wanted he wanted to light up he had them on the back of name yeah yeah and I think the system8 board had a tic tac toe and that he lit up one of two anything else all right well I guess we'll wrap it up all right we'll wrap it up thank you thank you for coming in thank you and like I said if you need help you can always just reach out to me on my Facebook page and anything I can do to help you I will
high confidence · Frank recounts a Stern Star Wars update failure case where node board swap testing, SD card replacement, and Stern tech support guidance ultimately led to network cable diagnosis
WD-40 applied to coils gums them up into a paste and makes them inoperable; replacement is more practical than cleaning
high confidence · Frank advises against lubricating coils with WD-40, noting it creates mechanical paste that is impractical to clean
Frank Lindenmuth @ Star Wars network cable case — Demonstrates persistence in troubleshooting and willingness to revisit difficult cases
“before you start getting into the complicated stuff make sure you covered all your bases a lot of times when you're fixing things you're going to be swapping a suspected bad part with a known good one”
Frank Lindenmuth @ methodology section — Establishes systematic troubleshooting approach: test simple things first, isolate variables using known-good components
medium · Two-month troubleshooting cycle for Star Wars update failure; Stern tech support couldn't diagnose issue; required component swapping (node board, network cable, SD card) to isolate problem