A disassembled pinball machine upkicker mechanism. A finger emoji points to a spot where the solenoid's plunger has snapped in half.

A player reported Striker Xtreme not getting balls out of the upkicker next to the goalie. Looks like half of the upkicker is missing. #pinball #pinrepair

Revenge from Mars' jump ramp has been having issues, typically the symptom being the ramp collapsing from under the ball. It got its wear parts replaced and some other minor tweaks. The difference was very noticeable, now even weaker shots go far enough to register. #pinball #pinrepair #repair

Player's point of view of Viking pinball machine.

Viking got a bit brighter, did a lamp check on it and naturally all the hardest to reach ones were dead. #pinrepair

Boxful of things that can be pressed and another boxful of things that go flip. #pinrepair

Below the playfield view of Who Dunnit pinball machine. The slots mechanism is currently missing.

Who Dunnit looks a bit naked without the slots mechanism. #pinball #pinrepair

TZ's powerball lives longer than a steel ball, but even it isn't forever. Here's a cleaned up replaced one. It's full of nicks and scratches, that could be cleaned, but it's going to end up looking like this very soon again. Anyway, one for the collection. #pinrepair #pinball

I finally got into investigating NBA Fast Break's weird lamp issue. In short, this platform has 5 strings of general illumination; 2 that's always on and 3 that can be dimmed with a triac. The 2 always one strings on this machine burn all the lamps in weeks. They […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

White chips in DIP package with golden legs.

PIA chips from the Take Five cocktail pin. These white and gold chips look so damn pretty. They're also relatively hard to source. #pinrepair #electronics

Curious prototype in use today! These Sega/Stern WhiteStar games use LM338K regulator for their 5 volt feed, but the part is very hard to source and prone to fail. Williams games have had their LM323K drop-in replacement mini switching PSU available for some time […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

A loose coil hanging by its wires under a pinball machine's playfield.

Viking was reported to make odd sounds when the ball hit left slingshot. I think we know where the problem was. #pinrepair

Too much excitement for one day. I managed to sweep the board off the table and dismount the camera module from the PCB. FFS. Fortunately it wasn't soldered in and all that was needed was to just push it back. One near heart attack later I put this thing back […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

Stern pinball QR code reader board being held in hand. It's on, with LEDs both sides of a camera module.

I pulled the questionable LED and would you look at that, the thing woke up. The LEDs are powered by AMS1117-33 regulator that features a build-in protection for shorts. Really wild that any of the LEDs shorting causes this thing to die and there's a lot of these […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

Today's cosmetic fixes includes the Mando's ship gun that fell off last Wednesday. These tiny parts are a bit challenging, as there's always a chance they get hit by a ball, so they always need some kind of reinforcement.

I drilled a hole in both, the gun and […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

Ha, gotcha! It has a bad LED in it. It's supposed to have 6, but only 5 light up fully. I wonder why does it light up at all. #pinrepair #arcaderepair #electronics #repair

Huh, curious. The the QR reader's backlight isn't all dead, it lights up during the self test but then goes out and never comes back. I had assumed it was completely dead. Need to continue digging. Too bad it's all super tiny SMCs, so poking it in-situ without my […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

An airball hit Mando's ship and knocked the other gun off it. It's pretty flimsy originally, I'll probably have to drill a support inside it before epoxying it back together. #pinball #pinrepair #arcaderepair

I've seen these failed QR code readers elsewhere, but this is the first one to fail of mine. I'm tempted to take it apart to see if there's some obvious failure. Anyone else diagnosed this issue? #pinball #pinrepair #arcaderepair

Godzilla was reported to have a dead bumper. Usually it's a case of a broken wire but this one was mechanical. It didn't take too long to see a situation where the bumper's skirt was stuck in a way it needed a ball hit from another angle to release it. Bumpers […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

A #44 base LED bulb with its top separated from the base.

These LEDs are the worst. I've lost count how many times these have just came apart like this. The previous ones with clear top weren't a lot better, but didn't at least fail this often. #pinrepair

Jackbot has been plagued by an annoyance, where it seems to be confused about whenever all the balls are in the ball trough. When not on the playfield, the balls sit in there waiting for their turn and their presence is detected by mechanical, or in this case […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

A pinball machine's ball trough opto board.

A pinball machine's ball trough opto board, closeup. It has a 3mm LED in a 5mm LED's place.

I'm investigating ball trough issue on Jackbot. I haven't seen this kind of repair approach yet. I guess I can't fault it either, I bought the game in '02 and this has been in it before that. #pinball #pinrepair

Not all pin repairs are huge mysteries. In this Williams 90s platform, computer controlled flippers behave funnily if a coil wire is broken off. They double flip and then stay down. Electromechanically controlled ones would just machine gun for as long as you'd […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

Original post on mstdn.games

I earlier posted about the florescent tube look-alike LED-strips, that are a drop-in replacement for the originals. Here's a short video about getting rid of Revenge From Mars' original dying tube and replacing it with a LED based one.

The original starter has to be replaced with the one that […]

Most pins before 2010s use battery backed NVRAM to keep the settings, audits and high scores between power cycles. Out of the 31 games I own, 10 still need the annual 3x AA battery replacement. I've been slowly working towards eliminating the need for batteries […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

Williams' WPC platform's first variant was pretty close to perfection from the maintenance point of view. This is why it always annoyed me so bad when they downgraded the design with the facelift, WPC95, combining the lamp board and backglass into one unit that […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

Pinball machines had originally a light panel behind the backglass with a ton of small lamps. In 1996 Sega did away with the panel and put a fluorescent tube there instead. This ended the use of flash lamps behind the backglass, but otherwise worked just fine […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

A stepper motor being held in hand, in the background Who Dunnit pinball machine's slot reel mechanism.

Inside of a stepper motor, the output shaft, bearings and rotors. The rotors are covered in metal filings.

This spring(?) I posted some pictures how I 3D printed a new slot machine reel after a stepper motor got so hot it melted the previous one.

Here's couple of pictures how they look after such a failure. In the first picture you can see some suspicious metal […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

Pinball machine driver board PCB on a table.

Closeup of a PCB, a chip and the surrounding area shows battery leak signs.

Closeup of a PCB, a chip and the surrounding area shows battery leak signs.

I wondered why someone had ended up parting out this WhiteStar pinball driver board, but then I noticed the battery leak marks. It makes me very curious what the CPU board above it has looked like, as there's no batteries on this board. Must've been really ripe. #pinrepair #electronics

Road Show has been playable for some time now and every now and then I check Red's and Ted's mouth mechanism gears. These are prototypes I originally printed out of PLA and I'm very curious to see how those fare in the long run, before printing them out of […]

[Original post on mstdn.games]

I noticed Road Show had some dead lamps while playing, time to hunt them down.

#pinball #pinrepair #retrotech #arcade