This game came in for general repairs. It wasn’t booting when it arrived. Most Bally’s from this era, -17/35 games, tend to need a lot of the same things addressed if all original.
The CPU was corroded and was replaced with a reproduction from Pinball Electronics. As a matter of good housekeeping on all of these games, I replace the rectifier board on this earlier style that mounted on the transformer brick assembly. The later style that mounted flat in the cabinet is more robust. This early style, however, are always heat stressed, have cracked solder joints that aren’t easy to get to, many times have shorted rectifiers/diodes on at least one of the power lines, and for the cost of the new board is well worth the peace of mind. I also always repin all 3 of the connectors that go to this board as they are usually tarnished and/or burnt as well.
Going down the power chain, I rebuilt and reflowed the Solenoid Driver board and checked it for any shorted transistors. The top right J2 connector is becoming increasingly in need of a repin, which this one needed and got. The top left connector on the MPU was repinned as well because of tarnish from the corroded original MPU. The rest of the connectors on the MPU were fine. Usually, J4 is a culprit, but the pins and connector were solid here.
I reflowed the lamp driver board and tested all of the SCRs on my Bally Brown Box Lamp Test Fixture. Bally games of this vintage are notorious for bad/flaky sockets, so checking on the test fixture is a nice way to isolate a socket problem from a board issue.
Four out of the five original plasma displays had either heavy burn, digitry issues, or both. If it is just one plasma burned display, sometimes two, it makes sense for me to replace with old stock that are good. However, when almost all of them have some type of issue including plasma burn which you can’t do anything about, it made sense to consider upgrading to LED replacements, which is what I did here.
Once all of that was done, the game booted up and was largely playable. I had to replace some burnt lamps, make a few adjustments, and give a little love to the right flipper. At some point in its life, WD-40 had been sprayed on several of the mechs. This is never a good idea in pinball. It may seem like an easy fix to spray on a sticky solenoid or plunger, but these games were designed for dry operation on devices like that. Doing so, in time, can cause the mech to become more gummed up, makes a mess underneath, and is technically a fire hazard though the oily residue after the vapors have long dissolved is much less one than the vapors themselves. Once sprayed, getting it all off is almost impossible, but I did my best to clean up and remove the lubricant from the mechs affected.
