Wish I knew more than nothing. Have you tried checking the connectors between the rectifier and mpu boards? I know this is a common problem probably amongst all machines. Try reseating the connectors and measuring voltages again afterwards. Just guessing I would say TP5 should be 5v. Maybe check for cracked pins on the rectifier and mpu boards?

You have 5v on the voltage regulator so your issue is probably connectors. Start with the MPU j4.

Not sure if you checked the connectors on the Power/Regulator board like Barakandl said above, but I'd check those for sure. Almost every Bally out there had problems with them burning up. Usually you can wiggle them and get it to work for a little bit or even pull them off a bit to get a different connection at the pins.

Def check the connectors! This game needed a complete electronics overhaul. When you get the machine running. Let me know if your top left bumper fires randomly with flipper activity. Does it score or no? One of the last electronic problems for me and I'm up the creek on it. Convinced its either and MPU or SDB issue.

How many flashes on the sound board? You should have 5! Does it have power? is the speaker good? You should have the as-2518-61a. Press the reset button on the sound board and see if it cycles through the sounds and speech. if not then you got problems on the sound board itself.

My displays were flickering as well, like wavy flickering, turned out to be a cold solder joint. I also changed all the J1 490pF caps that are for the displays too, no issues since.

Can't wait to see pix of this...

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Looks pretty clean on the cabinet inside, and you seem to have the same wear on the PF artwork as I do, pretty common areas near the outhole and upper drop targets. Also my plastics are warped exactly like yours, im gonna try the oven method to straighten them out after the electronics are cleaned up. Which I'm nearly done with, alot of MPU board issues with mine.

In regards to your sound quality, the board does seem to have the original caps in it. They must be replaced, I had the same exact problem. Big daddy enterpises sells an entire kit! Good catch on the EE jumpers, its specific to the Embryon rom's.

Also your solenoid board looks newer, but the caps look fairly old but its hard to tell from the pic. Any further issues with resetting or flickering displays I would suspect the regulator section of it.

My favorite is the backglass Spybryon, it looks mint! MF'in hard to find one in that condition, much less find one period!

I'm a bit jealous you got up pictures of your machine before me haha! Hope to have some pictures up myself soon once its all done!

Very nice looking machine! I usually don't like any more than 2 flippers...but it seems to work well here...

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I passed up an embryon awhile back because of some funky wiring and pf wear around that top flipper.

Cool pin and WIDE as they come. The look on it is super cool.

There's always been a special place in my heart for Embryon. It was one of the first Bally SS pins I worked on / with.
It's not necessarily my favorite pin from the era, but I've always like the artwork, sound speech and "genetic engineering theme on this game (not to mention the "Malfunction" tilt phrase )

... and yes, flip-save was neat to.

Spybryon, another source of sound issues is the two pin connector, that does directly to the speaker terminals, I find that the IDC connector...well...sucks! A good cleaning or replacement molex will help there too. The 15 pin Molex that sends power and sound select signals to the board goes shitty too, may be time to replace that as well.

The PF wear is always an issue up there, with the ball rapidly changing directions in a circle its bound to wear fast.

Wide AND HEAVY!!!!!

Spybryon, awesome news and congrats!! I picked up a dead one recently, and very soon I'm going to have to go through all those steps on mine, and test all those voltages, connectors, etc.

Let me just say THANK YOU for this thread and posting all this stuff in one spot!!

Embryon is a work of art in every way, and I can't wait to get the time to bring mine back from the dead. I'm going to do a stencil set on it as well. What an amazing machine...

mechslave, Dont forget my threads too on Embryon, I shotgunned the entire electronics and mechanics manifiest of this machine earlier this year. Plays like a dream. Eventually if funds permit I'm gonna get the PF sent out to HSA and professionally restored and I'll be touching up the cabinet, backglass is a 9/10 with one very tiny chip.

Oh and Spy, replace the spring with the stock one. I think marco specialties has it. I prefer weaker springs where you really have to pull the launcher to send it flying.

Love our Embryon too. It still needs some work too but is quite playable now.
The flash in the center only activates when the shot is perfect, meaning both the messenger balls strike the targets in the back at the same time, this will light 2 Embryon letters...

Does anyone know anything about the two different backglasses? Like the history of why there were two, or how many of each were done? Seems there are blue ones and purple ones... or is one color a faded original?..

Some of the best art in pinball on this machine, look forward to seeing the end result.

You will likely have to repin the connectors to the MPU if you have not, I have done this on several of this era machine and it solves flaky lights and timing issues, also, you will want to replace the caps on the driver board in the HV section, and adjust the voltage with the pot there if you have not done this (170v iirc?). Also, for these, ground mods on the driver board are a must and can prevent funky behavior later, all cheap fixes to make it a reliable machine...

Ive been wondering this as well I have a purple one that came on my machine is it faded or were there 2 versions i would certainly rather have a blue one myself. just becouse of some mods ill do to mine down the road.

But yes i think this machine is the best of the superpins playwise myself.

If youre having random sound issues thet change i would check over the S&T sockets real well Ive had a few of these where it had some random sound issues and it was a weak pin or so on the socket or some oxidation on the IC pins.

In my research the backglass colors were due to fading and moisture getting to the ink. If the BG is blue then its concidered to be in good condition. The purple came from the red and blues mixing together on the BG so I would expect that to be have been exposed to the elements. I'd love to see a photo comparision.

I've already done the ground mods and repinned every board connector in the backbox, not to mention changed all the bad components. The sound board connector is a known problem with wrong or random sounds

Im unsure if the purple is due to fading it appears to been printed the color originaly no other bally backglass i have has faded at all
Besides if you look at the flyers they have the purple BG it seems but i could be wrong

FTR, I got the purple BG, and the Embryon my parents owned years ago had the purple one too. Maybe the blue tinted BG was a bad batch of paint that got mixed?

Bit of a threadjack but since we're all owners of Embryon,maybe it could help someone else...
Any of you got the random firing from the top left pop bumpers(no scoring) when you flip ?
Solutions?

Could be the capacitor on the switch, shorting out.
You can cut it out of the circuit to check, but the switch will not register with quick closure.

Wrestled with this for the past year. Its actually caused by the pulse of EMI from the flippers feeding back into the wire network. Another cause that irritates the issue further is something called ground bounce. Its a design flaw of the circuit boards in general and known in the bally -35 MPU boardset. The only thing you can do is minimize it by changing out the caps, switching diodes, and making sure the connectors are solid. You may even have to dig deeper and replace the pull down resistors on the MPU/driver board and maybe the 11 caps tied to the PIA's on the MPU. This is what helped solve my random tilting and reset issues too. It also made the top bumper pop lesss It still does it sometimes which isnt too big of a deal for me as its no where near as often as it once was

I made a long thread about this same issue awhile back. Take a look, it may help you with your problem.

If you have EOS and flipper button switches that spark a lot it causes more phantom pops and slings.

Clean your high current flipper switches good and to cut back on the spark and it reduces the amount that this happens. Failing cap on switch matrix switch can also cause this.

Exactly. I added suppression caps on the EOS switchs too. EOS caps are an absolute must, not just to cut down on EMI, but to prolong the life of your EOS switches. Those arcs and sparks destroy the contacts. Also make sure your coil stop is not mushroomed either, if it is, it causes the flippers to be "bouncy" (another common problem with linear style flippers) which makes that EOS switch intermintently arc and get EMI through the lines.

In the end the main culprit for me wound up being the 11 caps tied to the PIA/switch matrix circuits. They tested fine in circuit but would fail after a few minutes of play after warming up. Even after changing them the top left bumper would still pop, but nowhere near as bad.

I did an experiment, added a stronger pull down resistor to that switch row for the top left bumper. It solved the phantom pops but instead it moved to the next switch row making the lower left pop bumper phantom pop. Makes sense since electricity takes the path of least resistance. Its the architexture of the circuit design, there wasn't enough isolation and shielding between the logic and solenoid circuits. The Bally -35 MPU boardset has the logic voltage and solenoid voltage running through the driver board, so it makes sense that a 43VDC trace on the board is going to radiate/bleed over to the 5VDC lines when the magnetic field collapses/builds from a solenoid relaxing/firing