I picked up a Tri Zone for cheap recently. It's obvious that somebody forgot to check the batteries for a while. I'm not afraid to try to repair the boards, but I'm wondering if it is a lost cause. Can anyone make a determination based on these pics?

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That's kind of like giving up before trying. The main rom is missing, I think I should at least try that before investing in a whole new board set. Replace the battery holder, test/replace components, maybe redo the connector... Any other suggestions pinsiders?

Thanks for the advice. I'll update when there's progress.

I was leaning more towards the fun/adventure/learning side for this project. If I totally screw up the board(s), oh well, there's always rottendog, and I work for cheap when working for myself, so nothing really to loose, just lots of tinkering and experience to gain.

Boards are out, battery holder removed. I purchased a fiberglass burnishing pen and scratched out a lot of corrosion. Then, cleaned with 50/50 white vinegar/distilled water and followed with denatured alcohol to clean up the mess. Here are the after pictures. I noticed some issues with the 40 pin connector. The female side is missing a few contacts and the male pens are corroded, looks like both will be replaced...

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Well, progress has been made. MPU passes the diagnostic test and I can get to attract mode, which seems to work perfectly. I can ground out the start button and get a game to start, but only 1 flipper will flip, the other is very sluggish. Most switches work, but some do not. The pop bumpers, kick out, sling shots, ball return, and drop targets do not work. Sound seems to work fine. Any ideas on why all these major components do not work?

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Also, the credits are showing up on the player 4 display, not the normal one on the lower left?!?!?!

So, a lot of time has passed and this machine had not made much progress until recently. The boards proved to be more work to kill the corrosion than I wanted to invest. I picked up a set of boards (MPU & driver) from a parted out Alien Poker. When I plugged in the new boards, the game fired up into attract mode with the Alien Poker rom installed. One difference between the board sets is that the new ones only use 3 rom chips on the bottom row (2 green flipper roms and the game rom) while the original set used 5 chips and appeared to be missing the game rom, but still started a game. I still don’t understand how that happened. Anyway, my issue now is that the game sometimes starts up in audit mode, not attract mode. I have been able to quick cycle the power and get it into attract mode until earlier today. The game would not come out of audit mode. Out of desperation, I removed the CMOS 5101 (not soldered to board) and reseated it. Then fired up the game and it surprisingly went into attract mode. Then it even started a game. All seemed well and I shut it off. Does anyone know why removing the CMOS and reseating would have fixed this? I’m guessing the issue will pop back up sooner than later, but I would like to permanently fix the issue.

I hope I don’t jinx it, but reseating the CMOS seemed to do the trick. I haven’t had any issues with the game since then. 30-40 games have been played and I have gone thru it and cleaned switches, installed leds, cleaned/waxed, and rebuilt the drop targets. My project is complete.

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