Blast! The game will be the death of me. I know you're already longing for a day when "1977 Bally Power Play" threads stop appearing. (I'm equally tired of creating them.)

Problem: All my playfield GI is out. I'm honestly not sure when this happened, though I remember thinking recently, 'gee this game sure seems dark' and flipped on some more ceiling lights in the area. Derp.

Other info:
- GI on the backglass and coin door are good.
- All the other lamps (those that turn on/off during the game) in the playfield are working. (Well, with the exception of a few that already needed some socket cleaning and/or troubleshooting.)
- All the fuses appear intact -- the (6) on the rectifier board, the (1) on the V/SR board, and the (1) under the playfield.

I dug through the schematics a little bit -- I'm still very much a beginner on sparky drawings -- and general illumination is referenced all over the place, so I'm not sure where to start. Some guidance would be greatly appreciated, as always.

Thanks again, in advance....

I inspected all the pins and connectors and didn't see any signs of burning. I cleaned the pins to be sure it wasn't an oxidation issue.

For kicks (and for your info), I measured the voltage coming off the J1 pins:
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0
4 - no pin
5 - 6V AC
6 - 95V AC
7 - 12V AC
8 - 6V AC

So .... the 0 off 1, 2, & 3 is somewhat disconcerting. What should these values be?

This rectifier board is already somewhat of a Frankenstein, it seems the previous owner(s) had some some work. I did notice on the back, that the solder for pins 1 & 2 were flowed together (see below). I haven't touched the solder on this board since I got it.

J1-Rectifier.jpg

Ok. Measured again, got:

1 and 2: 0
5: 6.5 AC
6: 43 DC
7: 5.5 DC
8: 6.5 AC

So 5 and 8 are ~0.8V low, but could this be within tolerance? If we assume the power coming off the pins is good, where do I check next? I suppose I'll trace the wires from there and see where I go.

Ok, checked up there. The first light gets a doubled up red wire and white wire. I went back to connector J1 and tested where the female connector meets the wire; both read 6.3V AC. I went back to that first light; both wires still read 6.3V AC. I followed the wires around and checked all the other GI lights, all are getting 6.3V AC and all are intact.

What am I missing? Is 6.3V simply too low to drive all these? Shouldn't they at least be on, but perhaps dim?

So I FINALLY got around to working on this machine again. I was a little more motivated recently, because even though I could play it with the GI out, recently some of the game lighting (e.g., bumpers, bonus) started flickering and the chimes were acting wonky, and the game wouldn't play. This issue comes back to some of the pesky corrosion on the MPU board. It was in fairly rough shape with the old leaky battery when I got it, so every once in a while I have to go scrub it down again -- it seems either more corrosion is popping up in new places or I haven't full neutralized it in the old places.

Anyway ... back to the GI problem: I rebuilt the connectors on the rectifier board, with the sweet header pins and trifurcon connectors recommended in Vid's guide. Also got my hands a sweet crimping tool for the connectors ... sure, it was $23, but worth every penny.

To no one's surprise, the first time I fired it up, all the general illumination came back on like nothing had ever happened.

After giving the MPU another scrubdown to remove corrosion, the game worked fine again ... and it was so happy about being back in action, it awarded with with a new high score -- absolutely destroying my previous high of 578,600:

20151119_225216.jpg

Overall, this is great news -- because I'm hosting a department holiday party in a few weeks, and we're going to have a little pinball tournament, so I wanted all three machines up and running. Sky Kings and Slick Chick are working like champs (as usual, man I love EM), and now Power Play is back in business too.

Thanks again Vid, erichill, and schudel5 for your help!