Hi everyone, just wanted to join the party. I've taken this quarantine time as an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with my 4 machines and give them some love. I have an original AFM I thought I'd share a few photos of here. Honestly I wasn't sure how I felt about the remake, if it took away from the value of these originals, but this machine is the one most people move to when they play. Other than the cliffy protector and Bill Ung Light Kit, it's stock. Pretty bad fade on the left side. Right side is sweet!

I have some LEDs coming in and intend to make this my first LED conversion game. Not sure if I will add any spots, will see how it looks in the dark with stock first.

I do have the stroke of luck and extra ball lights in the package I intend to install with my LED retrofit.

One issue I seem to have is that occasionally a pure shot into the mothership dead center will spit the ball back without registering the hit on the ship. Not sure if there's a known fix for that issue or not.

I'm hoping to save $150 on the LED OCD board but we will see how I deal with it. I'd rather put that towards a ColorDMD eventually.

I see folks talking about knowing if there game is a reimport, matching boards, etc, how do I find all that out? This was purchased from a prior collector about 15 years ago and has been in my home since.

Anyway will catch up on this thread and all your games, just wanted to say hello and join the martian club.

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Man, those some UGLY martians!!!!

Hey, sweet. It's a USA machine, assuming that's a good thing. Made on May 2, 1996.

Thanks much for the tip on the trough switch, I will see if I can get that sucker dialed in this weekend when I install my SOL and EB LEDs.

While I'm down there, anyone tossed a trough light into their AFM and what color did you use? Was thinking maybe blue for my TZ, would an orange or red be too tacky? Maybe just warm white?

Any good tips for getting at the back right pop bumper? It's the only LED that was a challenge to get at in my retrofit. Man these LEDs look nice on this machine. Really brightens it up. Not a big deal but my OCD is bugging me about it. I started to go at the right ramp but it wasn't cooperating too well and playfield posts started coming up and I bailed. Boy they sure made that one pop bumper tough to get at.

The wrench is a good idea. I was using a nut driver and it was turning the whole post along with the nut. So annoying.

Not sure how many people are on this thread but if anyone has their machine open and can post me a photo of the back side of the backbox to show the lighting pattern, I would appreciate. A lot of mine had broken tabs and the strings were not in holes, it's a little tough to determine the proper pattern for both the flashers and the yellow sockets (and which holes remain open). A photo would be a huge help to me in my LED conversion. I'll probably just tape down the sockets with busted tabs, shouldn't need to mess with this much back here once I'm done.

Absolutely amazing. Thanks so much. I did my LED swap today and got all excited to use your photos to route, only to determine only the small short yellow strand lighting. Opened the backbox and found a seriously burnt and mangled GI connector with cut and spliced cables leading to the braid for the backbox. Some pins just have a wire stub coming off them. Sigh. I have owned this machine forever and never noticed before (going from a player to a maintainer lately). The board looks okay but the connector is going to need totally rebuilt which is a skill I sadly do not have (though I have built CAT6 cables and punchdowns so not a total dunce I guess).

I'll likely have to call in the pros for this, my Whirlwind has had the back GI out for a while due to similar reason. Just kills me as I enjoy doing as much work myself as I can, but this type scares me as mistakes can be costly.

I took pictures but they'd probably make you guys cringe.

Alright, here it is. Welcome to my nightmare. I've never worked with connectors and wiring in the backbox before. I'm in over my head right? Stupid Williams/Bally GI.

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Backbox lighting behavior checkup here...It's possible that my backbox is already working properly, but before I rebuild the connector, I want to make sure anyway.

So I got all 3 of the pair strands (and the flashers) working and lighting up. When I first turn the game on all the strands light equally with the new Comet LEDs. Then once the game goes into attract mode 2 of the 3 strands seem to dim down to 50% or less brightness. They also seem to stay that way during the game (the shortest of the 3 pair strands in the backbox seems to stay at 100% but then may totally shut off during the flasher show at the end, for example).

Is this actually the normal behavior of the light strands in the backbox and I just never took it apart and noticed before? Or do I still have a potential wiring or power issue if these strands are dimming?

I do use the Bill Ung mini saucer kit but not the expansion, so my kit doesn't touch J105.

Appreciate any advice / info, at least I know what the supposed behavior is then when I start ripping stuff apart.

I'll reply to my own post and also if anyone else sees this.

So yes, the connector was to blame, a fresh connector brought the lights back. Wow! The backglass looks brighter than ever, funny that this has been bad for years and I never bothered to fix until I got the LEDs to swap in. Looks great.

Full disclosure, this was my first ever molex build, and I of course used a ramped connector and had the lip facing the wrong direction (towards the pin headers) so it's a tight fit but it works. I'll likely rebuild this when I remove the board to have the large capacitors replaced by a tech locally -- I am not brave enough to work on a PCB yet, my soldering skill has proven awful, I seem very good at melting solder and terrible at hardening solder on an actual connection point for some reason.

All that aside, the dimming lights had to be the burnt connector, and I'm sure the board needs some love as well. I'll get an NVRAM put on the other board at the same time, may as well pay for all the board work at once.

Anyway, little by little, getting somewhat better at caring for my machines. If nothing good comes out of the news lately, at least I can make my pins a little happier by giving them some much overdue care.

Anyone got a trick I can use to get my left AFM flipper to travel up JUST a hair higher? Strength is good, never rebuilt a flipper before (don't really want to dig into that unless I absolutely must). Oddly enough at the low point it does seem even with the right one and when I move it manually inside the travel is the same so it's definitely some sort of hardware adjustment I guess? The way it is now, you can't trap a ball in the left, believe it or not, angle is JUST enough to roll the ball into the center. Right flipper trap working ideally.

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Sounds like it's time for a rebuild kit - pbresource looks to have some nice ones and I definitely need one for Whirlwind (broken bushing and missing screws). May as well buy two and learn and do both machines!