Noticed that my Dirty Harry I bought some months ago had a credit dot. Checked it out and it reported bad standup switch 6 (a bullet target).

Alright, the wire was loose but ground was still there so I soldered it back up and I played a minute and the switch registered normally. Great!

Suddenly the game died. It looked like 5V was intermittent because the lights and everything came on and off by itself now and then. The DMD got garbled also. I turned the game off waited a few seconds and turned it on. It would not boot. 5V was missing as the blanking led was not blinking. It did flicker on a second now and then while power was on.

Very strange since the game worked perfectly until then. I desoldered the switch and reseated the flat cables and sure enough. Everything was back in order again.

What can be causing this? I don't think it's the diode since all switches works fine except this one. So it's not shorted closed? The switch itself is a regular standup leaf switch. It worked when wired up. Is the switch messing with the CPU?

Calling GRUMPY and other wizards on this.

You were right, checked the ribbon cable again and soldered the switch back. No issues.

As usual I was too fast with jumping to conclusions. Funny that it started acting up just when this wire was reattched.

They look brand new. Everything is China made nowadays and most things feels flimsy.