Wow...Along the bottom of your photo above are a mess of cold solder joints....Especially the 6 on the left. Reflow solder on these pins.

Agreed, many cold joint or not enough solder. One pad missing so who knows it there is a connection on the top side missing. A few traces are scraped and might be broken. Just a mess.

Almost every male pin in your header strip has a broken solder joint.

You can see the dark circle around the pins. This is a broken solder joint. Remove all the solder that you can. Don't reuse the solder that is there. You can create cold solder trying to blend in new solder or reusing existing solder.

broken_solder_joints.png

Can you see an orange glow in the front of the glass?
That will tell us if High Voltage is getting to the display glass.

Did you trim the glass legs after installing the glass? I would be worried some pins are shorting out to the metal display holder in the white lamp board.
You could hold the display outside of the holder and retest or trim the glass legs.

Can you take a picture of all the components on the top side of the display board?

Resistors R1, R3, R5, R7, R9, and R11 look burnt, as does the board around them. Each one connects to a digit, so if they're all open, then you won't see any digits. I think you would still see the glow at the bottom, but not all displays do this. Regardless, you should change out those 100K 1/4 watt resistors with 1/2 watt versions.

You can test a display tube out of circuit by holding it near one of those plasma balls you get from Spencer Gifts. If there is gas in the tube, it will glow. Don't touch the leads when you do this.

plasma.jpg

Enjoy!! I miss those days when I was younger. I had a lot of fun.

R1,R3,R5,R7,R9,R11 all look to have been replaced with a different type of resistor than original.

I think I had other resistor location failures. I'm checking into it.

If the display is gassed out you are wasting your time fussing with the display.

Resolder the header pins and try again. If there is zero glow, you have HV at the test point. The glass is dead.

From experience... the glass you in your picture sucks. They split open at the sides and the gas leaks out worse than other brands of displays. Glass with a "nipple" in general seem to be more likely to still be working in 2015 than glass with no nipple.

You stated in the first post that it was working.
Were the segments bright or dim before the display failed?

When testing resistors used to bias transistors, one end should be removed from the circuit to get a valid reading.

As for testing the glass, Bally engineering showed a simple trick at the service schools;

With the installed glass, make sure the legs are trimmed flush with the bottom of the PCB. Take a new glass and line all of the legs up with the respective pads on the board. You do this with the game on, in display test mode. Be careful as there is 190VDC or more. Steady hands are required. I keep a spare glass around just to do this.

http://ilaina.wix.com/wolffpac-tech

Just was trying to help determine if possibly the glass was outgassing knowing how bright the segments were before it went out.

The wolf LED replacement are a good option. I did a review and a few others have as well. I liked it just fine. Color match not perfect but for one display I put mine in the ball credit display. So if 4 players things do seem even. Depends on how picky you are I guess.
Price was a big factor for me.
Plus you will have fun building it if you go that route. Seems like you are perfectly handy like that.

could it be that the display driver chip is bad?

Sure it can, you can test the outputs of the chip, and inputs, and compare to a good board.
also, chk the ground, if everything is good cept the ground, no go.

^^^ What he said. ^^^

I have a pile of those, including a half-dozen or so that were NOS - all dead. The glass in your picture sucks.

<insert vomiting smiley here>

Yesterday it worked great. Today it's dead. That's how they are.

True story.....

I bought two displays from Williams System 6. Seller advertised them as tested working and I believe him.

I put one display in my Time Warp to replace a bad one. It lasted no more than a week before it gassed out. The glass delaminated and the gas escaped out.... dead dead dead... trash.

Can't fault the seller really, I just ate it. The other one he sold me is still working fine.

That is the one without the nipple in the back?

I honestly don't remember nipple or not. Did you sell me those? I wasnt trying to snarky or anything. No big deal, it happens.

Actually the one display I could get no sign of life from looked the nicest, newest and no nipple. The manufacturing process for those style must be much different and not as high of quality. Very interesting. Those were likely sold in bulk at around 5$ per unit and they are now being sold for 60$ per unit sounds about right.

Sometimes, even NOS ones quickly outgass as soon as they are heated up for a few days.

Make sure you all turn your voltage down as low as your displays will go, but still light up, on the SDB, or you will be burning lot's more of them out.

NOS displays sometimes need 6 hours of higher voltage to "burn in" and then you can lower the voltage back into the 170s.

No. I'm trying to gain some experience as I have a Gorgar and Time Warp I need to work on.
Trying to figure out how to test out glass displays for outgassing other than soldering it to a working display.

Oh.

It is easy with wms 3-6. Just rotate glass into a known working player position to test. If all the displays are out look for -100v and +100v leaving the power supply board and work back to the fuse.

If you aren't too hung-up on 100% originality you can buy a complete new Pinscore or Xpin LED display for less than $60 and be done with it. They work great and you can eliminate the high-voltage area of your solenoid driver board. Plug & play. Probably the single best replacement upgrade to come out for these older machines.

IMG_2542.JPG

The Kiss on the left has Pinscore LED displays and the Rolling Stones has original plasmas. There is a knob on the Pinscores to adjust the brightness so you can match the intensity of the plasmas. At full intensity the LEDs are a lot brighter.