Hi all, I posted a message exactly one year ago today and now the problem is back. I have a Bally Fireball Home Edition pinball machine (Series I / 606-1000). It works great but the “general illumination” lights all went out again yesterday. These are the lights under the plastic shields around the outside of the playfield and the pop bumper lights which are powered directly from the transformer - no drivers involved and there is not a specific fuse for the GI lights. All “switched lights” (A-D, 1-3, Bonus, Free Ball, etc.) work. When this happened a year ago, it was simply a bad connection at the connector under the playfield (2 green wires). This fix did not work today so assuming the connector was the problem, I installed a new connector but the GI lights did not come on. I am getting 5.1 volts (manual calls for 5.25 volts) at the connector feed when apart but when connected, the voltage disappears.
With the connector apart in order to bypass the feed wires from the machine transformer, I attached an 8 volt external transformer to the GI light circuit and the lights came on but only very, very faintly and the circuit read 1.5 volts.
What would cause 8 volts to drop to 1.5 volts? I assume that the 5.1 volts being supplied by the machine transformer is being drained completely resulting in no GI lights and no volt reading.
I only know enough about electricity to get myself in trouble, so please dumb down any advice for me : ) Thanks in advance for your help and patience.
Ed