New member here needing a little help. I have a Space Invaders that I have had for maybe 10 years that I did sort of a custom restoration. More on that later, but I wanted to note that I had put in a brand new Dash-35 MPU along with some other new after market boards at the time. The only original board is the sound board. Non-relevant note: It has the 7 digit mod and ROM. It has worked perfectly for the last 10 years. Lately though, it has developed an odd problem that has me puzzled.

Normal operation after using a credit or the next player starts, is for the ball kicker to pop out the ball, then the player's score will flash until the first points are scored. What is happening (randomly on any ball or any player) is that at the same time it kicks the ball out, it adds 5K points and the player's score does not flash. It acts as if a 5K target was hit. No sound is generated, but that may be because the sound card has not finished initializing for that new ball yet.

I have checked for stuck switches (test mode) but there are none. As far as I know, the only 5K target on the 1st ball and before any game play is the center loop. Also, as far as I can tell, the only time the 5K is randomly being added is when the ball kicker activates.

It's been a long time since I have had to do any work on the machine, so I figured I would ask before digging too deep and going on a wild goose chase. So, anyone have any ideas?

I already checked them (there are two). And while running the stuck switch test, I can not get those (or any of them) to trip by nudging/banging the table. So I don't think it is actually those physical switches. I have been playing with it some more and it only adds that 5K when it first kicks the ball out and before the player's score would normally start to flash. Frustrating, because sometimes it will do it every time, then it will be fine again for a while, then just random. Guess I need to break out the schematics and see if there is any correlation between the switch where the ball sits before getting kicked out (forget the name of it) and those 5K switches. I also need to figure out if there are any other "any time" 5K switches.

Ok, I think I am making progress (or not). When it starts acting up and after the ball is in the launch shoot, I can reach in the door and manually toggle the outhole switch. This will trigger the kicker and it will increment 5K (when it's acting up). If I disconnect the kicker solenoid it never increments no matter how many times I toggle the outhole switch. Connect the solenoid back up and it will once again cause the random phantom 5K. I replaced the kicker solenoid diode, but it did not help (not that I thought it would).

I was wrong earlier, it does make a sound as if a target had been hit when it increments the 5K.

Well, it turns out it was one of the hoop rollovers. I had found another thread where someone was having a similar issue, but it would score only when using the right flipper. He too had done the switch test and banged on the playfield but was not able to reproduce it. But it was a switch that was gapped too small. I was going to stick some paper in those two switches to absolutely rule them out, but I saw one of them was gapped pretty small. Opened it up and it's all good again. Funny how none of the other solenoids would trip it, because we were watching closely and it was only the kicker solenoid that would do it.

In my original post, I mentioned this was a sort of a custom restoration. When I bought the machine the playfield was toast. There were no overlays available, and I was not going to put a lot of money into it. I also did not really like how "busy" the original playfield was. So I just sanded it down and pained it a dark blue and made some new space theme bases plastics. While I probably committed heresy by doing this, I like the way it turned out and everyone enjoys playing it. Here is a not so good picture.

pinball (resized).jpg

There were no overlays available at the time (I looked everywhere). I also did not buy this as collectible. I got it really cheap and just wanted to make it playable without investing a lot. And as I said, I personally did not really like the original playfield that much. It just had too much going on for my taste. The picture I posted above is not that great, but it looks a lot better in person. It has like 10 coats of urethane and after 10 years is still looking as good as when I did it. That said, I can understand why some would want to keep it original.

The infinity glass is in perfect shape, although I have pretty much desecrated that too. LOL . But best of all, everything has always worked (at least until this issue) and we enjoy playing it. The BetaBrite below has been modified to display various animations and interact with the machine. It will display the high score, announce extra ball, game over, etc. (along with voice). I am more into making things do what I want, than having a collectible.

SI (resized).jpg