I'm in. I just purchased one for $50! It is truly a "barn find" (actually, it was in a machine shed on a farm) complete with mouse nests on the playfield. It had some "cow medicine" (per the seller) placed on the playfield glass that subsequently leaked into the cabinet (lock down mechanism, coin door and coin box). The electronics are all good except for some minor battery acid damage that I will fix (I also have a spare Alltek board and a Fixit, just in case). The playfield has some wear and the cabinet has some "patina", but the backglass is perfect. It should be a fun project.

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If the displays have at least some sign of a glow or flicker (they are not outgassed), they can be repaired very easily. If you have an issue with the displays, always replace the decoder chip first (be sure to install a socket). It is also very easy to test all of the SCRs with a digital multimeter set to continuity (check YouTube). Replace any and all that don't read correctly and the display will work well (assuming it doesn't have burn spots from years of too high voltage). Always adjust the display voltage on the solenoid driver board to 175 vdc. That will allow your displays to live a longer, more productive life (lotsa pinball). Have fun!

As suggested earlier, recheck your wiring to make sure it is correct. If so, plug in connector J2 and leave the others unplugged. Turn on the power and check the voltages at each of the header pins on J1 and J3 (per the wiring key posted earlier in this thread). If you are getting 44vdc at TP5, you should also incorrectly have that reading at J3-6 and J1-7 (they should correctly be about 6 vdc), which means you have a short somewhere on your board. With the power turned off, check for continuity between pins J1-7 and J1-6. There should be none. If there is continuity (a short), check to see if a piece of solder has lodged itself under the plastic of the header pin and shorted the two pins or maybe Rottendog did a poor job of soldering and QC. If that is OK (no continuity), go upstream from there in the schematic and look for shorts between the 44 volt circuit and the 6.5 volt circuit (check the schematic). Good luck!

Oops. I meant "If you are getting 44vdc at TP1, ...."

Again, good luck.

How to Flatten Playfield Plastic! (done on really warped Bally Space Invaders plastic)

I have been looking for a good way to flatten playfield plastic and I believe I have done it. In the past, I have used a heat gun to heat them and then hold them in position (by hand) until they cooled. It worked kinda-sorta. I read one guy's method was to sandwich them between plates of glass and then place them in the oven at 150 degrees (that seemed to work well but requires glass cut-to-size for the oven). Others suggested putting them between two old playfield glasses and placing them in the hot sun on a 100 degree day (only works for a handful of days during the year). I took a combination approach.

I first straightened them kinda-sorta with a heat gun (they were very warped). Next, I put them between two pieces of old playfield glass that were thoroughly cleaned and suspended off of the ground (see the pictures). A 1500 watt ceramic heater was placed underneath about 1 inch from the surface of the glass and turned on HIGH. I left it in place long enough for an area to become hot-to-the-touch and then moved it slightly to an adjacent area under the plastic. I really didn't keep track of the time in one spot, but it didn't appear that it would ever get too hot to ruin the plastic (if anyone tests that theory, please let me know the results). Once the entire plastic had been heated, I moved it to the "cool" end of the glass to be pressed flat while it cooled (you can see the large piece in the picture at the end cooling down). In the future, I will place some weight at each end of the glass to keep the "sandwich" tight. The results were better than I could have imagined.

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The piece in the last two pictures is the large one from the upper-left side. It ended up very straight. I was thrilled!

I am going to do an overlay on an EBD playfield this winter. Does it need to be clearcoated or have mylar applied to protect it? One other option is the clear polycarbonate protectors from SSpruch Spielautomaten. Or, is waxing adequate to fend off wear to the overlay? It just seems like it would need something to keep it protected. Thoughts?

Where did you get your overlay? I purchased mine from Classic Arcades but I don't know much about how it's made.

Does anyone have a good playfield scan of SI in PDF format? Please PM me if you do.

Did you get your rectifier board to work properly?

Send me a PM with an email address. I have a huge PDF file that I think is pretty decent. You might have to convert it to jpeg (or something else) and do some color work to get a decent match.