Joined the club this weekend! Non-working condition (only GI when turned on) horribly flaked backglass. PF, plastics, and cab look descent. Can't wait to tear into the cleaning and restoration!

What are the correct flipper bat and flipper rubber colors? Mine has yellow bats with yellow rubber but the brochure shows white bats with red rubbers.

Thanks guys, I guess I should have phased my question "What color bats and rubbers are original equipment on Blackout"...

I agree, other color combinations look better than white/red, I was just wondering what was stock.

Firepower has it. I'm not aware of a setting for this on Blackout.

Hey guys, I ran into this the other day and was wondering if anyone else has seen it. I earned an extra ball through score. I then enabled the playfield extra ball (left orbit). When the extra ball light turned on next to the scoop, the Shoot Again light from the score based EB I had earned, turned off!

Hmmmm, thanks for testing it out! I'll try it the next time I have the glass off. I need to adjust one of my spinners anyway. I can't seem to get all 3 of them to score reliably!

Anyone know if there were different versions of the code for Blackout? Maybe I have an older version???

The 1-20 lights are bonus you collect for certain shots on the playfield. It is collected at the end of the ball multiplied by the multiplier that you earned through the top lanes.

I've performed the upgrade on several games by replacing the base plate, which is pretty costly. A picture of how you did this would helpful! Specifically where you attached the end of the return spring on a stock System 6 era base plate without having the spring pull sideways on the plunger arm.

Welcome to the club!

You really need to start with Vid's Bulletproofing System 6 thread. Lots of good, basic updates in that thread that need to be performed to your boardset before you start chasing anything.

Sounds like your boardset is not booting reliably. 40 pin connector, IC sockets and cold solder joints at the header pins are the usual suspects.

ROMS should not get hot like that. Warm, maybe but certainly not hot. The oxidized legs are very typical and need to be cleaned but more importantly, the sockets they plug into most likely need to be replaced. I rarely see bad ROMs but see bad sockets often. A common problem to watch for with the PROMs with oxidized legs is that the legs get very brittle and break off easily. You can mask the problem of bad sockets by getting fresh new ROMs with clean legs but for long term reliability, the sockets should be swapped with some modern dual swipe style.

Q1 - the unloaded voltage is always higher than the voltage listed in the manual. When the circuit is loaded, it should be more around 28V
Q2 - Could be - check the wiring on the transformer. Look at note 4 on page 23 of the Firepower schematic document on IPDB. Someone may have re-wired your transformer for a low line condition.
Q3 - see Q2
Q4 - See Q2
Q5 - the 40 pin connector can cause all sorts of errors. Did you replace the CPU socket? Any other sockets on the board?
Q6 - yes. Even though continuity works, it still can fail under load, at higher frequencies, as it warms up, etc.
Q7 - See Q5 for a start and replace the 40 pin for starters. Are you sure this system 4 board ever worked for Blackout? Might be worth researching if system 4 CPU is compatible with Blackout ROMs. Also might be worth checking the jumper settings on the CPU board to make sure they are compatible with Blackout. Double and triple check your replaced sockets for proper continuity and look for shorts.

Good progress and observations!

I don't think the changes to the sounds are any sort of clue.

Q1 - All 35 year old IC sockets are suspect! If they are gripping the chip tightly, that is a good sign. I would put this on the list to replace if we can't figure this out.
Q2 - YES! Any socket that cannot hold a chip in place needs to be replaced. Even sockets that require less force to insert the chip are suspect. Replace the PIA socket!
Q3 - Yes, the display PIA on the driver can prevent the board set from booting.
Q4 - After the PIA chip, you can try the game ROM sockets. After that, you will need a logic probe to begin seeing whats going on to prevent booting.

Are you getting anything on the displays? Look closely at the displays, can you see any hints of orange glow in the glass? Best done with the lights off. Also, be careful with those displays - DO NOT touch them when they are on. There is 150V on those displays and that can hurt you.

Sorry, wrong word on my part. A loose PIA on either board can cause the game not to boot by corrupting the data or address bus. I would replace IC10 socket.

The question on the display was just to confirm the display power supply is working, which it sounds like it is.

Sorry that didn't help. None of the work you have done so far is not needed. The sockets and 40 pin needed to be replaced for the reliability of the board.

Yes, it is time to get a logic probe. Probably a good idea to start your own troubleshooting thread. This way we stop plugging up the club thread and you can get more people helping.

Congrats on getting it going! That darn 40 pin is the cause more times than not.

The End of Stroke switch adjustment has a significant effect on flipper strength. Push the flipper pawl into the coil with your finger (do not push it in by moving the flipper bat or you will get a bad adjustment) and adjust the gap to be around 1/16 of an inch.

If you don't get good power with the EOS jumpered, adjusting it is probably not the cause.

Next look at J3 (lower left on the power board) and J12 on the Driver board. At a minimum, reflow solder to these header pins or better yet, replace them. Look carefully at the connector for loose wires, replace with higher current trifuricon crimp-on style if they look questionable.

Remove fuse F4 from the power board and clean the ends with a green scrubby or steel wool. Inspect the fuse clips to make sure they are strong and grip the fuse tightly. Clean the fuse clips with a green scrubby best you can. Reinstall F4.

Last in the path is the connectors between the head and cabinet. Power leaves the power supply board at J3 (inspected above) and enters the playfield at 8P2. You can find this connector by tracing the wires from the power supply board. Ground connects to the driver board at J12 (inspected above) and enters the cabinet at 7J1 pins 7 and 9 and heads towards the flipper switches. From the flipper switches the signal again goes through 7J1 pins 8 and 10 then 8P3 to the flipper coils. Any one of these connections could be loose or corroded, causing weak flipper power.

Its a bit of a needle in a haystack. I would look at the connectors on the boards for bad solder joints and connections. If that's not it, you might just want to bump up your flipper coil strength.

Seems he disabled the GI blackout function. Seems kinda wrong. Love the runway light strip.

DO NOT get the one from planetary. The mirroring is great but the color saturation sux. The black is "see through" when backlit, for example. I had to remove a bunch of bulbs to make it even passable.

Did you get your sling fixed? There are 2 sets of switches on the slings. The one under the playfield with the diode attached only controls scoring, not triggering, so ignore it for now.

The 2 switches that stick through the playfield are what actually triggers the coil to fire. They should be wired in parallel. Carefully inspect these switch stacks for leafs that may be shorted together. Check the capacitor to see if it failed closed. Use your meter on resistance (ohms), game OFF, and measure the resistance between the contact points of the switches to make sure it isn't shorted.

Or camera frame rate making it look like that.

Glad you found the problem. Typically, a shorted trigger switch will not cause the driver to fail. Typically the coil will burn before the driver transistor fails. You might want to measure the resistance of that coil to make sure it is in spec, check that the coil diode has not failed shorted and make sure the wires are soldered on the coil in the proper orientation so that the striped side of the diode is towards power. A failed or reversed diode can draw so much power that the driver transistor fails.

Don't add a block that is wider than stock or it will get in the way of components on the underside of the playfield when it is in the playable position. I bet a 2x2 is too wide.

Blackout ROM file I have has 1 sound ROM and 3 Voice ROMs

Hmm, interesting. The voice ROMS are 4K and doesn't look like there are jumper settings for bigger or smaller ROMS unless someone physically modified the board and changed the addressing on the sockets.

The other option is if the 4th ROM socket is populated with an extra ROM or a junk ROM, it wouldn't change a thing. The CPU would never access it since the program isn't looking for a ROM there.

Do all 4 ROMs look the same? Can you read any numbers off the ROMs?

Would be interesting to read the contents of those 4 ROMs to see whats there.

Maybe to the right of the right most lane guide on the toplanes?

Looking great! Agree on the ear plug compliment, great idea!

What levels of sandpaper grit did you use? What was your final grit before clear? Did you sand the inserts with a smoother grit?

What did you use for clear?

Its a common issue with all Williams games from this era but it is fixable.

With the game off, clean the contacts of the start switch by pulling a piece of paper through the contacts as you gently press them together. Repeat until the contacts are no longer leaving a mark on the paper.

Gap the switch so there is about 1/16" of a gap at rest.

As Stashyboy said this can be a problem with the horseshoe contacts on the drop targets. It can also be a wire broken off the drop target boards.

On the back of the drop target assembly, there are boards with switch matrix wires connected. Carefully inspect the wires and jumpers for a disconnected wire. Not uncommon for one to be broken off the board. Gently pull on each one to ensure they are connected on both ends. Sometime it's hard to tell if they are all connected just by looking at them. There are a lot of wires there.

If not a broken wire, you have a contact problem. The contacts can be tricky to get adjusted properly and sometimes are broken. Problem is that it is a bit of a project to get to them to clean or make adjustments. You need to remove the boards off the back of the drop target mech or remove the entire assembly. Good news is you can still purchase replacement parts:

https://www.pinballlife.com/drop-target-horseshoe-wiper-contact-blade-right.html

That page shows an example horseshoe contact and what the board looks like.

Take lots of pictures of the wiring on these boards before you get started. They can come lose when you are working on the boards and having pictures of where they go can be immensely helpful.

System 7 has many of the same exact problems System 6 has. The 40pin - cold solder joints - worn out capacitors - worn out sockets.

Other games of this era have their weak spots too - Stern and Bally with that power board that is always burned up - .100 pitch connectors that are flaky - SCRs burning out in the lamp matrix.

I don't think advanced diagnostics is the answer when the average Joe Pinball isn't going to do board work. If so, there are diagnostic ROMs that will pinpoint problems (to a certain degree) on system 3-7. Or just get a logic probe and start working through the board.

I think it has nothing to do with reliability. It has to do with the sheer volume of some of these games that were made, the depth of the rules, interest of the gameplay (lack of ramps until System 7,etc) and the quality of the light show and sounds.

Hard to beat a System 11 game (which has it's own tech weaknesses) in these areas for only a few hundred to a thousand more than a Blackout.

Compared to WPC up to today and it's no contest which explains their ~$2500 starting point these days.