I was lucky enough to pick up an AFM last weekend, but it’s turning out to be much more of a project than I expected. I’ll post my progress here both for my own notes and to potentially ask for help if I can’t figure something out. As for the game, I knew it was rough, but it was a fair price, and included a new set of decals, a Mirco playfield, and a new Color DMD.

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I had a friend help me take a look when I picked it up two weekends ago, and we spent about half an hour just trying to figure out why things had been hacked the way they were. I think that we’ve worked backwards far enough to at least have a plan of attack now. Oddities to follow.

Let’s start first with the driver board. This thing has been butchered multiple times, and I’m not sure it’s salvageable. I ordered a new rotten dog board to move forward, but if anybody wants the old one, they are welcome to it. The GI connectors have been removed and direct soldered to what appears to be a car wiring harness. J129 was directly connected to the red lines off the transformer with a lamp cord.

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No idea why, but it appears as though there is a ground wire that is supposed to run to the left front leg bracket, and both it and the ground braid have been disconnected, so there is no continuity to ground through the left front leg (or bracket). Re-attaching based on how it is on road show.

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Next up, there are 3 ground pig-tails attached to the service box. Two are being used to ground the stay arm (seems fine), but the third is just dangling. I’m going to remove that one.

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This is honestly the first time I’ve been afraid to even plug in a machine that I’ve brought home. After checking all the cabinet grounding, I’m at least semi-confident I’m not going to shock the hell out of myself just by turning it on. Since the transformer wires have been tampered with, I’m going to get a baseline just by testing AC voltages across all lines coming from the transformer.

Okay, so the service box, and everything coming out of the transformer looks okay

Service Outlet 121.9
Violet (100V AC) 110
Red (9V AC) 9.5
White (80V AC) 87.6
White-Green (9.6V AC) 12.1
Blue-White (13.3V AC) 14.2
White-Red (16V AC) 16.8
Black-Yellow (51.4V AC) 55.5
GI (6.8V AC) 7.5

Grey/Grey-White (12V AC) 12.8
Grey-White/Grey-Green (12V AC) 12.8

When I get access to a molex pin remover, I’ll shrink wrap these wires instead of electrical tape, but it should be enough to keep going until then.

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Now that the transformer seems okay (and the secondary harness visually looks okay), the next step would be to attach it to the driver board. Unfortunately the mounting plate is not grounded and I can’t find a good picture online to show how it is supposed to be. The closest I could find online is a picture of an MM backbox, that shows the ground braid going behind the left side of the mounting plate, but not going to the knocker bracket.

Is that how it’s supposed to be on AFM as well? My closest reference is Road Show, that has ground braid going all the way around the head to all the head brackets (and the knocker) as well as one directly to the mounting plate.

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The A/V and CPU boards look okay so far, so I was planning on trying to get the game to boot with them as-is.

I can’t see where the ground braid connects to the mounting panel, but I can confirm from that picture that it does not go to the knocker mounting bracket. It looks very similar to the one I found for MM, so it looks like it just needs to run under the left side to ground the whole panel.

Grounding fixed, AC connected to the new driver board. 5V test point reads 4.96V

System now Boots. All secondary / cabinet harnesses have been hooked up. Next things to work on

- Color DMD fails to boot (init light stuck on). Tried flashing AFM and Sigma ROMs, but those also fail (PROG led turns solid, but never transitions to done, just jumps back to solid init)

- No high power disabled chime if I boot with the coin door open (driver LEDs confirm high voltage is actually disabled). I'm going to check the bottom switch to verify it is hooked up correctly

- coins are accepted based on sound, but start does not start a game. Going to check the switch itself

I haven’t been diligent on posting, but great progress has been made in the past couple days

- Color DMD appears to be dead based on this thread. The guys there were incredibly nice and offered to fix it, so the controller is going back for repairs

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/colordmdsigma-how-particular-is-it-for-voltages-tech-help

- The display ribbon cable that came with the game is too short, so the DMD needs to be mounted upside down until a proper length replacement arrives

- A friend was nice enough to lend me a loaner display, and with that the system booted and could run diagnostic tests

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Surprisingly almost everything on the playfield works correctly.

- The flippers work surprisingly well for how beat everything else on the game is. I’m going to rebuild the flippers, but currently there are FL-11630 coils installed. I will wait until the proper FL-11629s arrive before the full rebuild

- All cabinet mechs are working properly. Fliptronic boards have been cleaned, new flipper buttons installed, new launch ball button, and burnt out bulbs have been replaced.

- Around 1/3 of the insert bulbs were burned out. All dead bulbs have been replaced, non-dead bulbs have been pulled and wiped down (they were filthy with black dust)

- The insert panel GI connector has been rebuilt using trifurcon pins. With that the backbox lighting is now working

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Only one truly egregious hack remaining before this game is up to the state of “beat to crap players machine”. The playfield GI connector was butchered with this auto-harness and will need to be rebuilt like the backbox insert connector. Luckily it looks like the original wire is long enough to be salvaged.

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The only playfield feature not working appears to be the saucer drop target. During solenoid tests it will pop up, but once it drops, it never comes back in game.

Next step is to start the playfield swap process. The purchase included a new mirco playfield, but there are a couple defects. There is a large dust spot near the Tractor Beam Jackpot, and there is a white stripe in the middle of the left return lane by the flipper. I will most likely be sending it out for retouching, re-clearing, and hopefully rework for a mantis scoop protector.

GI crimps redone, and playfield GI added. Next up, the saucer drop target is not working, and it appears to be a switch issue.

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After re-soldering the switch, I realized that it had been bent to go under the reset plate assembly, instead of properly being triggered based on the drop target. After bending the switch actuator back to straight, the saucer is now working properly. Next step is a decent shop job (new balls, rubbers, flipper rebuilt, proper “T” and “I” targets, and putting together a list of things to be replaced along with the playfield.

The main saucer has a couple LEDs out, and I ordered the replacements from pinbits (along with the enhanced strobe and the blackout mod). Marco’s is out of stock on the gozmod, but if anybody has one I may be interested.

Honestly replacing the driver board was the worst part. After fixing the saucer drop target switch issue, I was able to play my first full game (a little hard to see with an upside-down DMD), and now I can enjoy a player’s condition AFM.

Thanks to the whole pinside community for being such a great resource!