I purchased an out-of-state Breakshot which arrived via a well wrapped and protected freight shipment mid last week. This was a residential cabinet that has seen very little play and overall is in really great physical condition. I checked cable connections and fired it up, and was greeted with a burnt plastic/fishy smell and a DMD showing nothing but a somewhat fuzzy "hill". Other than a playfield bulb outage and a drop target that looks like it popped loose, the gameplay and sounds all seems to be fine at a high level beyond the DMD issue. I didn't do a thorough check due to the smell and wanting to cut the power. It's still sitting on the shipping pallet with no legs, so I haven't taken the glass out to address the playfield stuff quite yet while I work on the DMD.

After turning the machine off, I tracked down the smell issue to the DMD power supply PCB's C2 capacitor which leaked out onto that corner of the power supply board. Cruising the forums, apparently this is a pretty common cap to blow on the Capcom A0015505 board. I ordered a full set of replacement caps from Mouser per the operator's manual specs for the board, along with replacement diodes for D5 and D6 plus resistor R4 which looks to have received the brunt of the electrolytic fluid leak.

I'll admit my soldering skills are not the best, but I cleaned up the board with Iso as best I could, and swapped out all of the caps and components listed above last night and it looks like I've got all clean solder joints. The good news is it seemed to have brightened up the display, the downside is I'm still only getting the "hill" effect that looks like this:

'Hill' effect

Occasionally there will be a smaller hill on the far left that will kind of bubble up and fade back down again, otherwise there is no change to the display, even after running for a few minutes. I swear I made out some ghosted graphics of "E OVER" in the "hill" at one point, but it could just as easy be my eyes playing tricks on me.

In and out of the maintenance menu via opening the coin door has no impact other than triggering the smaller "bubble hill" on the far left of the display. Fuses all look good. I've tested continuity on the original 14 pin cable and 8 pin power cable going to the display and all was fine. I took the display upstairs and popped it into my TZ table and the plasma display worked just fine. I also tried the TZ table's known working 14 pin ribbon cable with no change on Breakshot. I also tried booting up the system with the display ribbon disconnected. I expected to see a blank display but got some noise:

No display ribbon cable attached

Could be normal, but I figured it was worth noting.

It was getting late so I didn't test the voltage coming off the 8 pin connector on the PCB to make sure that wasn't an issue. Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior or where I should look next beyond the voltage tests?

Thanks for the input. Will hook up my DMM tonight and see what I get off the connector block, although I'm only a bit more than a novice. Presuming it's best for me to use a ground in the headboard and not the ground pins 4 or 5?

It does get to attract mode when the display cable is attached, and you can actually start and play a game with sound. No real changes to the "hill" on the DMD, but otherwise seems to be working fine.

Yep, definitely a problem with the power board still. Input power J1 is fine, J2 is all out of whack.

Getting -220v, -202v, +5.1 +0.17, +.053.

The 5v looks like a passthrough, everything else is jacked.

Ground braid

I'll give that a try later this week and see if there are any changes. The cabinet is upright and strapped closed while I try to figure out how to get the thing hauled upstairs to the game room.

It's the other way around. I took the Capcom/Breakshot DMD and put it into my Twilight Zone and the DMD worked. The rest of the game works fine as long as I don't connect the DMD to the driver board via the short 8 pin high voltage cable, making me think that the rest of the electronics are good. The issue is almost definitively the power driver board for the DMD based on the incoming and outgoing voltages.

Edit: I see what you're saying now, the DMD is a Capcom stickered unit so it's not a failed swap of non Capcom parts.

Sorry it's been a while, there was no change in the voltage readings between the ground braid cable or the 4 pin and 5 pin grounds from the plug (I tested against both). I ended up swapping out the plasma for a ColorDMD and just bypassed the whole issue since my electronic tech knowledge, skills, and test equipment is unfortunately not really up to par to diagnose the board issue from schematics.