my RFM had a known issue where the up/down post was staying in up (energized) position, but would drop if you flipped the flippers. originally, I thought that there was the possibility that the post had become magnetized and contact with the steel ball (resting against it) kept the post in the up position

while shopping out my RFM this weekend and replacing coil sleeves, I happened to notice a small burn spot on one of the eyelets that the copper winding passed through and was soldered to the lug for this particular coil

apparently, a poor solder connection at the lug caused the copper to arc enough that over the years it actually snapped the copper wire at the point where it was soldered to the lug. however, it wasn't noticeable because there was still enough to pass through the eyelet and the [loose] wire was still making connection with the lug (some of the time)

a very weird symptom to track down, but one that made me feel quite happy after resolving it

yeah, yeah, yeah...

I know that I should have, but to be honest after all of the small issues that I ran into like forgetting to plug in connectors for various parts of the machine that I could have sworn that I had, I was just kind of stoked to get everything back up and running.

another issue that I ran into was I swapped out the tiny opto boards (because the solder on the originals looked horrible; lots of acid flux residue and cold solder joints) on one of the poppers and that didn't work at all, so I ended putting the original boards back in.

either one or both of the LEDs must have been bad on the new boards, because I can't imagine B/W using a different set-up for pinball 2000 vs. the other machines that came before it