Hi everyone,
I don't have any technical experience with electronics or pinball machines but would like to give it a try and see what I can do. I own one pinball machine, Space Invaders. This machine has been owned by my family since at least 1986 and I know that at some point before that it was in an arcade. About 8 years ago I replaced the rubber rings and some lights, but beyond that I don't believe it had any type of service within the last 15 years (possibly much longer). In my opinion, the machine looks and plays great considering the circumstances, but it does have a couple of issues that I'd like to try to fix and was hoping some more experienced folks could point me in the right direction. Here are the problems I'm aware of:
1) The trailing/chasing lights in the cabinet aren't working. I know I remember them working 15+ years ago, but at some point they just stopped. I have made sure the pin adapters are properly connected and have also checked the fuses on the rectifier(?) board (see below).
2) Possibly related to (1), the lights behind the alien in the cabinet that are supposed to flash to the "heartbeat" also do not work.
3) When holding the left button, the small left flipper will glitch out - it'll drop and rise over and over as if it's not getting consistent power.
4) When (3) is happening, the machine sometimes locks up and gets stuck playing whatever sound was going at the time. It seems to only happen when the left flipper is glitching out but the sample size is small
5) Scoreboard displays are frequently distorted. A good whack to the side of the cabinet usually fixes it for a while. I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting the pin adapters to the affected displays but it doesn't seem to help.
As I stated above, I don't have any electrical or pinball repair experience. If someone could point me to some recommended resources for someone new to this I'd love to read through it to learn a lot of the terminology I see used on this site. I also want to make sure to do any work as safely as possible in terms of electrical shock as I don't know what I need to avoid (is there any danger when the machine is unplugged?).
I have verified that all fuses are present and none are broken using a multimeter. I also checked the rating of each fuse (except the one on the high voltage board). All fuses seemed to match the recommended rating except F6 - according to the manual and the machine it should be a 3A slow blow, but mine appears to be a 5A and I don't see or know how to tell if it is a slow blow.
I'm happy to provide additional pictures if needed of any part of the machine!
Thanks for reading.
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