Heya all,

Recently picked up a Data East Star Trek 25th Anniversary and am having some issues with it that I can't track down.

1) DMD Issue. The display test shows all pixels working, nice and bright. However during gameplay there are certain times where the dots look faded, seems similar to being gassed out I guess but since the display test works fine I don't think that's the issue. After ball drains it it shows the "Bonus" the top of the text for "Bonus" is faded/missing. Also the "Unlimited Millions" the millions score is halfway missing.

2) Whenever I hit the left flipper the score goes up randomly and will eventually trigger the "Unlimited Millions". Doesn't seem to do it with right flipper though, so that's strange.

3) Randomly it will kick out two balls at the beginning of the game / ball. Doesn't seem to be a pattern to when it does this.

Things I've done to troubleshoot -

1) For DMD issue I reseated the ribbons. That's about it so far. I guess I'm thinking maybe it's a display driver board issue?

2) I put it in switch test mode and hit the flippers and shook the game to see if maybe vibrations are causing a switch to activate. No luck - no other switches activate. Also checked to see if there were any stuck open switched and the test showed there were none.

3) For the ball issue I tried to look at the switches but I'm not 100% sure what I should be looking for there. I didn't see the optic board or anything like that...is there one on this machine?

I took a video of of the DMD issue that also includes the scoring when I hit the flipper. The problems should be pretty obvious in the video otehr than the two-ball kickout one...and when the score isn't going up is when I am hitting the right flipper. Here is the link -

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the info! So the scoring problem indeed was the center switches needing calibration! I got that fixed now. I did find a diode with a broken leg on one of the dropdown targets of "STAR" and fixed that as well, but now I'm having an issue where if a flasher goes off it kicks one of the coils...like the ball kickout and the knocker. For example if the "Ice Planet 10 Million" blue flasher goes off then the knocker will go off too sometimes. I think this might be a L/R relay issue so I am going to try and replace that. I've heard it could be something with the Q29 transistor too. Have you heard of something like this?

Just wanted to fill peeps in on the issue I was having. I replaced the L/R relay that controls the flashers/coils and it fixed the issue! So, other than the display issue everything is fixed. I'm not sold that it's a gassing issue quite yet though due to it looking 100% fine in the display test and only acting up during very specific times when playing. I'll post up again if I figure that one out.