Finally get to join the club. Picked up a nice player on Saturday and been too busy having fun to post. Also my first dmd game. PF is in great shape, needs some plastics and a good number of bulbs are out though. Hopefully cpr does another run of plastics soon. Working on putting an led list together nowtoo. It came with the newest code on it and man did that make a difference in the game. Think I have her a hair steep yet cause the ramp shot is pretty slow. Some day Id like to restore her like some of the beauties I've seen in this thread! Sorry for the bad pictures it's pretty dark were it's setup.

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ok so starting my first bit of troubleshooting before I place any orders. So Far R2s head does not turn at all and the death star rotates sometimes. Believe there is a relay that controls both motors. I'll be checking that soon, saw someone had bad solder joints on theirs cause a similar problem.

Grounding, there are 2 ground cables in the back box that I'm not sure where they are supposed to go. Logically it looks like they should connect to the dmd panel.

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My speakers have a horrendous buzzing that I'm assuming is ground related but have read this is a common DE problem. I plan of putting in a pinsound board but don't want to fry a $350 board if it's electrical in nature.

Next item I'm a bit perplexed on is the force lamp. I swapped in a working 44 from GI. (the manual says all these bulbs are 555 and a bunch that ARE #555 star wars letters are listed as 89s so huh!?) Now the force lamp goes on and off as I'd expect during attract and between balls but seems to flicker. During game play after sinking force the lamp just dims a bit does not go out completely? Almost like it's ghosting but it's not an led? Dirty socket, diode maybe? I've only really worked on EMs so this is an adventure.

I have the manual downloaded from IPDB and I'm trying to dig through it. Anyone had similar before to save me some time ?

Thanks in advance

Well hmm... I'm also running a rotten dog power supply. It's not too bad when playing but damn if I leave it sitting idle. Maybe the pinsound board should be my first upgrade.

On a side note I ordered my first batch of leds last night. Turns out a lot of bulbs I thought were burned out just weren't there. Still have no idea why the force lamp won't go out during gameplay. I put a spare bulb in the shooter lane for the 5 moon indicator and it's acting the same flickering and "ghosts" but it's not led. Have a bad feeling I'm going to be chasing lighting problems once I have all good bulbs in. Fingers crossed it's wiring and not board problems.

So my lengthy reply disappeared when I hit post grr... lets try this again....

Ordered, I was looking at those the other day wife gave the nod of approval today lol

Good to know thanks. It'll be my next upgrade after I fix motors and lamps.

OK so I dug into the ghosting problems. These are NOT leds. Forgive me if this is an obvious fix I'm new to SS machines. I don't know if having a large number of burned out and missing lamps would cause this. Let me know if I should start at the transistors on the board or sockets and diodes.

Force lamp (47 Power scoop left) Ghosts on every row test lit correctly on row 7, does not ghost on any column test. Lit correctly on column 6. On individual lamp test it ghost with everything besides lamps in row 7 and columns 2 and 6.

Shooter lane (Launch 31) ghost on row 1,5,6 lit correct on row 7. Does not ghost on any column test, lit correct on column 4. Individual it ghost with every lamp in column 4.

Only did individual tests with the following

39 drop center ghosts with every lamp in it's column (5)
63 right bump ghost with every lamp in it's column (8)
23 DS tie ghosts with every lamp in it's column besides 17 (not used) and 18
48 scoop right ghosts with 56.

Visual aid of my trouble shooting

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Starting to wonder if my good deal wasn't such a good deal. But we agreed this pin will never leave our house so I'm not too worried about it.

Thanks in advance.

Got the death star spinning again. Cold solders on the relay as suggested. Yay! I completed my first SS repair lol Think the motor might be on the way out as it shutters and has a slight grind sometimes. R2D2 is not spinning at all. Assuming if the DS is going I should look at the R2 motor next. EDIT. Yea has to be R2s motor. I swapped the lead from R2 to the DS motor and DS is still turning. Leads aren't long enough to go the other way but think this answers it.

Still chasing the lamp problem May post over on the tech forms I looked though all the under pf lamps and no diodes are broke or touching. Haven't taken an MM to them yet.

Started some of the led install. Liking it so far most are from nifty led. Need to repair the burnt back box gi connector, top half is very dim. Have a few not making connection and need to finish the gi. Led ocd should be here Thursday can't wait since I have a ton of ghosting now lol. I put purples in the ds but can hardly see them. Heard some folk paint the inside white to help. Considering that or lining it with reflective metal tape...

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Haven't replaced the back box gi connector yet but reseating it seemed to fix the dim lamps. Really happy with how this turned out.

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So finally getting back to giving my SW a little love after almost a year of life getting in the way. Trying to dig into this lighting problem again and just went over a ton of diodes found one dead on my non lighting pop bumper but still chasing this ghosting. I recall seeing someone mention they found diodes installed backwards? Any inclination from my testing pointing to where it could be?