So my son is playing my DE Simpsons the other night and all of a sudden there's a small pop sound and the alpha-numeric display goes dark. I turned off the game for a bit and unplugged it. On reboot, it seems as everything is working except the display. I played a few games to verify while my son cries thinking he broke the machine.

Because I can't go into any sort of diagnostic mode w/ no display, I tried to locate any blown fuses, but didn't see any. I was already considering a new X-Pin display because my bottom right character (last digit of Player 4's score) already had a broken connection pin, so if it's the display that's the cause, I'm all for replacing it.

I have a multimeter, so I'm wondering if there's something I can check coming into the display board to prove it's the display that's dead (and justify the new X-Pin display) or something on one of the other boards that's the root cause (which then will be the first fix, and then depending on cost will determine the X-Pin purchase after the fact).

Any help would be appreciated. I tried searching the forum with what I thought were relevant keywords but couldn't find another thread with the same problem.

Thanks @Pat and @barak. My biggest fear was that the problem lies somewhere before the display and getting a new display would be like getting new tires for a car with a blown engine.

I'll give everything another visual check tonight and see if I catch anything.

Other than a multimeter, I have no other tools for diagnostics here.