Condition recently got worse (possibly due to dropping temps?) and so I am curious if anyone can diagnose the problem from the symptoms. I don't have a spare display to test to see if it's specific to current display in the machine. About the only thing I've done is to check to see if all ribbon cables are seated properly (one wasn't but it didn't solve the problem).

In brief, the bottom display works perfectly fine on my BOP, but the top one is acting odd. The condition is that the first letter or number of displayed items in the top display is much weaker than the other letters in the displayed word or other numbers in the set of numbers. This is true when multiple words are displayed too (for example, both 'm's in the phrase 'make me' are weak). In other words, it is not an issue of having bad locations on the display, it just doesn't like the first letters/numbers in a word/number. The problem is worse at startup and improves, though never fully goes away, as the game is on. In other words, the first letter/number gets brighter the longer the game is on.

Sorry that I didn't explain this well.

The problem isn't that all positions in the top display are weak or that select positions are consistently weak. Instead the problem seems to be context dependent in which the first character in a word or number are weakly displayed while the other characters are strongly displayed.

For example, if the top display shows 'MAKE ME FEEL', the 'M' of make, 'M' of me and 'F' of feel are weakly displayed while the other characters are strongly displayed. If it displays a score of 7,890,500, the 7 is weakly displayed. If it shows 12,765,950, the 1 is weakly displayed and the 2 is strong even if the 2 is in the same position of a first character of a previous score that displayed weakly. Maybe I'll try to get some photos if this still isn't clear.

This has gotten worse with the recent drop in temps in the Midwest in which just after startup first characters are barely visible. A few minutes after startup the first characters are much more visible but still weaker than other characters.

Is this a sign of a display on its way out or could something else explain it?