I recently acquired a completely thrashed Eight Ball. Upon initial power up, all I got was general illumination. No led flashes on the MPU board. I noticed a few glaring issues that are probably why the machine isn't playing its boot up chimes. I'm still learning a lot about pinball repair, so helpful guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Number one:
The solenoid driver board looks like it had a fire. Is there anywhere that will tell me what value resistors, diodes, and transistors I need for this board?

Number two:
The rectifier board looked like it had a fire as well. I'm assuming that I need to repin all of the connectors for this board. I feel like I'm going to have a few issues doing this though. Is there a way to see what wires area supposed to pin into the connectors for the rectifier board? It looks like someone cut wires on a few connectors (Note the brown and black wire on one connector and yellow and green on another). So I need to figure out what those wire originally went to. I also have an issue where there's a randomly disconnected orange wire with a ton of solder on it. No idea what that goes to. So I just need some help making sense of the wire harness.

Is there a way that I can see what voltages should be on the rectifier board? Granted I'm still learning, but I feel like maybe issues with the power supply have caused things to burn up?

Thanks in advance for all the help. I can't wait to get this thing back and chiming again!

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Wonderful! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction guys.

I have been learning how to read the manual and schematics and I just want to double check I'm ordering the right parts.

Looks like my troublesome area is Q14. So if I read the schematic right, I should need the following parts?

Diode:
http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/1N4004
Transistor:
http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/TIP102
Resistor:
This one I wasn't sure about. Is the schematic saying 330 microfarad? Forgive me, I'm still new to all of this. 1/4 watt? 1/2 watt?
http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/R025W330

I also grabbed kits to redo the connections on the rectifier board and driver board.

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So I bought the rectifier board replacement. I have some quick questions as I'm rebuilding the connectors.

It looks like someone cut the wires for General Ill. Bus and General Ill. Ret. on the J1. The J3 is especially confusing because there appears to be a cut wire where the key should be?

I'm a bit confused on how to read the schematic. Should there be a jumper wire between the J1 and J3 for Gen Ill Bus? Do I need to be searching the harness for loose wire that should go into Gen Ill Ret for J1?

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Is there a diagram that shows the color wires running from the transformer and what their respective positions are on the rectifier board? IE the red wire from the transformer runs to E4 on the rectifier board? I'm wanting to double check my work before I turn this thing on.

So it has been awhile but I made some progress.

Redid the J connectors and put in the new rectifier. When I powered up I got GI, the LED on the mpu flashed, and there was a very loud hum. Shortly after power on, the 10 amp fuse on the rectifier board blew.

I'm assuming I have some coil locked on and that would explain the hum? What's the best way to track this down?

Looks like a trace on my brand new rectifier board got roasted. Any ideas as to how this happened or if I goofed? Perhaps the darker green wire on E10 is really more blue and needs to be on the second hole for E7?

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Awesome! Thank you! I'll double check my work tonight.

I should be able to run a jumper from that E10 solder point to the other end of the trace, right? Hopefully I didn't fry any components on the board.

So here's what I did. I followed the diagram per Mk1Mod0 suggestion and corrected my mistake. I also ran a jumper to bypass the burnt trace I made.

Next I removed every single connector on every board. No connectors were plugged in on the mpu, lamp driver, solinoid driver, and rectifier. I powered on the machine and nothing blew. As expected.

I plugged in J1 on the rectifier board and powered on. No blown fuse.

After that I unplugged the J1 and plugged in the J2. I powered on and the 10 amp fuse immediately blew. So the issue seems isolated to the J2 and doesn't involve any problematic boards. I would have tested the J3 by itself next but I was out of fuses

How do I isolate the specific problem within the J2? Should I remove the pins and add them one by one to see which pin causes the fuse to blow?

Yup. It only blows with J2 plugged in. So the issue is isolated to the cabinet wiring.

How do I troubleshoot the cabinet wiring? Do I remove all the pins from the J2 and then add then back one by one and power on the cabinet each time?

Great suggestions guys! I appreciate you dealing with my endless questions. I've been cutting my teeth on this Pinball for sure.

I'll try these things out and report back.

So I removed all the pins in the J2 except for pins 6 and 7 per RoyGBev suggestion, and the fuse blew. Which means I toasted this board from my newb mistake.

There's a quick hum and buzz before the fuse blows. Is that just the roasted board making that noise or does the transformer make that noise?

Figured I'd post my progress.

I redid the rectifier board with a new one and eliminated the 10A fuse blowing issue. Now the 5A fuse is blowing on power up.

Here's what I've troubleshooted. I disconnected the coin door. I looked at it closer and it was hacked up with lots of electrical tape. I disconnected every single board (mpu, lamp, and solinoid). I had all the j plugs connected to the rectifier board and it still blows the 5a.

I'll see if I can narrow it down some more tomorrow. For now I'm resting on it and going to raid home Depot for 5a fuses.

Thank you so much for all of your help guys. So far your suspicions have been totally correct!

BigAl56 Your troubleshooting technique worked beautifully! It's definitely the playfield solinoid bus causing the short. It was really awesome to see it boot up and chime! How did you know that the 5a correlated to solinoid buses? Did I miss that in the schematics?

I'll have to read up on how to test the coils and see if I can't track down the bad one. It's hard to tell if I coil is burnt up, or if it just has 30 years of dirt on it. The right bumper was wired up with two diodes instead of one diode like the rest of the bumper coils. Perhaps there's some odd fix going on there.

The left bumper coil looked pretty browned and so did the left slingshot. I'll look into those.

Thank you so much for your help guys!

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I tested the coils. They look fine. However, I think I found the short.

I tested with my multimeter and there's a bridge where there shouldn't be. The pins at the yellow arrow have continuity with the pin at the red arrow. I tried to clean it up but it still bridges. Is there a way to make some jumpers and undo the bridge? Or am I stuck with buying a new board?

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So I need a quick sanity check.

I did find a short on the solenoid board. I replaced the transistor that I believe was causing the issue. I'm still blowing the 5a fuse. I unplugged every connector on the solenoid board and it still blows the 5a. So my hunch that it was the board causing the short was probably not the full problem. So short still resides in the playfield...I think.

I've checked each coil and they look like they have the correct resistance. So I'm stumped as to which coil could be the problem. Could I just desolder every coil and see if the 5a still blows? If so, couldn't I just solder them back one by one and power on each time to find the short?

Perfect. That's exactly what I wanted to diagnose. I didn't know that fuse ran to every playfield coil.

I'm honestly hoping it's the playfield. If it's the rectifier board then I'll be completely stumped. This is the second new rectifier I've put in the machine. I triple checked my work when hooking it up to the transformer. Bad transformers are extremely rare, right? I'll let you guys know what I find tonight.

Maybe I made some progress. Here's what I tested.

Test 1.
A. Solenoid board disconnected
B. 1a slow blow on underside of pf removed
Result: Blew the 5a fuse

Test 2.
A. Solenoid board connected
B. 1a slow blow on underside of pf connected
C. Removed pin 6 (yellow) from j1 connector on rectifier.
Result: 5a fuse was fine. Game boots and chimes. All non playfield solenoids kick and work fine. Pf solenoids obviously don't work due to removing pin 6.

So given these tests I don't think the short is in the actual playfield or coils. I'm guessing the short is in-between where pin 6 connects to the rectifier and to wherever the yellow wire runs to. Since we only blow whenever pin 6 is physically hooked up regardless of the 1a slow blow fuse. The first thing the yellow wire runs to should be the 1a slow blow fuse, right? So if that's correct the short is before that fuse?

So I'm beyond stumped. Here's what I tested.

I desoldered every single playfield coil. I have the solenoid board completely disconnected. As long as pin 6 on the J1 connector is plugged in, my 5 amp fuse will blow.

This has gotta mean there's an issue with my rectifier board right? Is there anything that I could test on my transformer or rectifier board to make sure the right voltages are running through this thing?

Haha oh man. So you guys are gonna roll your eyes at me for this one. Chalk it up to inexperience on my side.

I followed Al's suggestion and started pulling what I *thought* was the 30 wire to see where it went. Turns out it went to the ground wire that runs throughout the whole playfield. So I immediately knew I had the wrong wire. That explains the instantly blowing the fuse. I went back to the J1 on the PS. Turns out 40 years of dirt turns a white wire yellow and a yellow wire brown. So this is twice now that the dirty harness has confused me! Oh well. I corrected the wiring on the J1 and the game works great!

I've got a lot of cosmetic work in front of me but luckily the complicated bits are solved now!

BigAl56 I wish I could buy you a beer or donate pinside premium to you! (Why doesn't that feature exist??) Your help was invaluable! It's people like you that keep this community thriving! Cheers!

I thought maybe you guys would like to see the cosmetic work and hacks that I have to correct. I really enjoy this coil sleeve that someone turned into a slingshot tip.

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I made a new restoration thread over here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/eight-ball-restoration-a-rookies-first-attempt#post-4165665

I'm not sure what I want to do with the playfield. I could do an overlay, but I also have a second playfield that's in fair shape. I can't really make my mind on how much time and money I want to throw into this project just yet. I don't want to overwhelm myself on my first restoration.