F5 is the fuse for your general illumination bus. Although it also touches other connectors, you said it doesn’t blow when you unplug the playfield. This should be connector J1. Pins J1-1 and J1-4 go to the general illumination bus.

It could be a bad bulb, bad socket or a socket shorting on something else. If it blows when you hit the flippers, it’s probably shorting on something else.

Here’s the short that was plagueing the previous owner of my machine. The power distribution wire ran between a G.I. socket and a controlled lamp socket that were too close and the wire was not protected with shrink tube. Every time the game booted, the fuse would blow.

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Glad you found the problem. They can be a bitch to find.

Yes, mine was the game from around Xmas time. Thank you! I made him a very fair offer plus a transformer that he needed to get his TAF running. The problems the game had were unrelated to him plugging the small transformer into the wrong plug on the power supply. The short I showed above, a bad bulb in the strobe board and a bunch of misadjusted switches...including the rollovers. It’s playing 100% right now but there a few other issues I need to address.

I started restoring my STTNG and life got in the way. Eight years later, I was done. Found all the parts.

No J1 connector and soldered directly to the bridge rectifier and the second rectifier burnt a hole thru the power module so a giant gallop of solder is patching the hole with a jumper to ground?

Alltek also doesn't make a rectifier board. What are you running for a rectifier board? Perhaps your issue lies there? Have you re-pinned your connectors?

I've got the PinPoint strobe board with Alltek Boards and a Rottendog rectifier board and have zero issues.

I'm using the Pinpoint Electronics aftermarket strobe board with a full set of Alltek boards and a replacement Squalk and Talk with no issues.

The linear flipper mechs suck and are lazy.

Just install classic Bally hardware and you’ll have what you’re looking for.

Just because you re-pinned the connector doesn’t mean that the connector isn’t the source of the problem.

Not a knock on you, but I have come across plenty of “re-pinned” connectors that needed to be re-pinned.

You guys with strobe board issues should check the continuity of the traces on your strobe boards.

When my game arrived, one of the issues was a non-working Pinpoint strobe board. It had a burnt trace.