I have a problem with my FT. At first it had some random restarts. I resettled all the cables and found one loose on the power board. It worked flawlessly for 2 days. Now, while machine was in attract mode it suddenly went dead, it was on, leds are on the boards but nothing on the screen and strange sound/static coming from the speakers. Restarting it works sometimes but when i start a game it dies on any flipper action (or just randomly on its own). I have noticed that many times, especially now when I try to turn on the pinball machine, it drops my local circuit braker/fuse in the apartment electricity box and I have to reset it there and try again...

What could be causing the problem? Is this something really complicated and serious?

I'm not technical unfortunately.... electrics guy is coming on Monday hopefully to look at it (but he has no pinball experience).

He is actually electronics guy not a regular electrician I'll prepare the users manual with schematics for him and pray for the best as pinball guys are rare breed here...

On a first ball, does this sound like something "famous" : when you turn on the machine, it kills the power on my outlets in the house where pinball is plugged in and I need to reset the circuit breaker. Sometimes it turns on without killing power but then it soon resets, usually on first flip of any of the flippers.

Thanks guys a lot for your feedback and tips! I don't feel confident (at the moment ) of opening the power box but this will be very handy when tech guy comes in. Hope this is not something too complicated/bad as I just got the game and played only few days on it (

I might just bite the bullet and open the power box by myself.... gathering courage

I think I have chickened out

That transformer doesn't look friendly to me hehe

Just for the purpose of learning, power box is not the thing located right of the coin door, rather thing with a "plug" in the back of the cabinet bellow the end of the playfield?

OK - this is where I retreat

It seems that these screws have complete round thing which I have no way of unwinding...(special tool?)

I have noticed that there is no fuse inside it (check pic)... But I'm pretty sure that fuse wasn't inside few days back as well and machine worked then.

I'll keep you updated on the progress with this issue.

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To clarify this is Euro game, running on 220V.

Yap - I have put the glass back on and won't be messing with it until the tech guy comes in.
It was unplugged

Update : looks like the power box is bypassed...

I'm able to turn on the pinball, but as soon as I hit any of the flippers (left, right or both) - machine restarts. I tried hitting various targets on playfield and everything else seems to work (coils, slings, bumpers etc). But, it looks like the switch just in front of the multiball locking reel has stopped working.

Where should I look next?

Thanks so much for your help.

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This was already done (powerbox bypass) and machine did work for some days without any problems.

I'm still waiting for the repairman to come....

OK - while I was waiting for the pin guy to come and service my machine, I gave it another go and retightened two screws on the power board (one in the middle of the board to the right and one in the lower right corner) and I also noticed a connector to the right of cpu to be loose. I have reseated it and now game works normally..... I have no idea what actually fixed it this time, we'll see how long it keeps working.

To update you guys - I couldn't find any pinball guy so I decided to work on it on my own. I followed the pinwiki guide and I think I have isolated issue to two connectors that connect the power board with cpu board. It seems I'm getting a bit low voltage when measuring on 32 pin on the CPU, in comparison to 5v test point on the power board. I have replaced the female connectors and hopefully got rid of the problem finally....waiting to see if it will continue to reset.

If it is helpful to anyone, my pin would start to reset on two flippers stroke or sometimes on its own. As soon as I would touch the molex connector on the CPU board that connects it to the power board, it would start to play normally and then start to reset again and so on.