I'm an owner, but hoping to not be by the end of this week.

Yep. Want to lose Future Spa to make room for Metallica. =P

Most logical explanation is that something that would connect ground to all of those solenoids is shorted... I don't entirely know this boardset either... is there a pre-driver IC that controls all the smaller transistors before the bigger ones that directly fire the other solenoids?

Sounds like a good place to start to me.. I would start with the 74LS154 (U2), as that seems to be the first link in the chain that would have the potential to ground all of the solenoids if I'm not mistaken. Prior to that would be the PIA that signals that chip.....but that chip is what's directly signaling the pre-drivers.

http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:B_solenoid1.jpg

*edit* Technically, and keep in mind my diagnosis skills are still pretty lacking, I THINK you could test the output pins of the U2 and see if they're constantly high on all output pins...that would tell you if it's fried. I think. :p

Don't thank me unless I'm right, otherwise I've just wasted your time. LOL.

I have begged for these plastics to be reproduced. If someone will get me quality scans of the plastics, I'd be really interested in taking a look at them and seeing if it's something I could vectorize. I don't have much experience with color separations, so I'd need to talk to Stu or someone more experienced to see what they need on their end to do the job, but lack of art files from a quality source (ie: not a lot of existing damage and hopefully not overly yellowed) is a nut-punch.

If there's not a lot of halftoning in the art, it's probably within my skillset at this point after warming up on my own Voltron stuff, and I'd be much more motivated to work on this project than Voltron, haha.

Yeah. And?

I still have every intention to own a restored game at some point, but that....thing....that I sold was not a good restoration candidate at all. At the very minimum I'd have needed to find a much better backglass, which for this game is like FREAKING IMPOSSIBLE. =\

I bought it cheap, I sold it cheaper, it got played all weekend at TPF. Everyone won in that equation IMO.

Oh, and I'm still sitting on a stripped playfield that I can put a hardtop on too.

I didn't play it at the show. I had a few games on it before it started acting up, and it seemed to play well but.. man. I'm just shocked bangerjay's friend was able to get it up and running so quickly, but hey..props to them guys. It sat in my living room for 4 or 5 months neglected because I couldn't be arsed to figure out why it was constantly rebooting..

Diagnosis is not my strong suit.