I picked up this gladiators from a friend of mine locally that has had the machine for years. The game used to work as I played it at his home last year. The game was moved at some point by the previous owner and the head was taken off to move it. Upon reassembly he told me that he got two plugs crossed up on the boards. He said there was a huge puff of smoke when he powered it back up. He realized what plugs were crossed and put them back but the damage was obviously done. It burned the 20 pin ribbon cable connecting the driver to the cpu. I replaced the cable and am attaching pictures of what the game does when powered on.

Obviously there must be some serious board damage. I am pretty good at doing the repairs but am not very familiar with gottlieb at all and this will be the first system 3 I’ve had to repair. That being said I am needing some help on where to start. I do not have a manual for the machine so no schematics. I’d greatly appreciate some nudging in the right direction as I know most of you guys know way more than I do.

I am attaching some pics and can take any more that need to be taken. The plugs that were crossed were j1 on the power supply and p1 on the driver board.

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Bump for the morning crowd. Anyone have any ideas of where to start?

Well that stinks. I don’t have any way to burn the ROM. Is there someone who sells them? What type of damage is typical? I know that connector that was mixed runs through the driver into the cpu. Does it usually just destroy both boards

I did find a rescue 911 manual in my box of manuals that has schematics

I unhooked every single connector from every board except the small power board. When I turn the machine on it does read 5v at any of the outputs on that board. It reads 0

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I have 16.3 v to pins 1 and 5 and .25 me to pin 4. I checked it with the plug removed from the board. Here is the schematic from the rescue 911 manual.

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For some reason my meter only wanted to read in kilo ohms but it .387kohm for r1 and .216 kohm for r2. R3 is the pot itself and it read .414 kohm.

I adjusted the pot both directions and tested the pins at j2. They all read 0 vdc.

I have the ground clipped to the green and yellow ground coming from the cabinet. I added a pic to make sure it was in an ok position

Do I pull the power board to check that leg of the lm338k?

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It reads 0 vdc so I guess that means order a new regulator?

Thanks for that. I will check the traces tomorrow and order the parts. I’ll rebuild the board and then post back when I’m done.

So..... I am still waiting on the lm338k to come in. The tracking says Monday

So, after waiting for what seemed like forever… The voltage regulator finally came in. I rebuilt the power board and now have +5 VDC to every pin on J2. What do I do now?

I just want to make sure before I plug them in that these are the ones I need to plug in. I have the ribbon cable connecting the dmd controller and the mpu connected as well as the ribbon cable to the dmd from the controller. Do I plug in both p1 and p2 on top of the controller board and p1 on the mpu

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I still get the line across the dmd. Led1 on the mpu flashes. Led1 on the dmd controller is locked.

The voltage on p1 going into the mpu is correct. The voltage on the 5 and 12 pins on p1 into the controller are only reading mv so no where near 5. Maybe I’m checking it wrong

These are the ones I’m seeing. I’m not great at reading it but I tested pin 1 and 4 on p2 for +5 and +12 and it was mv

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Pin 9 reads 5.

Pin 5 only reads 1.2

Yes I think I get it.

So I probably need to go ahead and replace that bridge and the cap inside the cabinet?

I at least feel like I’m getting somewhere wth it. I am going to have shoulder surgery on Friday of this week which will put a bit of a delay in my going much further until it is healed.

I will test the bridge rectifier tomorrow as soon as I get home from work and post what I find. I really appreciate the help

I got swamped the last two days trying to get things lined out at work for me to miss tomorrow for surgery on my shoulder. I am not going to get to check this bridge till after I heal up a bit. Hopefully it won’t be too long. I really do appreciate the help