My dad and I recently expanded our collection via a FREE TOTEM MACHINE! We were thrilled it is great condition but it had a few problems that the previous owner didnt want to mess with so he dumped it. First and foremost the machine had power when turned on, BUT all the circuit driven solenoids locked on immediately and stayed energized so you could not keep it powered on for more than a few seconds in fear of burning things up. So after digging around on here I really thought it would be a good idea to start going through the extensive guide that clay has provided on pinrepair about these systems, I started with Q2-Q3 transistors and the spider cap suspecting on of these to be the problem, (the Q2 gave a bad reading) I believe the previous owner had started doing some similar troubleshooting as he had some of this scrawled on paper. When I reassembled and powered up the Machine I got power followed by a massive meltdown in the Q2 Transistor (pictured). I have a bit of knowledge on this stuff but as far as power supplies are concerned I have no idea on this one. I heatsinked it, put the insulator behind it, made sure I had good ground. Should I go back and put in new caps transistors etc. or toss this and get a rottendog or some other aftermarket thing. Thanks in advance for the help.

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To answer all, yes that regulator was replaced, I had assumed from the looks of it that it was a capacitor with multiple lead, the guy at the electronics store told me to replace it, that they often go bad. Also just to note, we are talking about a professional electronics store not Radio Shack, these guys dont do pinball machines but they know components. Also I was aware that there was an insulator both on the back of the transistor and coming off one of the legs, I put everything back the way I took it apart, I have not tore the board apart but there is a possibility that that little isolator piece on the back of the transistor leg fell off as I was putting everything back on the ground plate. If and when I take this back apart I will probably be able to see a short somewhere. I may take one more run at it component wise, but right now I am leaning towards a rotten dog PS. For the price and reliability it seems like a good buy. Also not to knock original engineering but the OEM board seemed like such junk when I was working on it, burnt in a lot of places and those tin leads all over the back it just sucked. I figured a re-manufactured one like the RD might have cleaner voltages and be all around better for the rest of the machine.

I got the Rottendog Supply and followed the Pinrepair Video when I put it in. Worked great I had also blown a 1 amp slo-blo that comes off the smaller transformer says main line. Got to say that small little piece of fiberglass used as an isolator probably fell out I transported it and installed it and I didnt notice.

Anyway One note for anyone using this thread to troubleshoot. While watching the pinrepair video and powering on step by step, in the video he powers up the solenoid driver board with none of the plugs along the bottom connected and then you are supposed to wait for the Tilt Hold and Game over Realays on the bottom of the playfield to pull in. Then you know you are in good shape. Only problem was, I could not get them to pull in unless everything was plugged in, so I guess one of the lower Molex plugs on that card has to control or partially control them. So long story short, if you cant get those to energize on startup at that point in the guide. Try plugging the rest in and see what you got. Just watch out for a locked on solenoid, turn it off right away or you will have a bigger problem on your hands. Definitely not saying he is wrong, it just wasnt working like that for me and I racked my brain for a while until I took a chance and plugged in the rest of the connectors.

So now the game works pretty good, time to replace the onboard battery (which was in great shape actually), and fix some lighting issues.

Thanks for the advice, that PS seems great, looks better, good voltages etc.