Hello Everyone. I recently acquired a Stern Meteor that I would classify as 'neglected'. It is not
in terrible condition and apparently was owned by an arcade at some point as many helpful mods
were made early in its life, such as the removal of the problematic battery that caused acid damage to the boards
in so many units. The machines life after the arcade was met with neglect however and numerous issues exist. I will run them
down for you. Starting with the most pressing issue.
1) +12VDC rail has some sort of problem (weak) that I am not sure if the root source is at the Transformer, Rectifier or elsewhere.
I read 11.4V at the Solenoid Driver board. Rectifier board TP3 or maybe its 4 (not at the machine just now) outputs about 11.5V. The problem
manifests itself in that the MPU will not boot even though I am reading 5V on the various test points. I am guessing that the MPU is
detecting an unstable power source. If I remove the board and connect it to my PC power supply on my test bench it boots perfectly.
What I have done is remove the 12V pin connection from the rectifier board and attached it to a PC power supply running in the cabinet.
By doing this I am able to boot the machine and actually play/work on it. Any pointers on where to look to sort out this power issue? The workaround
is stable but I want the root issue resolved.
2) The left slingshot is burning R6 on the driver board and is not responsive. I have it disconnected to prevent further board damage.
3) The outhole coil was not operational and oriented in a position that both connectors were grounding to the apron. Doh! I reoriented it and tried changing the diode but that did not fix it. It will fire once when the machine is powered on and immediately blows the 1A Slow Blow under the playfield that controls the coils. I have that coil disconnected at the moment. Not sure if the coil is the problem now or if it has messed up something on the solenoid driver board.
Other than those issues, I have begun replacing the GE44's with LED's, need to install some resistors to reduce flicker on the playfield lights.
I've repaired the right drain switch. A wire was cut and wrapped around some other wires, not sure why yet but the switch does work now.
All of the backbox lights were non-functional. It appears that the pins had burned on the rectifier board and toasted the molex connector. The rectifier board has been replaced at some point but instead of repairing the damaged molex connector they just cut the wires to the backbox. Interesting. I replaced all of the molex connectors at the rectifier board. I also found two shorted bulb holders in the backbox which I also repaired so now I have a well lit backbox.
4) The displays are mostly good. There is one with a single digit out and Player 1 for some reason displays's what looks like apostrophe's quite often. Any tips on what might cause that?
The playfield is in really good condition so I am thankful for that. The plastics also are in good order but I would get in on a buy just because the age of the plastic I am sure they are getting brittle.
I need to re-bush the upper playfield flipper, it is sloppy and I need to replace the upper METEOR targets as a couple are broken.
I have checked all of the pins on the boards and did not found anything toasty or corroded. I polished them a bit with some Mother's metal polish just to clean them up.
One final question as I shop for parts I can't help but wonder if it is less expensive to replace the boards with the 'Ultimate' versions or repair the old ones or maybe a combination of repair the old ones and sell them to fund new ones? Just curious. One consideration I have is are the 'Ultimate' boards harder to repair than the classic ones? Is it more costly to rtepair an "Ultimate' board or do they simply not fail? How sensitive is a new board to coil failures etc? Inquiring minds you know.
Anyway, that's all for now. I love this game!