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!

@Tomahawkjim Very handy with electronics. I can read schematics and well versed with DMM.
I'm a PC tech by trade thus my 12V hack for the power. I am more familiarizing myself with the layout of the
machine and fixing the low hanging fruit. I've replaced 1 lamp driver at this point.

@wdennie I'll have a look at the solenoid transistor tonight and run some checks on it.
Thanks for the opinion on the Ultimate board.

The MPU is fine, I may wait to replace that but will let you know. The issues I am having are with the Solenoid/Power board.
That board has had quite a bit of work to it over the years.

As for last nights work,

1) Q16 solenoid driver was indeed bad which caused the solenoid playfield fuse to blow.

2) R6, the burning resistor didn't seem to have any solder on the back of the board on one end so
either it was vaporized from heat or someone never soldered it in. The resistor isn't that
burned and still reads 330 Ohm's but it is crispy and was definitely smoking. I read a thread
somewhere else where someone had the exact issue and when they replaced it it burned again but there was never a posted resolution.
I tested the related solenoid driver and diode for R6 on the driver board and they read fine. I tested the slingshot
coil by grounding the tab on the driver and it will fire. I also removed the coil and diode and checked the coils resistance
and the diode on the coil and found no anomalies. So either the resistor just decided to go, was never soldered
in and was arcing, or U1 has an issue, or something else.

Replaced R6, immediately burns. Something shorted I guess. Not sure what yet. Pretty much it's the only non-working element right now.
Going to re-cap the power and sound boards and do the ground mods and see if that fixes my 12V issue so I can lose the added PC power supply. Will begin servicing some of the score displays after that. I think I've emptied Fry's of all their pinball components, not that they carry a lot. They did have a small stash of 2N5060 equivalents and a TIP-122. Would have preferred a 102 but it was just for the outhole popper. Going to place an order for a stash of commonly used items. Have to ramp up my tech kit.