Is it too late to be added to the Beta Test list? I'm interested.

That's encouraging and the shipping front. Looking forward to hearing back. My Silverball Mania would look great in blue and 2 of the 5 displays are flickering pretty bad.

Yes, I reflowed the solder on all the connectors you could clearly see cracks in the solder... Didn't make the flicker go away though. Shipping was $23 for the set of 5, 6 digit boards? Doesn't sound bad with our rotten exchange rate.

My feedback is a little late in coming but here it goes Experienced folks need not read, I'm quite junior working with boards so other inexperienced people may take something away form what I've written.

Great kit... as others have said, the packing is fantastic, no way I'd get all that stuff back in the box! I'm probably selling myself a little short but I think my soldering skills are at the 'beginner level'. I don't have a desoldering station, I use a manual pump and desolder braid when the need arises... no braid for this project mind you. I've used an iron for years and I've even done a playfield swap before but when compared to my peers here on pinside or previously on rgp I always feel like a rookie, my actual board work is limited short of swapping out a couple of components on a light display board or reflowing the solder on some header pins I'd say this is the most of I've done in a long long while.

With all that being said, I think I did alright on my first board. Instructions are GREAT! very detailed, I know they were the first draft but for someone like myself pictures are priceless and more would make the instructions better. As noted in the directions I found myself flipping the board over and back numerous times to be sure I was getting the right component after I a while I got the hang of it and needed to it do it less and I suspect the rest of the boards should go much quicker.

I spent probably 2 hours across the last two evenings doing my first board and a lot of that time was reading and re-reading the directions. Actual time with the iron in my hand has to be less than an hour. I'm just really slow .

I don't have a power supply on my bench so i did not test the board prior to putting in the machine so I just crossed my fingers and flipped the switch. The displays all lit up but lit up a little too well... all digits had a 1 displayed on them, but not in full brightness. When I played a game the digits all worked great and the ones that were supposed to be bright were. Its getting late here and I wanted to give some feedback and it just dawned on my that I believe I skipped a step and didn't cut the 2.2K pull-up resistors off the board and that has me wondering if that may be causing my problem! I'll check that out tomorrow.

Overall I think this is a great kit, it was fun to work on and I look forward to finishing off all my boards. The Blue LED's look great. I figure this kit is great for beginners through to to advanced. Thanks for putting it altogether and for including me in the Beta.

Edit: I clipped the 2.2K resistors off this morning and I still see faint 1's across all my digits, time to do some troubleshooting I suppose.

I'll double check for cold solder joins and see if I can find any unintended bridges... the decoder chip doesn't look like any fun to track down. Great Plains has them but that will take a bit to arrive and I'm not having much luck searching other sources for the MC14543LE.

I think I'll try another board and see how that goes if I can't find any cold solder joints or bridges.

Search for the right part number and they show up! More expensive then from Great Plains, but they will get here by the end of the week.

http://www.digikey.ca/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=206729296&uq=636092801183747354

I think these should work these sockets:

http://www.digikey.ca/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=206729443&uq=636092801183757355

I did do the soldering in parallel, I will do a review of my board for sure and see if I can find any mistakes I may have made... I don't have any trouble believing it is me behind the error