Just picked up an Alien Poker. She does not work currently. Upon examination of the drop targets I noticed that every coil is melted. I've also noticed that the 40 pin connector between the MPU and driver board is original. The owner told me that the game just started smoking. The GI also isn't working and the fuse on the power supply board will blow if it's connected which I believe is a separate issue altogether.

I suspect a faulty 40 pin connector caused all of the solenoids in the drop targets to fire at once and lock on. I can't think of any other reason why 6 coils would lock on and melt.

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm not one that likes fixing stuff if it isn't broken. Would it be recommended to start by replacing that 40 pin connector, fried coils and go from there?

I do my own board work. I know it's going to need some work so I figure I'd bullet proof it while I have it out. Trying to pool the gurus over here to see if there are any weak links I definitely need to replace.

I ran Leon Barre's test rom on my boards and they tested out fine. I had to wiggle the 40 pin connector a few times to get all the outputs on the PIA to toggle appropriately. I do believe the boards are working 100% though. So I measured the voltages off the power supply with nothing connected and saw something that I think is odd. I am getting 20 volts for the controlled lights which seems ok for an unloaded circuit, but I am getting 38V dc for solenoid voltage should be 28V. That seems way to high to me. What do you think?

I plan on replacing the interconnect. I think the flakey connection is what caused the problems on this game. I'm going to rebuild it and also the fried target bank and report back.

I rather spend 10 bucks changing out some pins on the boards than $300 on a new board. I enjoy the challenge of bringing a broken game back to life. The early SS game technology is pretty low and easy to diagnose from what I'm seeing. On top of that there are plenty of gurus on this forum that have already dealt with the same issues I'm seeing that can help guide me in the right direction.

40-pin connector replaced. I went thru all the MPU and driver board diagnostics located here: http://pinball.flippers.info/system6repairpart5.asp

And the verdict is.....
Bad lamp strobes.
5 of 8 Tip142 were bad. I suspect the board was missing the blanking signal and locked the drop targets on and the previous owner probably shorted the coil voltage to the lamp matrix while he was "fixing" it . Luckily the tip142's are the only damaged components on the board. I'm taking the opportunity to upgrade the lamp strobes over to mosfets while I wait for my replacement drop target bank thanks to corkgiants.
More to follow....

Ok. So I installed the 8 new Mosfets in my lamp driver circuit and removed the old resistors and jumpered the connections, rebuilt the drop target bank using parts from the bank I received. I installed the rebuilt bank and the boards in the game and fired it up.
So the game booted fine, I added credits and played a few games. The sounds are off and the game isn't resetting the right most drop target for the 10 card. I tested the transistor for the 10 card by shorting the tab to ground and it exhibits and odd behavior. The coil activates, but then it stays locked on until I power cycle. I decided I'd troubleshoot the coil last since I need the game to be operating properly in order to trouble shoot it in the machine. So I pulled both flipper roms and the game rom to test them since I suspected that maybe the game code was bad. (I figured this had to be the case since the board passed all the tests with the test rom installed on the bench)

I verified the chip against the rom images on IPDB and both flipper roms passed the test, but the game rom failed!! So I burnt a new copy of the game rom. Installed them in the machine, powered up and now the game doesn't boot. I had removed the boards from the game when pulling the roms just to prevent damaging them since they looked pretty fragile.

I quit at this point since it was approaching 10 PM and I needed to get some rest. Tonight I'm going to start by testing the voltages at the power supply connector on the MPU to make sure they're all present and transferring correctly, if not I'm going to replace that connector. I'm also probably going to replace the sockets for the game rom, flipper roms and also rerun Leon Barres test rom to double check everything.

Hopefully this will fix my issues. I'm sure there will be more down the road. I'm so close I can taste it. There's nothing like the feeling of the first few games you flip on a machine that's been broken and unplayable. I can't wait till it's playing cherry again

Hmmm.. I tested all the predrivers using the test rom and they were all cycling. I wonder if there is something that is weak under load.

It turned out the 10 drop target was a bad 7408 and pre-driver transistor. I replaced them and now the game is playing pretty well. I need to focus on a few other odd issues now. The sound effects are not triggering correctly. I'm not sure if the problem is on the MPU or the sound board. When you first start a game it says "Alien Poker - You deal" but then right away it says "I fold - you win". Something is wrong. Also the periodic background sound that should play is not activating and when I hit the spinner the spinner sound just loops indefinitely. I checked the 7408 that feeds the sound triggers with my logic comparator and it doesn't appear to be bad. I also checked the TIP122's and pre-drivers and they all tested fine.

I pulled the rom and tested it and it didn't match the code on IPDB. I tried erasing and reprogramming the rom and the chip won't erase. I ordered a new one to replace it. I'm not sure if this could cause the problem but I think a corrupt rom can't be good.

I also can't seem to get into test mode anymore. I was able to when I first picked up the machine, but not the test buttons don't seem to work. There is another strange problem when I close the coin door and the interlock engages, the whole game just locks up and the displays go blank. I tried rebooting with the coin door closed and the game just shows zeros on the displays but doesn't boot or go to attract mode.

These early SS games are fun to play but man they're a conundrum to work on.

Ok so Alien Poker LIVES!! I did some research today and figured out that you could use a 2732 rom in place of a 2716 if you just burn the image twice to the chip. So instead of having to wait for my new 2716 chip to arrive, I burned that on some old roms I had. Plugged it in and the sounds were working, but no speech. I did some further research and it turns out that the rom set on IPDB and in the game manual are incorrect. They call for Williams Sound rom 2 which actually doesn't work. It plays sounds but they're actually off. You can see how the sounds were with the sound rom 2 here:

I burned a copy of sound rom 3 and now the game works 100%.

The test switch problem ended up being the plug at the top right of the MPU board. When I had installed the MPU board I had inadvertantly installed the plug with one of the pins too far right. I removed the plug and installed it correctly and the game went right into test mode.

So the total fixes I had to perform to get this game working were:
Replace male and female 40 pin connector
Replace the lamp matrix transistors with Mosfets
Remove lamp matrix resistors and install jumpers in their places
Replace all 5 coils on the drop target bank
Burn and install new copy of the game rom
Burn and install a new copy of the sound rom
Replace the 7408 at IC1 that drives the 10 drop target
Replace the Tip122 and pre-driver for the 10 drop target

Game should work great for awhile now. Time to shop it out and add it to the line up.

Thanks for everyones help.

Good thing you turned off the shaker motor on TFTC. It could've caused your hip to break !!

BTW that Alien Poker would look nice in the pro shop