Hi everyone,

First post on here as I am now the proud owner of my first pinball machine, Judge Dredd, but I am having a bit of a problem.

The machine was thick with dust so I stripped it down and cleaned everything up (see the before and after pictures). I was very surprised to find that when I put everything back together it worked first time with no errors on start up and from what I could see everything working.

I played about 7 short games and during this time had a few power offs where the machine totally powered off for a few seconds and then switched itself back on and started working. There didn't seem to be a pattern to this, it could be at the start of a game or a few minutes in and not when anything in particular happened in the game.

I noticed that the left top flipper was getting stuck under the metal rail so I switched the machine off removed the glass to add an extra washer on the posts holding the rail up to make sure it cleared the flipper.

After putting the glass back on the machine won't start up anymore. None of the play field or back glass lights come on and nothing on the play field moves or works. There is no sound although some slight static for the speakers. The only thing that appears to have power going to it is the dmd which shows a garbled mess of dots (see picture)

Behind the back glass the 3 lights on the CPU board D19, D20 and D21 don't light up at all. I think 2 of the lights that should be lit on the power board are also off. I will find out which these are and update later today.

As this is my first machine I'm not quite sure where to start with diagnosing the fault. Could this all be caused by a blown fuse? If so does anyone have a suggestion of which are most likely to be the cause or should I just test them all? Or is this going to be a bigger problem than just a fuse?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I still haven't played a proper game on it yet.

Thank you

Liam

IMG_4811.JPG

IMG_4835.JPG

IMG_4867.JPG

Thanks for the reply wayout. Things have developed slightly since my original post. As i guessed it was something power related more than just a fuse I had a look through the manual I have printed and removed and reseated any connectors on the power driver board that mentioned power. This appears to have got the machine to power on again although I am still getting the random restarts.

I ran through all of the light, switch and other tests to see if it was on thing in particular causing the reset but nothing caused it. I also thought it was when I pressed both flippers buttons at the same time but then it restarted multiple times just after booting up without even starting a game.

Looking at the LED's on the power driver board the manual suggests that LED 3 (Hight/Low line voltage sensor) should be off normally while all other LED's 1-7 should be on. Looking at my board all of the LED's including LED 3 are on. I can't find anything in the manual that mentions what LED 3 being on could be. Does that help with pinning down the fault or is it simply to point out that there is something not quite right?

I have a multimeter and have a basic understanding of electronics. Now that I have the machine powered on again there appears to be plenty of information on the internet regarding the reset problems so I will have a search around and gather some information.

I think my first move before any major work is going to be removing the connectors on the boards and cleaning up the pins.

Thanks again for the replies.

I have removed all of the connecters in the back box and given the pins a bit of a scrape although they didn’t seem to be dirty. Since then I have had the machine running for 1 hour + with no reset but have still had a few here and there. It seems to be worse when the machine is cold. If I leave it on in attract mode for a while and then start playing it seems more stable.

I will continue to investigate and follow the links you guys have sent.

I had no idea anything like that board to run off the 12v supply existed. Obviously not really a permanent fix but great to get things going and help with diagnostics so I think I will pick one of those up.

I didn’t find stripping the machine down too bad considering I hadn’t done it before. I didn’t take the crane or planet mechanisms apart it was mainly just taking everything off and cleaning the playfield, wire rails, plastics, metals, optos and anything else I could as it was filthy.

The good news is apart from the resets it seems to be playing fast and without problems which I am very surprised at.