Brother, it's all monies. If I had a mansion and $100,000 cars like a lot of these folks what's a couple hundy for a node board? Shit throw in like 4 when I pick the game up and add it to the price. Pinside has already proven to Stern that a great deal of people will defend them no matter what, and already enjoy throwing an extra Cleveland at Stern for literally nothing (LE).

Caught this post in another thread...

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/star-wars-a-negative-review/page/11#post-3911227

I saw those and it really annoyed me. May be great if you can't fix anything and shipping is fast but for me it is just something I can't fix without a very expensive part that takes a couple weeks to arrive. Not good if a game is on location, it is a double hit with part cost and down time. Sure they may not break but I have no way of telling what will happen all I know is that it is something that will cost a lot if it does. Then there is the whole worry about what happens with these things down the road with reliability and if Stern decides they can't be bothered making a #5 node board specific to KISS or even worse if Stern disappears.

I see your indirect jab but you get my point. You are always more likely to hear from the negatives on these sorts of threads, without inside data we'll never know what the real failure rate is.

A short on a node board can destroy it, costing hundreds of dollars and days to fix. A short on a Sam game results in a blown fuse or transistor, pennies and minutes to fix. These are pinball machines, it's inevitable something will break, which system would you rather have when it does?

I see you have a WoZ, Hobbit and a Dialed In. It's inevitable a board in one of those will fail. Are they easily repairable?

I see you have a WoZ and a Hobbit. What happens if one of those goes down on location due to a board, or worse, if JJP goes under?

Sorry boss, will do.

I've had two node failures on my WWE. I think they were failing more often on early code but I still have zero faith in this system long term.

Node board 9 failed on my GB Premium 2 weeks ago (purchased in November). The replacement arrived today. I swapped it out and now neither node board 9 nor node board 8 are initializing. So frustrating. I supposed I will call tech support on Monday.

Added over 7 years ago: Update: After speaking with Stern tech support, it turns out one of the dip switches was in the incorrect position on my new node board. Once I moved it to the correct position, both node boards began to work properly.

I also have sterns and my older ones don't worry me at all. I am not prepared to by a Spike game right now because of quality concerns and Spike concerns. I am buying a DI though.

I'm less worried about fixing or replacing a JJP board. People have replaced the motherboard in WOZ with an off the shelf motherboard from a PC supplier and a DI motherboard will work on a WOZ. The power driver board in JJP games is very fixable. Lightboards are unique but not terribly complicated and they could be reproduced.

Thought I had my first node failure. (Intermittent weak flipper). Turned out the EOS switch wasn't working properly. So my one spike game has had no node failures.

The WWE pro I had was on it's third Node 8 board. Stern was kind enough to send an additional one without fuses, as I had one board blow apart and the fuse was intact.

I have zero faith in Spike at this time. I'll stick with SAM and older, but I honestly prefer Whitestar over a lot of systems. Again, just my opinion.

Here's the real question, has anyone actually had to pay for a node board after being denied a replacement from Stern?

Is Stern actually enforcing the 60-day warranty?

By the way, I had one go on my AS, my 3rd spike machine. Called my distro and stern sent me one immediately.

From what seems like dozens of separate posts about having to pay for node boards... it seems like not everybody is getting them free.

How old was your AS when you reported your node problem?

No, I see people listing prices from marco and other sources, but haven't heard anyone complain about actually shelling out cash.

With all the bitching that goes on here, I would have expected someone to explicitly say they had to spend money.

The AS was right out of the box, less than 50 games.

I only have two spike games currently, I have had one bad node board on GOT. The CPU board had to be replaced as well, luckily it was under warranty so I didn't have to pay for them. So far not to bad, obviously I would prefer the sam like system. I'd even pay extra for it if it were an option. This seems to be the future all companies are gravitating towards like it or not.

I think they are just getting the pinball community used to the idea before they start getting stricter, also it's a way to test the reliability of their new system.
I think the stern warranty only last two months, so I technically should of paid for the CPU board.

I read one post where a guy had actually ordered from Marco (not sure but I interpreted it as he didn't contact Stern to request warranty support, just ordered it). Otherwise it sure sounds like they're covering all node boards for now.

If anyone was denied warranty coverage on a node board, hopefully they'll share their story here.

My distributor told me a 6 month warranty on node boards so that was comforting. Personally I would be happy and much relieved with an official one year warranty. That would let me site a game for a while and not have to worry about spending a lot on node boards.

You listening stern? If you want to boost confidence stand behind your products in writing. Putting things out in writing and then saying we don't really mean it eg ghosting does not instil confidence!

Damn. What was the failure on this board?

This was the source of the flipper problem?

Node 8 board failed in our GBLE about 2 weeks into ownership. Worked with distributor and Stern shipped a replacement at no charge.

Node 9 board failed 3 weeks after the initial node board failure and Stern covered at NC. Worked for a couple months until our playfield was swapped for playfield defects. No issues since (6 months).

NODE 9 dead in the 1 month of home use, of course including ghosting & chipping
but OK, as it was (early run of) GB, let's supposed is quite "normal"...

(oups inside)

Further proof that they don't turn on and test every game

Voltage issue, one of the 4? present voltages wasn't showing up. the game turned on, but nothing happened.
didn't actually try to discover for myself the source of the issue. might of been interesting trying to figure it out though. I don't think they make schematics available to consumers for these boards for whatever reason. I could be wrong, just haven't seen any.
sucked, lost revenue for that week.

yep, sure was. They said they had multiple reports of the same issue. As soon as I said explained the issue, he knew exactly which board needed to be sent back. node board 8, I think was.
this also sucked because the pin was down for almost 2 weeks.

My node board 8 on Gotle failed immediately after one of the code updates. Game had less than 30 plays at the time and it was clearly something in the update. They sent me a new one, I sent back the old one, simple. No problems since. Although I wouldn't mind another update

Has anyone had a node board fail after the game has been out for a while and after most or all updates have been installed? Seems these failures are always early on.

They have been. I think it's a good sign that we haven't seen these fail other than right away or right after an update that messed something up.

I think if a failure happens right after an update, stern would replace those no questions asked.

I've seen quite a few comments aboot updates potentially killing nodes BUT I don;t know if that actually happened or people fearing it will.

Just saying that qualifies as "a while" and that since we don't have reports of boards failing after the game has been running for 2 years, it's encouraging

Looks like that happened right away no? Not seeing the point.

The new updates are capable of updating the firmware on the node boards. It is software, so if the node board firmware upgrade doesn't go well, it may get in a state where it can't finish the update (or be updated again), so it fails. The reason they don't mind taking them back, is they can probably put them on a bench and flash them again and poof they are alive. Also it's good to see the dead boards and figure out what has gone wrong.

If it is a software issue, then as they get their upgrade procedure working better it should go away. If it's an inherent design flaw, it may already be addressed, but they may have 1000s of the old design (tiny board so bet they are ordering in large batches) that they will use up first.

I haven't had any problems with my machines and most everyone I know hasn't had problems other than an out of the box issue here and there. They seem to be pretty stable after getting some time on them.

Time will tell sure, but I'm pretty optimistic too. I've had flaws with my cars too, recalls etc. so it's not just a pinball issue.

Okay I see what you're saying. However, the problems seem to only be happening at the very beginning of the life of the game, well within the warranty.

So let's assume every single game from now on will be susceptible to node failures in the first however many code revisions and all failed boards will be covered by stern. If they never fail again, is it going to be that big a deal? I'll answer for myself and say no.

How many dummies are messing up their node boards from installing mods into their games or installing software incorrectly? My guess is, some.

Well look at the bright side, they may go up in price when we get to the diff'rent versions of node boards are phased out.
Like Chuck & my GOT boards

Yep and if that causes a failure because you updated the game wrong, that's on you.

Since I was very closely a part of all the updates to GOT I can tell you that the more mature the code gets the better the nodes should behave. The first couple updates had pieces in them that solved problems in earlier code that were causing nodes to fail. The code is causing them to fail, not the update process (assuming it was installed correctly by the user)

That work perfectly. (Knocking on all the wood around me)

Seriously people F up updates constantly. I don't get it either.

I'm hoping that updates don't make issues but fix them. Node issues that is. Always bugs to be worked out.

I'm both excited and terrified whenever the next BM66 update comes out. it'll be months and months since the last code change, with certain node updates included I'm sure. I'll be holding my breath the entire time!