Be happy that your an American, I’d be willing to bet that it will be close to $400cdn to get one of these with shipping and currency conversion. I can only imagine what the EU or Aussie guys pay

I always called this “shotgun repair” toy just follow the traces and replace everything that looks like it might be blown. As long as you can find part numbers. This will be a lot harder with SMD, but it’s possible to fix most anything

What’s the life span of a stern operating system? Could they already be planning the next cpu? If so, I could see them waiting to release schematics until they’re building different hardware. Keep the 3rd party repairs one generation behind.

This guy gets it. There’s not many other logical reasons for so many revisions

Are you listening Stern? Better get this shit figured out. Your customers already have a place to unite and discuss their common complaints, and the pinball crowd has came together before to sue.

So you still have a broken node board that is now put into a new location that just doesn’t use the the broken section of said board?

When’s the part about stern fixing the problem.

Was the 1st node board even faulty? Could it have just been the trough boards causing the fail signal to show at the node board? It kinda seems odd that both would blow simultaneously. If so, I wonder if a problem with the one board took out the other board.

Did you have to pay $450 and exchange your broken board? If I’m paying $450 for a new board then they’re not getting my damaged board back for free; it may be fixable. If the board HAS to be returned to stern, then the replacement should not be so expensive.

I wonder if there are any local to me, after all they call Kitchener-Waterloo the Silicon Valley of the North. If they don’t need to destroy the board to reverse engineer it, I’d consider donating to get myself schematics. Might be worth it, even if it’s a couple hundred bucks.

Spoken like someone with more money then brains. Why pay a hundred or more for a 1 dollar fix.

30 years in the business, your comfortable with a couple hundred dollar expense, and you still need a tech to do repairs? Sounds like more money then brains.

Would you be ok with replacing one of these parts in a machine that’s less then a year old? Like if a touchscreen went out within a year of it being new, would you be upset with the cost, or just think

Because you haven’t instilled confidence in me with your vast knowledge of electronics

I’d love to have a full set of hi res pics for each node board. This is Node 11 from game of thrones.

I’ll be gone ice fishing this weekend, but I’ll snap pics of the rest next week. I’ll also try to get better quality pics.

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So, since I "have no idea who you are" I dont get an answer to any of my questions?

Sorry for being so rude, I may be an asshole, but I wont say anything behind your back, that I wont say to your face. (I guess some people are more sensitive then I am)

Anyways, I dont think that it's right for stern to be withholding schematics. I dont think that it's right to pay for a replacement part when something can be fixed, and I dont think that it's right for a customer to be gouged for parts that realistically cost dollars. Maybe you think all of these things are ok, but it dont.

The cpu board might load the firmware onto the node boards when an SD card is installed. That would explain why node boards would die during a code update.

Worse case scenario, couldn’t you gut a spike system and install a P-roc board to run the machine. Re program the rules and wire it up. It’s a lot of work, but what’s stopping it from being done?

The proof is in the pudding. The components they use, the support they give, and the boards design, these all add up to an answer. If the components remain available. If the support (schematics and boot code) is provided. If their boards can be serviced, then our answer will be that Stern has not planned there obsolescence. Anything short of providing full customer support would look like planned obsolescence when compared to every other generation of pinball games.

At the very least Stern should be chastised for contributing to the e-waste problem. Make a product that can be fixed, not thrown away.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Don’t throw out a node board and buy a new one, fix the problem.

Just long enough for the customer to feel like they got value for their money, so that they are a returning customer; but if the product lasts to long after this value threshold has been reached, then the company is loosing out on a returning sale. Why sell one widget that lasts for 20 years when we can sell 2 that last for 10, as long as the customer is buying our product.

Where would I find this info? I’ll have to fix this I guess.

It would be nice if stern had some dealer network, where they can send important information on to the customers. Like how car companies send an auto recall notice. I would have never know about this problem.

Weird. I can’t find anything for GoT. It’s a spike 1 game, and has node 8 and 9 in it. I wonder if it’s required, and what’s changed?

I like I/O pcb

Here’s a look at node 8 from GoT Pre (Spike 1)

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This is node 9 for comparison, GoT Pre Spike 1

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Knowing my limits, it would be a tough repair, but definitely not impossible for someone more skilled.

I'll get to it later today hopefully, out with the family for a bit now.

Did you want better shots of the 16 pin chips, or the tiny k7k c3, guys right next to c16? I'll do my best, but just using a cell phone camera

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Node board warranty should be 5 years or 10000 plays to begin with, operators should expect the cpu/nodes to last enough plays to recoup their cost in the game. ($1/play)

Would I pay an additional $250 at the time of purchase to extend that time period out to 10 years or 20000 plays, Yes I would. I imagine a lit of people would, operators would for each game that bought if they new that it would have support for a decade.

Tha onus is on Stern. Dont they have enough faith in their product that it will last long enough for the game to earn a profit. Apparently not at this point. 6 months is a joke to stand behind your product.

That service bulletin says that it’s for node 8 and node 9. Although the picture doesn’t look anything like the node 8 or 9 that I posted from my game of Thrones premium. Weird. Why call them same if they’re totally different, are the two interchangeable? Is one better?

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I laughed out loud we’re talking about Stern, right?

Schematics are coming this month hopefully stern comes through

we’re already seeing older games being un-repairable. Shaq attack (might be a poor example) has a scoreboard inside the game. The chip for that board is obsolete and unobtainable. I highly doubt that chip will ever be made again. So, these games are not yet unplayable, but more and more we’re seeing old tech become impossible to replace. Eventually more and more of these old parts will become impossible to find. Better stock up now if your hoping to keep old games running forever.

Evolution is inevitable, your ability to adapt isn’t.