Hi,

My Pinbot broke down a while ago after a period of giving warning signs on the displays and later backing it up by “pop” sounds every time the machine was turned on.

I never found out what that warning was that was shown on the display.. as we were on our honeymoon and my father in law was always playing on it while we were away. He never told me anything about these signs until the machine wouldn’t start anymore.

I fixed up my Pinbot (did a playfield swap and fixed the cab). Replaced the GI wire, all of the GI sockets and replaced all bulbs for LED except for the #1251 bulbs. I made no other changes to any of the electrical systems.

When I turn it on it does the following:

The machine makes 1x a “pong” sound
The back box GI lights are on and only the GI lights on the left side of the playfield are on.
The top 2 displays repeatedly show a gibberish text that blinks 10x. The CPU board repeatedly shows a 7 and then a 8, both blinking 10x. There is a light “humming” noise coming from both the cab speaker and the left hand side speaker in the head box.

What I checked:
- all bulb sockets with a battery before putting the pf back into the machine.
- all connections and plugs, making sure they are clean and properly pushed back together.
- checked the ground bead, making sure it makes contact on the parts it’s connected with.
- made sure the processors/roms are properly attached to the CPU.
- Checked all fuses with a Ohms meter
- Replaced the batteries in the holder. The old ones did not leak/corrode

I have no idea what could be wrong..
Hopefully someone here has an idea

E5FA18EE-7E63-4F02-9D55-AA462E2C0C90 (resized).jpeg

Yep.. all was working fine. Then the warning messages (that I missed, because I wasn’t home) came and then it just didn’t work afterwards

With the GI power out, everything seems to come alive.

The flippers do go stiff in upright position before the game pops the ball out. Also the drop targets are stiff too. Flipper buttons don’t work. Bottom displays work now, but the top ones still show jibbrrish

Thanks, @rotordave.

I’ll go over it and let u know.

Sorry for the late response, I have been flat out with other stuff and had almost no time to work on my Pinbot

This is what I’ve done after @rotordave’s last reply:

I checked the GI wire and the ground braid if it touches anything it shouldn’t and found one suspicious soldering spot and I fixed it.
I also replaced the ribbon cables (since it was a quick and easy thing to do). The result: the gibberish text on the displays is gone and the displays work fine now.

The stiff flippers and drop targets are working fine now too. I previously screwed them on too tight and after loosening the screws they work fine now.
The CPU board is also showing 0 now, so no more flashing 7 and 8. Based on this, I recon the initial issue that caused the machine to stop working was probably caused by the batteries running flat. I actually still had those batteries laying around and I checked them. They had no juice left in them.

So my best guess now is that in the PF swap I must have made a wiring mistake.
Remaining issues:
- The GI on the right side is still not working. I replaced the (5A SB) fuses in the GI fuse holder and on restart the second fuse (2nd from the top down) immediately burned. I did notice in that split second that all the GI on the right-hand side did initially turn on.
- The pop bumpers and kickers don’t work.
- There is still a slight humming noise coming from all the speakers. Might be normal as is vaguely remember a noise like that, back when the machine was working fine, but not to sure (as it’s been a long time since I played this machine).

Attached is a sketch of my GI wiring of the right side of the playfield. Can someone please confirm if this is correct? As you can see the dotted red line shows the location of where the middle pop bumper was wired to the GI before the PF swap. Reason why I connected it to its current location is because when I did the GI wiring, the middle pop bumper light would not work. I checked all of the globes/sockets with a 9V battery as I did the wiring. All other lights did work except for this one. When I made the change all of the lights turned on.
IMG_4307-01 (resized).jpgwiring dia markup (resized).jpg

Anyone, please?

Thanks…

Thanks rotordave . Problems are partially solved. Found a bit of solder that acted as a bridge between the GI and the socket body.

Also found that I got the top left 2 wire bundles as shown on my sketch soldered the wrong way around. So I swapped them over.

The GI lights all go on now and no blown fuses.

Remaining issues:

- The GI bulbs of all of the 3 pop bumpers don’t work.

- Both kickers and pop bumpers don’t work

- The 4 switches on the playfield side of the kickers don’t work

Getting closer now to a fully working machine.. almost there..

Regarding the not working kickers and pop bumpers:

I checked the wires, checked the connectors, the powerboard and CPU board.. it all looks good to me.

I did check (again). if the fuses are ok. I noticed that the third fuse on the powerboard is a 3 amp ADL fuse. I replaced it with a 2.5mdl fuse and when I powered up the machine it was fine, but once I went to the test menu.. the fuse blowed.

It’s weird to me as the sticker on the cabinet shows it’s a 2.5amp fuse. The 3amp fuse works and was already in the machine when I bought it.

I added photos. Is there anything you can see wrong?

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This is what the rest of the board looks like.
What do you guys think?

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E48DF16A-0B83-487B-ACAD-1063599ACD2B (resized).jpeg

F97DA6AB-9028-43DE-A6E9-2203BF022A2F (resized).jpeg

Guess the good news is that the board is fixable/salvageable if given the proper care.

I don’t know Ken Shipley.. would like to get his contact details.. plz.

It would actually be even better if there is someone in Victoria that fixes boards, so I can drop it off myself. Any suggestions?

Sending it to NSW might be a nightmare with current massive shipping delays by AusPost. As example: I been waiting now for a month on a order from Sydney to arrive.. my wife will not be happy if I don’t get this machine back up and running before Xmas.

Holy shit that’s .. scary news.

What do you recon is best to go from here?

Im thinking

A
once I find contact details of someone that fixes boards) send pics and ask for repair estimate. If it’s more than a new board costs then get the replacement instead.

B
Just get a replacement..

is it correct that only rottendog made replacement boards?

I’m looking for a long term solution as I want to keep this machine.

UPDATE:

I ordered a new board from DumbAss and it’s due to arrive within a couple of days.

I finally had some time again to work on my machine. I found that one of the leafs on the top pop bumper was broken. I replaced it and solved one of the issues. The lights on top of the pop bumpers work now.

Switch test comes back with just a “visor open” issue. That’s just something I can fix with a minor adjustment (the switch is not broken).

Only remaining issue is the pop bumpers and kickers not working.