Going to try to document my progress of my Fish Tales resto. I found the machine in a non-functional state. Let's see if I can bring it back to life.

This is my first pin of the 90's era.

new family member

So first thing is first I found that F114 and F115 were missing from the Power driver board. So I replaced the fuses on the PDB and the batteries in on the MPU and switched it on. Now there was a tiny bit of corrotion on one battery terminal so I clleaned it up. I inspected the board top see if there was any damage caused by the corrosion and I can see any but I will check that closer later.

corrosion on the battery terminal

For some reason the F114 & F115 check fuses issue is now gone (could be the fuses I put in haha) and now the message is about factory settings are restored.

I turned on the machine and I hear two beeps a gap then a final beep. I see lights are mostly not working on playfield and backbox but that can wait. The leds that are on on the power driver board are LED1,2,3 are OFF and 4,5,6,7 are ON. I then tested voltages on the TPs and the results are as follows: TP 1=14.92v 2=4.97v 3=0.61v 4=3.65v 6=73.2v 7=21.7v 8=16.22v.

Power Driver Board

there were a couple BRs in the coin hopper that match the majority of the BRs on the board but a couple have been replaced.

a replaced BR
I think these BRs have been replaced too

C2 looks ok but I am going to start by taking out the PDB and testing all 5 of the BRs an inspecting C2 and C4 as I keep reading that they can affect 12v at TP3. How do I test those in situ?

C2

I will replace these most likely and see if they fix anything. I have also been told that C30 can also cause issues for 12v. I will check that one too. Any advice?

it isnt too bad. Most of us order stuff together to save on shipping costs.

Can you post a link here as most of the search results end up pages of Casters Club threads - which is fine but I would love to see rebuilds in the one spot.

I have been documenting my progress.

Getting it going.

How did I figure it out?

Fixed most things:

Driver Board
Sound board
Left hand target
broken plastics
cleaned & waxed playfield
cleaned everything
added leds to playfield inserts and warm white leds to GI. (not backbox yet)
topper not working - high and low voltage to J107 and there is continuity from J107 to the coil in topper but the coil does nothing when testing topper coil in test menu. Fish also has tears in it. Will need to figure out how to repair and keep it from happening again.
next reinstal lightning flippers back to the game as there are standard flippers but not the same color.
leveled playfield

IMG_1319 (resized).JPEG

OK replaced old non matching flippers with new lightning flippers withh translucent green rubbers, got the topper working, updated the Stretch the truth board with coloured leds, fixed some more switches, fixed pop bumpers. IMG_1571 (resized).jpgIMG_1578 (resized).jpgIMG_1573 (resized).jpgIMG_1579 (resized).jpgIMG_1580 (resized).jpg

The condoms dont fit the led conversion bulbs (warm white). So either I left it as is (incandescent bulbs with condoms) or just warm whites. I tried the WW and thought I would try some colors.

Geez so I got everything back and operational including the fish but now the reel motor has stopped. I put 12v to the motor and the motor turns. I checked volyage at J122-4 and J118-2 and there is 12v coming out of the PDB. I am now checking thr EMI board.
IMG_1596 (resized).jpg
IMG_1597 (resized).jpg

Reflowed board and did not effect any change. doh!

right I fixed that by replacing the tip102 and diode on the EMI board and that fixed the reel but now the reel is not calibrating.

Ok the optos were dirty and so I cleaned it and now I am golden.

It did not fix the problem. The real issue was the motor control board had some dodgy rails. It seems to work intermittently so I ditched it and got a new one. Placed it in the machine and has worked ever since.

Here is my fitting the Fishy with a PIN2DMD colour display.

Project Restoration complete.