In both your videos I see extra stuff on the DMD after free play. Might not be relevant at all.

Intresting. I own one and there is another one in town I play during league and I've never seen that before.

Ya..curious what that's all about?
-Mike

I have nothing to add to the sound issue, but I'm guessing you have nvram? I had 2 LW3 games that had garbage at the bottom of the dmd when nvram was installed. Took it out and installed a lithium battery and the garbage went away. This game seems to prefer battery back up.

I'm wondering with the DMD issue that the problem is in the CPU board and not the sound board. Give the caps a good inspection on it yet?

Edit, take a look at the 6821 PIA at 7B, looks like it does double duty for sound and display.

LW3_2 (resized).png

For what it's worth, both my and the other local LW3 have nvram and no DMD issues.

I was suspecting something upstream of the soundboard as well with the DMD issue.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/best-of-pinside-threads/page/4#post-4526244

Adding your LW3 tech thread to the "best of" thread is worthy of multiple downvotes, IMO.

How do the other boards look? Do any others have signs of previous repairs?

I might have you beat on that

Have you replaced game rom?

Following.

Mine has they same symbol behind freeplay but not as "thick" my background sound drops out when coils or flippers are used and only sound effects continue. Im sure I have a power board or connection issue since the whole game doesn't crash.

I would try the Basement 2000 chip on the sound board. I had one go bad that did something similar. Probably worth a shot or if you know someone with a data east swap the chip and see if it changes anything

Watch it on boot up, I found this for how it should behave

"At power-on, the CPU board performs several self tests. While watching the LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) on the CPU board, some information can be derived from them. If all the self tests pass, the LEDs illuminate in the following order at power-on.
PIA (Peripheral Interface Adaptor) and +5 volt LED turns on immediately. After about 1/2 second, the PIA LED turns off. Blanking LED turns on next. +5 volt and Blanking LEDs will stay on (until the game is turned off)."

Also worth looking into the sound board chip as suggested and the condition of the sockets on the sound board.

I had an issue like this on GNR.

Same symptoms, game worked perfect then went to hell suddenly.

I ended up tracing it to a misaligned/loose cable to the dmd (seriously), if I remember correctly...I'll check when I get home.

Is it possible you just aren't catching it flash during the boot? Should only be on for a half second. You could also consider picking up a test rom to help troubleshoot this if you confirm its not lighting https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/965-0100-00

I had problems with this connection, below the roms...re-seated, and all was bueno...may not even be on a lw3, but the same sound issues happened on GNR. Like, exactely in the video posted.

My next door non-pin-head neighbor randomly has a lw3 in his basment; it works perfectly; I'll see if I can't get some comparison pics.

IMG_1374 (resized).JPG