Working on a new to me Space Station. In overall excellent condition. Have had it about 1 week now and have started to notice a few minor issues.

The main one that is bothering me revolves around the lamp matrix. I am assuming it is one or more diodes that have failed but perhaps it has to do with LEDs being installed in some spots.

LEDs have been installed in most areas behind the glass along with most of the inserts on the playfield. There are still incandescents in all bonus awards (shuttle and station).

Here is what my individual lamp test produced.

Stop and score will not light up during my lamp test but it does work during all lamps test and seems to work properly during gameplay.

All of the bonus award inserts lamps cause another lamp to light up also. They are as follows.

Under the shuttle and station bonus awards, each one lights up the same other light.

SPECIAL lights up “relaunch when lit”
EXTRA BALL lights up “docked port side”
50000 + lites outlanes lights up “hold bonus”
50000 + lites bonus ball lights up “docked starboard side”
150000 + hold bonus lights up Station Wheel 3 (which is the left most bulb behind the Williams logo)
75000 lights up Station Wheel 2 (middle bulb behind Williams logo)
25000 lights up Station Wheel 1 (which is the right most bulb behind the Williams logo) - when 25000 is lit up on the station side, not only does it light up the right Williams logo bulb but it also lights up the 25000 bonus award light on the shuttle side.

And when station wheel 1 is lit (right most bulb behind the Williams logo) - 25000 bonus award is lit up on the shuttle side only.

I think that is all of the issues with the light matrix but have no idea where to start to troubleshoot this issue. And during a game it is pretty annoying when it says that balls are locked when they actually are not.

What should I test first? Could it have anything to do with the LEDs and perhaps switching back to incandescents would solve the issue? Or is that just hopeful thinking??

Thanks in advance for anyone’s help on this!

Thanks for the reply. I will take a photo later and add it here.

Alright here are the photos.

Front left to right I see the following wire colors

Red / green
Red / yellow
Red / orange
Red / black
Red / blue
Red / violet
Red / grey
Not used
Yellow / red
Yellow / grey

Small plug which I believe is for the flashers has orange and black / orange.

The bigger plug from left to right is as follows.

Red / orange
Red / black
Red / yellow
Red / green
Not used
Yellow / blue

1J6

Red / grey
Red / violet
Red / blue
Red / green
Red / yellow
Not used
Red / orange
Red / brown
Red / black

1J7

Yellow / grey
Yellow / violet
Yellow / blue
Yellow / green
Not used
Yellow / black
Yellow / orange
Yellow / red
Yellow / brown

I am suspecting that the yellow/red wire on the large bonus award light board should be yellow/violet but it is nowhere to be found near there. The only other lamp that the yellow/violet controls is the big flame in the back box.

Confused…..

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Now that I am looking closer the wire on the light board may actually be a faded yellow / violet. So I think all of the wires are correct.

Yes Ottawa Ontario Canada.

Yes I noticed that as well. I actually have a fully populated extra playfield that was included with the purchase of this machine and that diamond shaped board on the spare playfield is the same as yours. I could try swapping the whole board to test that out as well.

Will try that later today or tomorrow and report back. Thanks for all your help so far.

Tried unplugging the diamond shaped light board and still getting the same behaviour (apart from the lights being activated on the diamond shaped board obviously). So I am pretty sure this is just a unique / rare board that may have been used at one point or another. This particular machine I believe was imported from France or at least was setup at some point in France due to the coin door being setup for francs.

Where should I look next?

I purchased it from Ottawa about a week ago but yes it was the one with the extra plastic but that was just the original key chain installed there for whatever reason.

I did go through the individual lamp test and that is how I determined the issue but it also appears during gameplay as well the same behaviour.

I did just find this on the main board and maybe this is the cause??

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After revising the manual, looks like Q78/Q79 have something to do with the jet bumpers and they all work as they should so likely not the issue with regards to the lamp issue.

After further inspection of the lamp matrix, all the the issues are indeed tied to column 6,7,8.

When any light is lit in column 7 or 8, it also lights up the light in the same row of column 6.

The one unique situation is when row 8 column 6 is lit, it lights up the lamp in row 8 column 7. The other unique situation is when column 8 row 8 is lit, lamps in row 8 column 6 and 7 are also lit.

Seems to be things are pointing towards an issue with row 8 of the lamp matrix?

Thank you. That will be my next step. I have lots of extra lamp sockets and diodes and test leads that I can create a lamp socket.

If it ends up being a CPU issue, I am guessing that is a lot more involved/problematic and will require a professional to troubleshoot and fix?

I tried one other thing by unplugging the 14 lamp bonus award lamp board and going through the individual lamp test and it still lit up the extra bulbs so now I think it may be a bigger issue than a shorted diode. Perhaps a CPU problem somewhere more upstream.

So I unplugged 1J6 and 1J7 and tested every individual lamp directly from the CPU and each row and column combination only lights up one lamp combination.

Take that as a good sign but now need to figure out where the issue lies.

What’s my next steps? How do I know which diodes to test?

Found something last night online regarding some cheaper LEDs that act like a diode if installed the wrong direction. Turns out after changing all the LEDs back to incandescent it fixed all of my lamp matrix issues. Game is so much more fun when the correct lights are lit up at the correct time.

Thanks to everyone for your help!

New question with regards to fuses in my Space Station.

I was going through all of the fuses and wanting to make sure they were the correct ones and I noticed that the 2x fuse holder between the power supply and the sound board had fuses labelled BUSS MDL 8A.

From my understanding, these should be 1/10 AMP SB correct? So these having 8 amp fuses is a recipe for a disaster if something was to happen that the fuse should have blown before frying something else?

Most of the other ones were correct. I did find one other one that should have been a 2A SB that had a 5A SB instead.

Actually maybe they are 0.8 A SB….

I do have a printed manual and yes I believe those are the ones I am referring to.

I’m assuming I should source some 0.1 A fuses to replace the 0.8 A fuses that are currently installed.

Thank you. I guess what I am trying to figure out is, is this an 8 Amp fuse or a 1/8 amp fuse?

See photo below. I have a feeling these are way over fused!!

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Thank you so much. I’m new to SS pinball machines. Would you recommend not turning the machine back on until I replace the fuses with the correct amp ratings? Will need to order from PB Resource and takes about a week to get to me.

Thanks! I have emailed PBResource an order for a bunch of fuses. I don’t have any spare slow blow fuses so figured it would be good to have them all on hand anyways.

I saw that kit at pinballmedics but doesn’t have the one main fuse that I am searching for. Thanks for the link though.

New question for all the space station / system 11 gurus.

Looks to be a blown capacitor next to U21?

Any idea what issues / problems this could cause? Or was this intentionally cut?

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From a little bit of googling I have figured out this is a bypass capacitor for chip U21.

What issues would this cause being blown? Could it cause static on the speakers?

And what other major issues / problems could arise if I don’t replace it?

Thanks in advance.