Hello,

I live in Sweden and just bought my first pinball machine two days ago. The machine that I bought is a Stern Pirates of the Caribbean. At first it was working perfectly but after playing no more than maybe 10 games on it something went very wrong yesterday. When the issues started I was able to play the first ball but as the current was rushing to the coil in the ball though up-kicker the machine turned off (everything but some LEDs in the playfield and the DMD and the light in the backbox). The DMD still looked fine after this happened. After I turned the machine off and on again it was working like normal again but then the same thing happened again and again every time I started the game. One time the same thing happened when I hit the ship on the first ball and ( I assume) too much current rushed to some coil that does something with the ship. I have no idea if this (too much current rushing to the coils) is what actually happened but I instinctively thought that was what happened.

A little later when I turned the machine on again it didn't boot at all and the DMD was looking like this. It looks like all the fuses on the I/O power board are ok and there is 5V, 12V, 18V, 20V and 50V. I don't know if it means anything but there is a flashing L18 LED on the power board. I have no idea what to check next. I'm completely new to pinball and would appreciate all the help I could get with troubleshooting this issue. I don't know if it's relevant but I should mention that to get the machine into my car we had to unscrew the backbox from the cabinet and pull a lot on the cables between the cabinet and backbox. So much that two connectors in the cabinet were disconnected and the flipper buttons didn't work. This was easily fixed by just connecting the two connectors.

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You were right, Schwaggs. I measured 2.62 V on the 5V test point right after I powered on the game. After about 5 min the game booted and I measured 4.5V. I measured again 5 min later and now it was 4.7V.

Sorry, forgot to say thanks for the advice to you YeOldPinPlayer and Schwaggs.

The game self-healed so I haven't tried your solution with the auxiliary heat sink yet. I still only have 4.7V even though the game is working so I will definitely try this eventually. Is it safe to remove the heat sink all together? I don't understand how it's possible that the heat sink isolates the 5V regulator. Surely the heat sink and screws are not part of the circuit right? That would mean that some current would be going through the screws to ground right?