In ‘93 my wife bought me a Williams 1988 Swords of Fury. I brought it back to life years ago. It’s a fun machine. It has sat for 10 years or so and I decided to get everything going back to her former glory.

I replaced lower flipper mechanisms and coils, new silicone bumpers, replaced a few bulbs that were out, and found a bad fuse that was causing RH GI to be out. My wife and I have been playing this for a few days and we have fallen back in love with the game. We have a big Christmas party this Sunday which was spurring us to getting this all fixed up.

All was good until this morning. GI lights work but lower and upper playfield lights are all out. I have checked all fuses with continuity tester, I replaced a few fuses that were incorrect with new correct amperage fuses. Been like that since I’ve had it. No burned or disconnected electrical connectors. No loose or cracked wires.

Any ideas on where to go from here? I’m hoping it’s easy as I need to get this bad girl going by Sun. Any help would be appreciated!

I think I know what to do to check continuity. I’ll check the relay, but it it went bad, would all GI lights go out? All of my General Illumination lights are on, it’s just the lower and upper playfield that is out.

As far as voltage, I’m out of my league. What voltage am I looking for where? Something happened to knock all playfield out at once. It’s not a single light or area. Looking to try to leverage someone’s experience with the upper 80s Williams machines. I can post pics or schematics if that will help. I’m just a newbie trying to get this thing going.

Thx

Kelly
I’ll check the relays as you mention. Are the playfield and GI lights all tied together or on separate circuits? In other words does that relay work for both GI and playfield

JP
Yes, I pulled and used continuity setting on my DMM. I had a few fuses that the tone was somewhat intermittent. I did read up on slow blow fuses and evidently the older ones can test OK but not pass the right amps. I replaced those.

Chosen
Im talking about the feature / scoring lights under the playfield. The general illumination lights that stay on on playfield and backboard all work. I was wondering about an issue with a common ground being bad. Where would I look for this? How can I test to see if this is the case? No, temp has remained constant and no physical stress to the machine.

Thanks everyone for your help so far . . . Here is a status and some new findings:

- Continuity on all GI and flasher lights on playfield and backboard are obviously good. Rechecked continuity at all fuses and they are good (except one, get to that later). Continuity on all playfield scoring lights, bonus, etc is not good on all individual lights when I went from one wire to next. I even pulled out the bulbs in case a sharp voltage spike took them all out . . . Interesting that the bulb continuity checks for the press in peanut bulbs mounted in sockets on small boards seemed to be good . . . I was checking soldered flat from one of bulb to other.

- Something strange is going on. My scoring LED panel is now out and my 1/4 Amp slow blow is blowing. I can only find 1/3 amp fast and 1/2 amp SB. I’ve popped 3 of these. I even tried a 2 amp SB for a few seconds and it blew that. I’m getting 96 volts across the fuse holders. May this be part of my problem?

My machine is now running, without scoring LEDs, without the 1/4 Fuse on power supply board, and without lights on playfield. If any of this helps narrow down a potential solution, I’m all ears

I did find the solenoid under the playfield at the bottom. Unsure how to test continuity or voltage. Pls advise.

Here are some pics that might help

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So I removed the relay that controls light from the bottom of the playfield. Not knowing how to test continuity of a relay, I removed it and touched one probe to each pin location then to each soldered in penetration on the bottom of the circuit board. I was able to get 1-2 or 3 circuits connection for each pin (so there were some combinations of pins / relay penetrations that worked for every pin)

Don’t know if that means anything. Nothing looks burnt or even discolored.

It’s possible I fried the alpha numeric display swapping fuses. I didn’t have any 1/4 amp slow blow so I used a 2 amp SB. I know that’s a no-no but I was desperate to see if that fuse was the culprit to my lights being out. The display was working up to that point. Possibly unrelated. Maybe tied. Who knows.

How and where would I start looking for a grounding issue. That seems like a potentially logical as any place to go on this since the relays look good

I got the playfield lights going. Yay! Now to tackle the scoreboard. I traced power coming into board and I do have power. Thinking the board could be fried?? Just as a precaution, I bought another replacement scoreboard. Hopefully it will take care of it.

In a possibly unrelated manner, I still have fuses instantly blowing see pictures. .25 AMP slo blow. I tried a .5 AMP and a 2 AMP. They all blew. What could be causing this? What is this fuse for? I get 93.7 v AC and 12.7 milivolts DC with no fuse in it.

As you can tell, I can use any advice I can get. We have one local guy who services machines. He’s said he was going to come out since before Christmas.

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New board came in today. Had it installed in 3 minutes and viola, my Pin is back to its original glory. I kinda like that this replacement board has a variable brightness.

Still don’t know what that empty fuse is on the power board. At 1/4 amp it can’t be controlling much. Everything is working, so I’m not too worried.

Awesome . . . Mystery solved! Thx