I could go into a very long story, but there are enough local people who have already heard it.

The short of it is I loaned my TAF to local coin-op museum (you can fill in the blanks) for people to enjoy it while we worked on getting our basement ready. Fast forward a year and the game was returned to me with a charcoaled mid-playfield (magnets left burning for hours despite them being fused -- which still puzzles me), and then several working boards with matching serial numbers taken and swapped out for unknown reasons. Litigation issues aside, I've documented and taken extensive notes of the state of the machine.

With CPR playfields finally coming out, I'm considering doing a full restore on it. When I powered the game up I got nothing but a loud hum from the speakers. I had a spare WPC89 MPU with digital voltmeters soldered to each of the test points (a highly recommended and very cool mod!). I swapped that in yesterday on a whim. All voltages were perfectly within spec, but the same hum.

Upon further investigation, I found that not only did the asshole steal boards but he wasn't even smart enough to put it back together correctly. I found the ribbon cable at the top of the CPU board offset 1 row of pins (bottom row exposed). I reseated the connector and fired up the game, BONG!

So here's where I'm at. I've got a booting game. I've got audio. I can actually step through the menu and hear the sounds.

Display: Nothing
GI: Nothing
Insert Lights: Nothing
Cannot start a game (even though I can credit up).

Any idea where I should begin? I'd figure I'd at least have GI. I rebuilt the GI connector years ago and obviously the driver board is good. I know the display was good too.

I feel like I'm "close" to a game that I can perhaps begin to salvage with the release of PFs.

OK here's where I'm at with minimal time the past couple days...

GI: I've got 7.8V AC w/o load going into J120 on the driver board (good!) but nothing coming out of J121 or J122. Triacs obviously not "activating". I checked all 5 output pins from U1 into the triacs and they're all HI -- should be LO for the GI circuit to be turned on.

DISPLAY: Voltages coming into the display from the dot matrix board are all correct except the brown wire (schematics say +62V DC), is reading 1.7V DC.

So, this will be my focus today to see where between the bridge rectifier and the output that something has gone bad.

I did logic probe the ribbon cable going into the display and have pulsing activity on a lot of pins, so hopefully correcting the +62V feed will give me a nice display. I ran a continuity test on all the pins coming out of the U24 RAM chip on the dot matrix board and those are good.

OK, here's an update. Grabbed a HV repair kit and just got the DMD controller back to where I last left it. +62V is back so I have a nice working display, except every 8th column is out (this was an issue prior to said a-hole destroying the game). I've got continuity everywhere out of U24 RAM chip, and I have a LO signal on all of the DMD control board-to-display ribbon cable, and a pulsing signal on all of the odd pins as I should. Somewhere in that pulsing data is a missing 8th column I'm looking at the schematic and having a tough time figuring out what signal controls the columns, specifically this column so I can figure out which chip is bad or has a bad trace. Anyone have any DMD schematic experience and point me in the right direction for troubleshooting?

As for the rest of the game, now that I have a 7/8ths working display... it boots and goes through attract mode on the display, cycling through all of the pages.
In test switch edges mode, I have 4 perfectly working flippers and all switches seem to register.

GI - none
Insert Lamps - none
Flashers - none
Solenoids - none

I can start a game and it scores correctly, but no lights, flashers or non-flipper solenoids.

Chris, I've got 7.8VAC (obv no load) coming in J115 and nothing going out of J120/121. I would also agree that the triacs themselves are fine, but it's pulling down a HI signal on all 5, forcing the GI off and not completing the circuit.

It lives!!! After looking at the manual in greater detail, I noticed that the GI, lamps, flashers and solenoids all had one thing in common. The logic chips switching them on/off were controlled via the CPU through J113 ribbon cable. I reseated it a bunch of times, nothing. I then grabbed the one out of my Fish Tales and said a prayer. Yup! That was it! What a hack. I should have suspected the cable since I swore I had replaced them all and this one was old. What a jackass that guy was. Literally swapped everything from my driver board.

Anyways, I'm good to go (sort of).

Still need help repairing the DMD board to get that column back, but I have a fully playable game (although haven't gone through all the mechanics)

Chris,

Reversing the DMD board to DMD ribbon cable didn't change anything (it's a new cable anyways). What I'm seeing is every 8th column missing if the screen is "text". If the screen is graphics, far more of the display is blanked out. I've gotta have a missing data signal somewhere but unlike an alphanumeric display, I do not understand the schematics here. Would love to troubleshoot and repair this.

Rest of the game plays correctly.

FIXED!!! WOO! Thank you Penn State PHY202H for teaching me to read schematics back in the day.

Display test ran through and then threw a bunch of B(x) page errors and a RAM addressing error. I had already checked continuity out of U24 RAM chip, but didn't realize that the BA0-7 signals each have two inputs on the right side of U24. BA6 (U24 pin 18?) had its signal from U29 to U24, but did NOT have its signal from U28 to the same pin on U24. Soldered a jumper wire, fired it up and perfect display!

Yes, the RAM had been replaced previously several years back (it itself had failed). Although I can't see a cut trace visually, the bad trace was component (top) side. Oddly, at the time the RAM was replaced initially, the display worked fine, so how this line was severed at a later date, beneath the 28-pin DIP is beyond me. That's why I really didn't go down that path initially knowing it was new RAM.
Anyways, the fact that I completely fixed a dead game in a few days, I'm pretty pumped. Now for CPR to release the PFs so I can put this jagoff behind me.