I am in the same boat. I have a LOTR with a dead sound chip. During my research, I found out that Rob from lockwhenlit.com does repair these boards. I would contact him for pricing and repair times. I also discovered that if you install a Pinsound board, it completely replaces the old sound circuits. I am currently saving my pennies for a Pinsound board.

I think the playfield color quality was an issue all through the early 2000s. I noticed the same thing on a couple of different TSPP last year.

Ok, I have owned my LOTR for about 3 months now, and I still have not been able to destroy the ring. I am starting to wonder if there is something wrong with my machine. So last night I took the glass off to test the ring setup. All three switches are working, and the magnet appears to be working well.

So here is what is happening when I go to destroy the ring. You can get the first ball in the ring with no issue. When the second ball goes up, It will stick to the first ball, and does not go through to hit the second switch. It is like the magnet is too strong. I have read about the issues of the balls become magnetized, but these balls are new, and are not sticking together at all outside of the game.

Does anyone have any suggestions for fixing my magnet?

Hmmm... this may mean I have to upgrade my ROM set from 5.01.

I have my own ROM burner, and I found the V10 rom files on Sterns website. I may take a look at the chips in there tomorrow, and decide if I want to try to erase them and burn the files to them. I just have to figure out which cpu file and which display file to burn to my machine.

Ok, I got the files, I found a spare 1mb chip, and I liberated a 8 mb chip from the dead sound section of my cpu board. I had to double up the display data to fill the 8 mb chip. Every thing appears to have installed ok, now I just need to have a game worthy of destroying the ring.

I personally have always used pinsound studio to get my files setup before I plug the USB drive into my machine. Less chance of it failing to unpack properly, and you get to play right away.

After owning it for nearly four months I finally did it.D02F6B2B-40E8-458E-9A52-AD6EB01DE70E (resized).jpeg

And it was quite the marathon game...
411C361C-AA66-413C-AA4E-23832184BE8E (resized).jpeg

Unfortunately I have to let my baby go...
Anyone want a nice LOTR?

SOLD!

Machine - For Sale

Lord of the Rings with Pinsound Archived

Fully shopped/refurbished - “I have a pretty nice LOTR for trade/sale. Overall nice cabinet, only a few minor scratches Playfield shows no wear all the plastics are intact Pinsound board installed and working...”

2018-04-24

Bakersfield, CA

uncivil_engineer

5,300 (OBO)

Archived after: 9 days

Viewed: 650 times

Status: Sold (amount private)

Contributed to Pinside

Ive noticed that with a lot of Stern playfields from that era. It really stands out in on TSPP. BTW, the lower picture is my playfield. I think the harsh lighting doesn't help the picture much.