Head over to www.maaca.org and send the boards out to ToMMy. You have acid damage at the battery holder and maybe elsewhere

pasted_image (resized).png

I bought a non-working (AKA: 'It worked when I shut it off.') Sys 3 (similar to Sys 6). Man, that was truly a bear to work on. Acid damage, bad transistors, replaced every connector, IC's, relay, caps, added the fuses between the transformer and bridges...the list just kept growing and wouldn't stop. Even replaced the displays with a LED version since new display driver chips were expensive. Really wore me down.

Here's a good read to help you out: http://flippers.info/system6resources.asp

Take the batteries completely out and wait a couple minutes. Turn it on and you should get some numbers in the credit/ball in play display. If you don't it's not booting. What the LEDs are doing is irrelevant, they really only come into play when you press the diagnostic button, which does nothing if the game doesn't boot.

If the game isn't booting, it's also not pulsing the lamps properly, and those resistors you noticed getting hot will get REALLY hot since they normally have 18 volts pulsing through them short enough to provide about 6 volts.... with the software not running, they're dropping the full 18 volts.

You can remove the lamp fuse while you're troubleshooting so this doesn't happen.

Ignore the flippers being on telling you anything about the power supply being good. It's actually telling you that something is really amiss, because flippers shouldn't be on in game over mode. (Maybe you'll get lucky, and the game is actually in audit mode, just with messed up displays) And all it tells you is that the solenoid voltage is good. (While you're at it, remove the solenoid fuse as well, to prevent further damage.)

Fixing system 6 boards isn't that difficult, but don't zip in there thinking you're going to make this magically work with some poking and prodding - you have to really go through each board starting with the power chain and get each solid before going farther. The corrosion someone else spotted on your MPU isn't going to help either. Start with the power supply then work over to the mpu/driver board (have to fix that as a unit because the stock software won't boot with the driver board disconnected..... if you can get a hold of test chips either Leon's or the pincoder.ca ones all the better).

Pinwiki isn't really complete in this area but it is a good start. Probably the bulletproofing vid1900 thread would be a good read as well. Those hammered resistors on your driver board will need to be replaced with either higher wattage versions or the mosfet mod, but worry about that stuff later, get the boards booting first.

The fact your displays are "trying" to load something is a hopeful sign, but I agree you have your work cut out for you. If you want to shoot for a quick motivating minor victory, sure, it normally does not hurt to carefully reseat all the connectors, including removing the driver board and reseating it. HOWEVER, those connectors have limited cycle times and known failure points, and if the game "comes to life" after doing that, there is NO guarantee it will stay alive. In fact, you can be assured it is merely an indicator some serious work will be required, like what slochar mentioned above. It's a rite of passage with old System 6 games.

The good news is if you are reasonably skilled and willing to take the time to learn and invest in a few tools, System 6 is a great platform to learn with in that it's a bit more forgiving when it comes to removing components and building your skills (unlike Sys11 and later, which you shouldn't even think about if you've never done it before). But you will need to take your time and do research.

Get a power supply rebuild kit for $10-20 and practice on that. Sure beats spending $80+ on a new supply, and they're actually pretty easy. After that, you can consider what lies ahead.

If you're not able to do tackle board work, you can find reputable techs here, or an aftermarket combo board such as the Rottendog 327. An aftermarket board is about $300 or so. Depending on the depth of work required, a paid tech rebuild could approach that... or maybe only a few bucks. Hard to say up front.

Blackout has a great layout and interesting sounds so it's worth the effort...