I have owned my machine for about 2 months now and have noticed that occasionally there would be a hum through the speakers. Recently when I turn the game on it said settings and bookkeeping cleared. Today I tried booting it up and it failed. The dmd would show an orange line and there would be a hum. a while later the machine booted up and I played a few games until the game stopped working during multiball. I tried reseating all the cables and various things would happen ranging from flippers turning on to flasher lights turning on. on the cpu board d19 wont light but d21 is on. Now there is a different noise coming through the speakers.

My right speaker hasn't been working since i got it. and today it started to crackle before the game died

When the game died it started working again a few minutes later without me touching the cables then died after 3 games

I replaced the batteries when I got the machine in september. Ill try reseating the gamerom

I pulled the gamerom chip cleaned the contacts and put it back and nothing

I am probably going to invest in a new rottendog mpu and some new chips and a new powerboard. I wanted to replace all the boards in the backbox as well as get an xpin led dmd. I dont want to be dealing with 22 year old parts. I might get the old boards fixed and keep them as backups or sell them

Suppose I send out the original boards for repair No one can say when the next failure will happen on another part it either works of it doesn't. I could be saving half of what it costs to replace a power board and a cpu board but then it will break down again at some point.

I am going into this with the mindset of why sit there and try to track down a problem that will take as little as a minute (which at this point is long gone) to hours or days.

Yes a new board does not guarantee it wont fail just like a new car doesn't guarantee it will not fail when you get it. However, new boards have 22 years more of a chance for improvements to design, a guarantee that if something is wrong they will stand by their products.

As far as DMD I want to modernize it to LED for that same reason and replace the old dmd board.

The argument that RD boards might have issues is the same argument you can have with the old WPC boards.

Am I wrong in thinking like this? (I am not afraid of debugging, I have already replaced all my flipper coils and rebuilt them. Patched up clear-coat damage to the power-field, replaced all the bulbs with LEDs, fixed a problem where half my GI wasn't working etc.) I just think that time and money costs seem to be better invested elsewhere.

I can even get my boards fixed and make a rig where I can flat out isolate problems rather than have to use my game as my only workbench especially since I want other WPC89 games.

I decided to go with John to do a once over on the boards. If anything it's a reactive and proactive measure. I want to make sure that anything questionable is replaced.

In San Antonio there isn't really a place that does board repairs. I would have to go to Pinballz in Austin (which is where I work) and I sort of don't trust them.

Pinside has a wealth of knowledge and people that do good repairs and I trust John to do a great job because you guys recommend him.

I do want to redo the connectors in the backbox and I think Ill replace those ribbon cables.

Now Ill just use the money I saved to get a new pinled board and a white LED dmd

I meant xpin board. Also I'm heading to altex to buy new ribbons to make new cables.

Thanks you guys for your insight.

I already did a full led conversion I am not sure they would be happy but I love how bright and colorful the play-field was for the 2 days before it crapped out lol