I’ve been holding off getting a Stern game to a fair extent because I haven’t yet developed the confidence in their long term repairability.

I don’t have the impression Stern is doing much to assuage such concerns. I find no mention of node board availability or prices on their homepage. The online retailers in my area at least don’t seem to sell them.

The JJP concept of using a Linux PC with a dedicated driver board, multiple graphic cards and a flash drive seems to me to be the better strategy (even if a few of the parts are yesterdays technologies and not so easy to find).

I can imagine the time on the assembly line hooking up wires could be reduced significantly with a bus system which appears to be the spike strategy. For repairability, however, a plethora of wires seems the better way.

I’m particularly intrigued by GB Pro. This being Spike 1 and older makes me even more nervous.

well, I for one am going to hold strong and not buy a new Stern game until Pinside tells me it’s ok.

that's not a good comparison as automobile companies guarantee spare parts availably for 10+ years. It's usually much longer in practice. You also have a vast availability of dealer repair garages and independents. Pinball is nothing like this.

No issue, but most electronic products cost nowhere near what a pinball game costs and when these other consumer electronic products do fail, it is usually time to step up to the next generation of products anyway. With pinball this is completely different.

I’m always on the lookout for new and useful tools. I have a great led lamp with a large magnifying glass, but what do mean with lights that fold down? - could you share a photo?

thanks for saying this because this the point that keeps going through my mind. To what extent should the repairability of a game be considered during it’s design even if it means some fancy features have to be omitted or done differently ? In my mind great innovation in design needs to include repairability as a key feature. With its prices, immobility and expected longevity, pinball shouldn’t be going in the direction of most other consumer electronic gadgets.

And in general the home pinball enthusiast needs a certain skill set to keep his or her games running. I think the easier a game is to diagnose and repair, the more pleasure the game will provide long term.

I may have missed some key posts along the way, but my impression was that JJP failures were pretty much always with individual parts of the game such as the phone screen in DI or the trough switches in Wonka or of course all the talk about playfields. I don‘t recall reading about the central hardware system in a JJP game breaking down. It‘s, of course, just a pc, which could break down, but I‘m guessing a pc is more robust than Spike.

the hypothesis is that components (such as node boards) on the underside of the playfield will experience more shock/vibrations, etc., than those in the backbox. Seems reasonable to me, but sure, one could measure freqencies, amplitudes as a function of time, game status, etc. MIt might provide additional insight.

And any repair data is going to be anecdotal because only the manufacturer will have a full set, if at all. They have no need or motivation to share this. Therefore, insisting on being shown data is rather pointless. I don’t imagine distributors of pins will provide data either. Further up in this thread are comments of folks who I assume are operators or repair technicians regarding Spike 2‘s reliability. This is probably the best available source of data, but it will, of course, always be colored by their perceptions and individual experiences.