Ive posted on this before. As a tech I am refraining working on any Spike 1.or 2 systems for the time being. This includes issues such as a simple thing as a sticky flipper. I tried helping a friend update his software on a pinball and it caused a node board to fail . It was very aggravating to say the least. In the world of home pinball repair things can fail sometimes if you look at them the wrong way Its part of the business. With WPC, Whitestar, and all the other makers its easy for a tech to have redundancy and confidence to repair a new issue.
I just had a Space Station that I did a motor replacement on the station. A few days later the the game is completely dead. He is calling me as I was the last to work on the game. Anyone who works on pinballs knows this is not uncommon. In short it was a bad cmos ram on the cpu board., I replaced and he has been happy ever since. I didn't charge him for the labor. This happens quite often as its impossible to predict what will fail next on a pinball. The good news with older games they are generally inexpensive to repair at a pcb component level. The boards are through hole and easy to repair. Replacements are pretty reasonable if needed.
I cringe at the thought in the future of working on a GB with a bad flipper and getting a call a few days later that the game is dead. I know its nothing I did but the customer does not and assumes otherwise. How do I explain to the customer that he know needs to spend $800+ on a cpu board a week after I worked on it?
Currently its not worth the stress and aggravation for me to work on the newer spike systems.I want to maintain a good reputation with my customers. If in the future schematics are provided and the boards are sold or exchanged for a reasonable cost I may reconsider. But for now no thanks.

True, I remember being able to buy system 1 games all day long for 25 to 75 dollars non working. This was in the late 80,s before replacement boards came along.

I uncrated a starwars pro today as my son is a big fan. The game had a bumper that was machine gunning constantly. I was surprised that the software would allow this to continue. On even system 3 Gottlieb pinballs from the 90,s if a sling or bumper was gapped too close it would shut off when a machine gunning scenario started.
I hope stern can address this in the future because a burnt coil and transistor on this new system could be a disaster.
I would also like to see plywood bottoms rather than artificial wood that is highly susceptible to moisture.
Overall happy but this will be my last nib Stern until documentation and theory of operation regarding nodeboards, CPU is provided.

I surely understand as I can do the adjustment. But many new people are entering the hobby and may not do this or this could develop on location .
Typical scenerio is a ball gets stuck. Kid walks away and bumper fires repeatedly until things heat up.
I'm not bashing stern just pointing out observations.

Does anyone know of a good sm iron or soldering station for these types of repiars?