Today I was dissecting my dead fish (FT) when I noticed leaking batteries on the CPU. I quickly cut the battery pack off of the CPU, and in doing so I ripped one of the legs of the X2 8MHz crystal right above the battery pack. Now the machine will not boot up. Can I replace this crystal with another 8MHz crystal? Or is there something special about the Williams part? Those I found on line look to be smaller and they have a stainless steel casing.

BTW, I did get the Fish Tales pin working again prior to taking out X2 and changing the battery pack. The resetting problem I experienced earlier seems to have stemmed from loose ground screws around the edge of the power board (lucky me!) Thanks!

Thanks Tuukka! Do you know if the pinball machine will work without it? My crystal is completely off the board now and my machine won't boot. I am wondering if this is the reason it is not booting.

Thanks Crash! That's what I figured, but I wanted to make sure before attempting a repair.

Ok, I got the replacement X2 crystal in the mail today and I quickly put it on the CPU. I put the CPU back in the machine, and plugged all the cables in and fired her up. It still does not boot up. I hear a small hum sound from the back box and there are some straight horizontal lines on the DMD. The 3 LEDS on the left all light up and stay lit (the top one does not go out and the middle one does not blink). I am lost on this one. I hate dead fish!

Happy New Year!

I removed all ribbon cables and other cables from the CPU, other than the J210 power supply. I then turned the power to the game on and watched the LEDs on the CPU. D19 and D21 lit up and stayed lit. D20 never came on. I'm convinced the problem is with the CPU here. I will take it off and look it over, but I'm not sure what to look for.

Howdy all! I wanted to provide a final update to this thread. I finally got my Fish Tales pinball machine up and running again. I ended up buying a brand new WPC MPU board from Pinball Basement. Charles makes a very nice product and the board looks identical to the old board only new. I simply moved the ASIC chip, batteries, game ROM and microprocessor chip over to the new board and installed it into the pinball machine back box. It worked like a charm! Once I was able to get my machine to boot up, I resolved the problems with the resets. It was the easiest fix ever! I simply pulled all of the connectors around the perimeter of the power supply board and re-seated them. Viola! No more re-sets in over a hundred games. I also changed dozens of bulbs, fixed a disconnected wire on the left flipper. I found a piece of square metal with a hole in it in the shooter lane. I found it broke off of the metal cage that keeps the ball shooter in place. I ended up welding it back on and all is good. I replaced ALL of the rubber rings - a huge chore! What a lot of stuff to remove to get to the rings in the rear! The game plays like new. It looks good too, but some of the plastic inlays on the playfield are pushing up creating a bit of an edge. The dead fish is now a shining gold fish and it looks and plays great! Thanks for all the help guys!