(Topic ID: 325098)

What kind of surface mount transistors does stern use to drive LEDs?

By seenev

1 year ago


Topic Heartbeat

Topic Stats

You

Linked Games

No games have been linked to this topic.

    Topic Gallery

    View topic image gallery

    IMG_0655-e1573069641991 (resized).jpg

    You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider seenev.
    Click here to go back to viewing the entire thread.

    #1 1 year ago

    What kind of surface mount transistors does stern use to drive LEDs on their led boards? I need to replace one because Stern is not being cool about replacing the board.

    IMG_0655-e1573069641991 (resized).jpgIMG_0655-e1573069641991 (resized).jpg
    #3 1 year ago

    I'm actually looking for led board 8b for tmnt premium. Is there a diagram for that? How do you look these up? Thanks.

    #5 1 year ago
    Quoted from Noahs_Arcade:

    https://sternpinball.com/support/
    scroll down to the bottom. there's no 8b listed, but i am sure the transistor is the same.
    stern tech support is probably best if you need an exact schematic for that board. i'm surprised there hasn't been more outcry over this. exactly what people feared with the spike system and lack of repair documentation is exactly what has happened.

    The board i need is a game specific board for tmnt. They're probably concerned that people will recreate the boards in eagle and make their own replacements and maybe even sell them to people for a lot less money than stern charges. I've designed and assembled a few circuit boards in my time and I know enough about the cost to know that the markup on these boards is extortion

    #7 1 year ago
    Quoted from pete_d:

    It's possible you're right about their concerns. But IMHO those concerns wouldn't be valid. At the very least, they probably could assert a copyright claim on the exact board layout, if not the schematic, to fend off competition. It would be legal for someone to clean-room reverse engineer the board (something that wouldn't be all that difficult) and provide a replacement part, so if there's really a big enough market for that to support that kind of effort, which I doubt, it would be happening anyway.
    But frankly, surely having accessible replacement parts, whether sold by them or someone else, is better for their bottom line than having their pin sales decline because of concerns about reliability and parts availability and cost.
    Now, again...that's not saying there's not some bean-counter at Stern who doesn't see the big picture, and who is resisting the urge to make public important technical documents. But it'd be a pretty short-sighted attitude if so.

    I asked stern support for a schematic of the board and they sent me the wrong one. I'm not sure if it was a mistake or if they didn't think I'd realize. I'm really disappointed with their support. They told me I need to buy a new board as it's past the warranty but they can't be sure it will even fix the problem and won't tell me if I can even return the board if it doesn't fix it. I've ordered some transistors so hopefully I can fix it myself, no thanks to stern. I'm canceling my pending GZ order out of pure frustration with the company.

    #11 1 year ago

    Well I was able to replace the transistor and fix the board... NO THANKS TO STERN.

    You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider seenev.
    Click here to go back to viewing the entire thread.

    Reply

    Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.

    Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!

    Donate to Pinside

    Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!


    This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/what-kind-of-surface-mount-transistors-does-stern-use-to-drive-leds-?tu=seenev and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.

    Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.