Quoted from Manimal:Part of my conversation with Jersey Jack Service folks...I hope it is OK to post this part as he does a great job of explaining the reason for the new boards. Sorry for the length of the post.
The original LED boards (regardless of which actual version of LED boards you have, as long as it is not 2.0) are all daisy chained together like Christmas lights and therefore when one fails, you lose the other ones downstream (I don't mean that they are damaged, I mean they go out or start getting corrupted data and acting all different crazy ways). At that point you have to identify the bad board, bypass it using the data cables, and then eventually turn that board off in the settings or replace the board and put the new one back into the chain in the settings, or both, and so on. This can be a hassle, and while it isn't too much of a big deal if you have one board fail, it can be a pain if you have more than one go bad or have one fail now and then another in the very near future and so on. The one concern that should not avoid being mentioned is that the chips that are mounted on the LED boards (there are 31 small boards and 10 big boards in the chain, and they all feed each other) are at the end of their life cycle so while we have lots of them around right now, in the future this could be a concern (you said you plan on keeping the game for a long time) as they become more scarce. Note that the 31 "GI" boards (small individual boards) are all the same other than the metal mounting bracket orientation so it's not as bad as thinking "what happens if I can't find a GI #28" - you can use any of your version LED boards and just turn the metal bracket around by carefully cutting the tape that holds the bracket to the LED board. In addition, if the big boards fail, they are not interchangeable in the same way and they can be fairly expensive. Looking at it from that perspective, the 2.0 LED kit becomes a very good idea and a cost-effective alternative long term.
The 2.0 system LEDs are NOT daisy chained, that's one big advantage, so if you were to have one go out, not too big a deal as you would only lose that light if it was a single board, which many of the boards are. The 2.0 system is based on the lighting system used in our Hobbit machine, although if you want to be entirely accurate, its more akin to the DI and Pirates game setup and has been shown to be very solid and reliable. Eventually this system was put into production Wizard of Oz games but the question remained "what about the thousands of WOZ games out there with the earlier LED board setup?" So development began on the 2.0 LED kit which WOZ owners could, if they wished, install in their games and then have the peace of mind that comes from not having the lights chained together and also having a system where the replacement single boards, should any be needed (and the failure rate for the 2.0 style boards has been VERY low), are much less expensive and don't have the concern about the driver chips becoming obsolete soon and so on. The 2.0 kit is much more involved than just replacing the individual boards with new ones (Shannan said she sent you the instructions so you can get an idea what is involved). The system is different so if you are going to change your game over, you have to do the entire lighting system, removing not only the old LED boards but all the cabling and you have to add a power supply and the BAG board (which basically runs the new system) and another board plus all of the new single GI boards are much lower profile so it involves drilling some holes to mount the new boards (which go much closer to the playfield wood). There is all new harnessing too so you remove all of your existing lighting harnessing at the same time. Everything comes in the kit along with the instructions. It's not so much that installing the new kit is incredibly difficult, it's more that it is time consuming and requires lots of tedious work. That said, it's been seen as a blessing by lots of WOZ owners so far and something that they have been clamoring for ever since word got out that the 2.0 LED system was going into production games. The kit took a long time to get developed and then price reduced (the initial estimates I was hearing were similar to "a kit like that would have to sell for $2000 if we made one" and all kinds of things awhile back. Thankfully (although I'm fully aware that spending $800 on a game you already own is definitely nothing to sneeze at, believe me), the thing was developed and tested and is able to be sold at $799 still (we assume that a price increase of some amount is coming at some point, but for now it's still at the introductory price and has been since it was finally released months ago). So I guess the long and the short of it is that you are absolutely 100 percent NOT required to buy and install the upgrade kit but It is in a lot of ways a good idea and that's why lots of folks have been ordering it as word has gotten out of its availability.
Whitey1 (resized).jpeg
This is exactly the detailed, informed clarity I have been looking for. I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a thorough response.
Avondale, AZ
