Author Topic: Williams / Bally WPC Driver Board Upgrade  (Read 11016 times)

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Offline johnwartjr

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Re: Williams / Bally WPC Driver Board Upgrade
« on: November 18, 2011, 05:18:30 PM »
A few comments after reading through this...

I find J101 and J102 are common reset culprits.. as much, if not more than BR2 and C5.

I find C4 needs replacing as often as C5, if not more often - and it's cheap!

I've gone from replacing everything to trying to do more in depth troubleshooting and replacing only what actually needs replacing. While caps have a limited shelf life, I've got plenty that are 15+ years old in pins still working as well as they did on day #1.

I've had a lot of rework come across my bench from people who meant well, and tried to repair a reset problem by shotgunning parts, and now they have 3-4 problems including ripped up traces, parts installed backwards, or the shotgunning didn't fix the problem (because the reset problem wasn't BR2/C5) and then they go off on other parts of the boards.

Some of my best deals on boards have been from people who went Rottendog and unloaded their perfectly serviceable original boards for a pittance.

If you don't know what you're doing, send the boards to someone who does.

If you think you know what you're doing, but aren't sure, find an old junk board to practice on.

Don't just destroy a $300 PCB when you could've had it fixed for 1/3rd of that :)