Author Topic: Data East Star Wars Restoration  (Read 4278 times)

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Offline Strangeways

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Re: Data East Star Wars Restoration
« Reply #15 on: November 07, 2012, 09:46:16 PM »

Board Rebuilds

Often overlooked and nearly always create service calls in the future. Best to alleviate that concern now ! General rule of thumb on Data Easts is to replace ALL the fuse clips on the Power Supply, PPB and flipper boards. They ARE the weak link in these games. I often find creative repairs on boards, and some of them require the boards to be removed and checked to find them !

One aspect of restoration (reconditioning and "shop outs") that is almost always overlooked are the fuses. I don't think I've ever worked on a game with a full set of correctly rated fuses. This IS DANGEROUS ! A blown fuse means there is a problem that needs to be attended to ! The fuse is the BEST diagnostic test there is ! When one blows - there's a problem. Replacing the fuse with a higher value can then create problems at the next weakest ling - usually expensive boards !

All fuses on this flipper board were different values. They should all be the same. I simply replace ALL of them with NEW fuses !





PPB Board - Looks good ! But the problems with this board were serious !





Turn the board over ;





Close up ;





Those points were not soldered. They look like they were "spot welded" ! There's a HEAP of damage to connectors due to over fusing the Flashers on one circuit. REALLY poor workmanship.


Connectors

Again - A quick scan and they appear to be correct. But are they ?





Burnt to a crisp. I had to trim 5 cms off the wires as the copper was burnt under the wiring. The actual wiring was burnt out !





After replacing the connectors and rebuilding the boards, I moved on to the trigger assembly. Tired and not working correctly, it needed a rebuild and a new decal.





So I stripped it down completely, cleaned it and rebuilt it.











On the home stretch now.
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