I just remembered that I should report back here to let everyone know how my search went.
Jaycar didn't have the exact same fuse holder. It's the right rating however it doesn't physically fit through the hole in the line filter box so I've had to mount it temporarily until I can track down something more suitable as a permanent fix. I replaced the power cord at the same time and as well as being safer it looks a lot less ratty on the living room floor too.
Strangeways, thanks for the tip. I needed up doing as you suggested with regards to buying an extension lead and cutting the female end off. I made sure I fully understood (and took photos of) the existing wiring before I started the replacement. I think I re-checked the photos and the wiring diagram about a hundred times :) The test and tag idea is probably a good idea for peace of mind though!
baoyar, I think it's a great game as like the others have said the rules are quite straight forward and easy to learn but still fun to come back to. All of my friends and family members who have visited recently are aways eager to have a go and often get hooked. As far as repairs go, like with troubleshooting most things, if you can work out how something works by doing some research online and in the manual first you can usually narrow the problem to a small area. Once you've narrowed the problem down to a small area is far less daunting to troubleshoot.
As an example, I turned the machine on recently and noticed a number of the lamps that make up the tachometer on the playfield were no longer working. Below was the process I used to troubleshoot and fix the problem. Note that I've hardly touched a multimeter or soldering iron prior to this and as a result it was very rewarding for me when I put it all back together and it was all working again.
- First up, I checked the manual to see what info I could find about these lamps. I noticed that the 5 lamps that I had noticed not working were all part of the same column in the lamp matrix.
- I then did some quick Googling to learn how the lamp matrix works. I then ran the lamp tests in the service menu to test the other 3 lamps that belong to that same column in the matrix and noticed that they too were not working.
- At this point, the problem was now narrowed down to a relatively small area. I then used the continuity test feature on my multimeter to work out which pins, wiring, lamp sockets, etc were OK and which one may be causing a problem. Some of the non-working lamps are mounted on a 10-lamp PCB and from testing each part of the circuit I could tell that there was a problem with the PCB but I couldn't put my finger on the actual problem.
- I then disconnected the wiring from the PCB pins and pulled the PCB out of the machine. I gave it a quick clean to remove years of dust and had a close look at it. Initially everything looked OK to my untrained eye so I started testing continuity from each pin to the furtherest point on the PCB and everything was still OK. I then looked closer at the solder on the pins themselves and realised that pin 8 looked a bit dodgy (the solder was cracked and there seemed to be a small amount of movement in the pin). I then realised that each time I touched the multimeter probe to the pin, it was shifting the pin the tinniest amount which allowed it to make contact and complete the circuit. I found that if I touched the multimeter probe to the pin really really gently and tested continuity from the pin to the through-hold on the PCB there was no continuity.
- I (nervously) desoldered the dodgy solder surrounding the pin and then applied fresh solder.
- Finally, I did one last continuity test across the pin and confirmed that it was all OK prior to re-installing the PCB in the machine, plugging it in and having a game with working lights.
Photos below:
Lamp PCB removed from the machine and cleaned:
Pin 8 on the far left has broken solder:
Pin 8 de-soldered and then re-soldered. I probably used a tiny bit too much solder and maybe a little bit too much heat but not bad for a newbie I reckon:
