The replacement display driver arrived last week, so I plugged it in this weekend. After satisfying myself that it has all its parts and a few plugging misadventures, I booted the machine and...
That's certainly an improvement over the wavy line! For those who can't see, that's the Bookkeeping Totals Cleared/Factory Settings Restored display when the game doesn't have its batteries. Clearly a step in the right direction... that's the celebration part. The killing myself part has to do with the fact that almost all the pixels are lit up... it looks like a police car light flashing on the display.
A trip to the repair guide and some voltage testing indicates that the board is running hot... pins 1 and 2 on the display are -138V & -126V, not -125 & -113 they are supposed to be. Based on my guide, my guess is that this is a board where the voltage has been upped because the display it was used with was dim -- probably on its last legs. Increasing the voltage makes it brighter. Of course, for a brand new display this isn't good. I'm going to verify this on rpg, look for the telltale signs that the board has been rebuilt, then complain to the eBay guy again. Hopefully, he'll offer a refund again, and I can cut my losses and just buy a new display board.
That was last weekend. Today at work I had a bright idea... I can probably get out of this screen by pressing one of the buttons that my game doesn't have, and then I could get to the inevitable error messages. So when I got home, I experimented with Visual Pinball again... I renamed the .nv for Doctor Who (the saved settings for the pinmame emulator) so I got the above message, then pressed the virtual buttons until I got into attract mode. I found that Escape button == good, Enter button == bad (because you just have to press escape again), Up & Down buttons == who cares.
Using my manual and the spare coin door interface board as a guide -- boy that thing's coming in handy! -- I connected an alligator clip to ground (J3 pin 3, if you're keeping score), turned the game on, and touched the other end to pin 7. Look what happened:
Hey, this crazy gizmo really works!
For those who can't tell the players without a scorecard, it's in attract mode! Most of the lights on the playfield are strobing, some of the coils fire off, and a loud annoying voice is telling me that my hands will be crushed to a pulp by the mini-playfield! That's the sweetest loud annoying voice I've heard in a long time!
Let's get a closeup of that DMD...
That reminds me of this classic picture from Engrish.com...
So anyway, the game is more working than I expected. I think my next step is to get some buttons and connect them up so I can navigate the menus (my first goal is to put in some batteries and turn down the volume). Then I gotta get rid of that warning... the game thinks the playfield glass isn't on, so there's probably an issue with that switch. Then I can run some of the diagnostics and see what's REALLY wrong with the game. All in all, things could have been worse... maybe I'll just mutilate myself.
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