Category Archives: Tech Tips

Maybe they’re all blown.

In the vein of the Maybe they’re all burnt out rule, I recently got a Gottlieb Monte Carlo  and none of the pop bumpers worked.

I got really lucky with this one. Each pop bumper is fused separately, but each and every one of them was blown individually. I could have gone checking the power train back to the transformer, but I was sort of smart and checked the fuses first. I say sort of smart because if I was legitimately smart, I would already have pulled every fuse on the game and made sure they were as originally specified, and I haven’t.

All of that said, why did three fuses die simultaneously? Well, the game was moved several hundred miles on the back of a truck. The drop target reset fuse had also blown. Maybe the fuses were just old, or perhaps I have another problem. In any case, though, they certainly needed to be replaced.

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Maybe they’re all burnt out.

I powered up my Twilight Zone after moving to a new house and none of the flashers worked. I started checking voltages and cabling. What could have happened?

Flasher bulbs are a bit delicate. The move broke all of them. They were burned out.

When I bought my High Speed, none of the flashers worked. We started checking the large under-playfield resistors. We broke one in the process. Replacing it fixed nothing.

Flasher bulbs burn out and on High Speed, some are wired in series. They were burned out.

Chris told me about working on a home-model game that was showing some massive failure in the lighting, but on closer examination, all the bulbs were burned out.

Always check the easy stuff first!