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DMD Driver Boards Blowing?

Pick Holder said:
These games are over 20-30 years old - we have to accept that things are going to fail.

Capacitors are starting to go all over those boards now. If I bought a non-reissue DMD bally/williams game now I would be changing a load of electrolytics and all those ribbon cables.
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Indeed... Electrolytic Caps have a working life of approx 20 years, so these will all start to fail soon ifnot already... Is a similar scenario to all the Monitor Chassis needing a rebuild... (But i know you know this!) :)
 
Maybe we should do a group buy of all caps on WPC games (others if neccessary) - I am happy to change all caps when getting a new game. There isn't a HUGE number on WPC games is there.
 
James said:
Maybe we should do a group buy of all caps on WPC games (others if neccessary) - I am happy to change all caps when getting a new game. There isn't a HUGE number on WPC games is there.
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We can all change these since it's not difficult, however the concern IMO is that as @pinballmania has mentioned before, these quite often (if not careful) remove the Through-hole on the boards when removing on the big ones, so need to be done with great care. Have done so myself, and i like to think I am quite proficient with an iron....
 
Yeah I bollocksed one too on one of my first games. Managed to repair it and was all fine but...
 
Paul said:
We can all change these since it's not difficult, however the concern IMO is that as @pinballmania has mentioned before, these quite often (if not careful) remove the Through-hole on the boards when removing on the big ones, so need to be done with great care. Have done so myself, and i like to think I am quite proficient with an iron....
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Exactly, the amount of driver boards that i see where the issue is due to previous repairs.... Changing all the caps isnt necessary currently in my view. Maybe that will change in another 10 years. For example the filter cap for the flasher circuit isnt mission critical and the lamp circuit already has 2 in parallel. I just wouldn't change caps yourself unless you have a specific fault and you know what you are doing.

And on parts, i would only buy from known verified suppliers. I have had boards to repair where cheap chinese replacement caps have been fitted instead of real panasonic/kemet/nikicon parts which made things worse.... Chinese capacitor crap is often very light!!! for obvious reasons
 
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