When these boards are under the playfield they get shaken to hell - they use a small USB connection which did crack off in the one in
@Tilt_Birmingham that to be honest stood there not working for most the time we had it.
FT itself is a great game, but I would want one for £1,000-£1,500 as if it failed - you are left with a paperweight. Or you stick in a PROC system and rewrite the game which is a hell of a job.
The SBC in the game is easy to change.
The node boards and other boards like sensors/leds will be a pain in the backside to replace. The sensor boards are quite easy to replace however they have heighway software flashed onto the small pcb - if my memory serves me right.
Schematics are not available for any of the pcbs inside. Even if they existed they are not really 'home repairable'. They were designed well but made cheaply so after the warranty would run out, boards would fail and
AH would make more cash out of the zillions who bought his games.
As no exact figures are around about how many machines got made - I would guess maybe 300 games left the factory TOPS. It is not a business plan to copy these boards - and if they did - they would be very expensive to make in small quantities.
Was told by other 'ex' employees these boards are extremely hard to repair.
Replacing coils will be easy enough but these are not the main issue with the games.
Keep in mind the one we had at Tilt was only working for a few weeks of its 9 month stay. We just about managed (Pinball Heaven) to get a 75% refund for the game and we were extremely glad to see the back of it. Within the game we had 4 node board failures. The crap USB hub failed (easy fix), amplifier blew (again easy fix) and I found burnt out connectors in several molex plugs that took the 48v to each PCB.
In the time it was in Tilt it took very little money compared to a Stern.
It is amazing that you can repair pretty well anything on a WPC/WPC95 Bally/Williams that was made in the 90s.
Do not think there is a market for used Heighway stuff, it looks extremely unlikely that the company will start up again (who would be mad enough) and due to the low numbers of games being sold I cant see anyone doing replacement boards.
The best option would be is getting in touch with Romain at Team Pinball to see if he could help - but I get the feeling they do not want to be linked to the old company in the same way I do not want to be linked.
If you own one of these games - put it on ebay and get what you can.
@carl lawrence - my advice is stay clear unless you get one DIRT cheap.
I am sure when the node boards start to fail you will see a few getting broken for spares!!! For instance if one node board fails - put the other ones up for sale at silly money and try and get as much cash back as you can. Same for the other components.