The Machine: Bride of Pinbot

My gameroom friends and I were approached by a group of pinball enthusiasts some weeks ago. They had a non-working The Machine: Bride of Pinbot, and they asked us to have a look at it. It was obvious that they were very good at playing, but had little experience with repair. Quite the opposite of my gameroom friends and me.

We agreed on a fixed price for the work: One case of beer. They drove quite far, 62 US miles, to deliver the game.

We quickly discovered that it had a switch matrix problem, which was solved by replacing the ULN 2803A chip at U20. It also had a problem getting balls from the through to the shooter lane, which was easily fixed by changing a coil sleeve.

We played a couple of test rounds, and I was happy to call the owners to let them know that they could pick BOP up the following week. Then.. problem struck! They soon discovered that the game had a problem with some of the upper playfield swithces. I was unable to locate the error on such short notice, I just saw that there was no contact between a pin on J207 and the aforementioned U20. As I said, they drove far to pick up the game, and I wasn't ready to disappoint them, so I switched their CPU board with mine.

I actually have two BOPs: The first pinball I acquired, in 2003, and a more recent, diamondplated one. You may ask why I would trade a perfectly working CPU board for a broken one, but it doesn't matter that much. The next day, I soldered a jumper wire on the backside of the board, and everything was working perfectly again.

And.. I will sell that BOP anyway, and probably to one of those guys, who was interested in purchasing it.