Fish tales

Yesterday I got a new project in to the workshop, a Fish tales with severe booting and rebooting problems. When powering it up it gave some intermittent noise and flashes for quite a while until it finally managed to boot. When then starting a game it rebooted almost immediately. Rectifier bridge BR2 and capacitor C5 has already been changed by another repairer. To my experience the most common cause for this kind of problem are the connector J101. When inspecting it I could see that it had been quite hot. I put the connector back at the board and now it booted properly but still rebooted during gameplay. I replaced the connector and now the game boots and plays as it should.

There is still some work to do at the machine. I will move the batteries from the CPU to an external battery holder, there is a lose cable at the knocker and I haven’t yet taken off the playfield glass to examine the playfields upper and underside. I also found two lose connectors that first worried me a bit, but they are for the animated fish topper, which is missing at this machine.