This pictorial is demonstrated on an reimported Indiana Jones pinball machine made in 1993. However, this problem is common to all of them due to inadequate design flaws. We'll demonstrate how to fix it and what's going on.

IMPORTANT! - If you are not confident in your repair abilities and if you have never done any repairs before, TXPinball does NOT RECOMMEND doing any kind of diagnostics, troubleshooting or repairs. If you do not know how to solder, if you have not worked on pinball machines before, but you read this and "it seems easy", please don't do it.

If you do not know how to use a digital Multimeter or if you do not have other proper equipment, TXPinball does NOT RECOMMEND doing anything to your machine or you might damage it. Please contact or call a pinball machine repairman in your area for assistance, email us for advice or get someone a little bit more knowledgeable to lend you a helping hand.

IMPORTANT! Please use due care and precaution while following this pictorial. Use at your own risk. If you do not have any repair or refurbishing experience and/or knowledge, do not work on pinball machine circuit boards, power supply, transformer, connectors or anything inside at all and step away from the machine!

This webpage is for informational purposes only. TXPinball will not be held liable or responsible for any damage that occurs to your pinball machine or any bodily injury or any kind of damage by use or misuse of this technique. If you have no idea what you're doing, step away from the pinball machine! Drop that soldering iron in its holder! Now, onto the pictorial...

Every now and then an email or a voice mail pops up here asking about General Illumination lights problems and repair. This pictorial will help you to accomplish that. You will need to buy some tools and materials, or you may already have them in your tools arsenal. If so, even better.

Guess there are many ways to go about this and many ways to do these things. This is ours.

What exactly is General Illumination, later below referred as GI? These are lights that are always on, scattered throughout the playfield and in the backbox, providing "general" lighting for your game. They do not blink, flash, or do none of that fancy stuff, they are simply always on when the game is powered up. Even if the CPU board fails and nothing on earth works on your game, GI lights (assuming they are working properly) will still come on. Why is that? Because GI lights are not controlled by CPU board, they are fully independent of it. They need 6.3 AC Volts to operate and they get that directly from the transformer, bypassing CPU board entirely.

Look at the arrows on this WPC power driver board. The entire circuit of GI lights is as follows: transformer at bottom of the cabinet provides 6.3 AC Volts directly to this part of the board. Transformer GI wires are solid yellow wires. So, the first thing to do if you have GI problems is open up the game, find yellow wires coming out of the transformer and its Molex connector and reseat the connector a few times to "clean" the terminals. Maybe that will fix the problem. If yes, great, move on with your life, if not, read on.

There are 5 strings of GI lights. It is possible to "dim" them (so they emit less light and are "dimmer") and this is accomplished with Triacs mounted on those heatsinks circled in the above picture.

Triacs VERY RARELY, if ever, fail, so don't worry about them. They "could" fail, of course, but this is very unlikely. Out of dozens of games I fixed GI problem on, Triacs were never a problem. So, don't worry about them for now, the probability is, the connectors or current continuity will need to be addressed.

The board has 5 heatsinks with 5 mounted Triacs because there are 5 GI strings. There are 2 strings in the backbox (upper and lower) and 3 on the playfield itself. They are daisy chained one after another. Wild, eh? Yeah, sure.

The arrow points to fuses area that controll the GI lights, they could be blown, that's one problem. So, always test the fuses first. Connectors J120 and J121 and connector J115 are by far the most common problem with GI lights. Why? They get so hot (cause in the arcades they leave these games constantly on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year), so they burn eventualy from too much heat. There is only so much a plastic connector and a small strand of wire can take.

This is by far the biggest problem of all of them. Look down for the damage and hacks previous owner tried to "repair" this problem. Sometimes, people will solder wires directly to the male connector on the board. This is plain stupid. Fix it right, or don't mess with it and get someone who knows how to fix it right.

Now, on this picture we see initial so-called "fix" and what heat can do to GI. One of them is fried, another melted and a "repair" was done by soldering them directly on the pins, or adding solder to connector over the wire. This is all crap, and both connectors, male on the board and female with the wires will need to be addresssed because of what this dumbass did. Also, note J116 in the left corner being fried too, that also will need a replacement (but this is not a part of GI circuit).

Closeup picture of the damage. These are some hot and crispy connectors.

Skipping over now... to the board to see if there is any damage. Of course, you have to take the board off, discconect everything, label connectors with a sharpie and have a manual for the game with schematics and wire configuration, so you can insert them in new connectors properly.

Now, we are working hard. J116 male is replaced with a brand new one. J121 male is desoldered and will be discarded, and J120 is the only 1 left to remove.

On the solder side of the board the connections are good and strong now. Continuity has been performed and it all check out. Moving on...

Closeup of a brand new installed badboy male J121 connector.

Looking at backbox. Not a surprise that GI lights don't work here with such damaged connectors...

We got J120 removed successfully too.

Testing for continuity. Remember, when you hear a sound that means continuity is successful between 2 points. Moving on.

Again, continuity is important. Not just when dealing with GI connections. Every time you solder something, check for continuity. How do you do that?

You have to use your multimeter. One some models, continuity and diode checker are on same spot on the dial (diode symbol is a triangle with a cross going through it). On some models, continuity is labeled as a few soundwaves going out in semi circle, or it has a picture of a speaker, or a musical note sign.

In any case, when buying a multimeter, get one that has AUDIBLE continuity. That means, it will make a sound when connection is detected. Much easier to work with the device that way. Anyways, to make sure it works, set your dial to continuity and touch both multimeter leads together. A sound should be heard. There, you have continuity between those 2 leads (cause you physically touched them together).

Now, apply that newfound knowledge to the circuit board... On the board, when you look at it, there are traces between the soldered components. That means they interact with each other and current flows through those traces - they make a connection and work together and do "stuff" (laughing) as intended...

So when you put your multimeter lead on one end on 1 component and other lead on the other, if there is a trace between them, the meter will buzz. There is continuity and that proves our soldering job was successful, the connection was made. The picture above hammers this point home and illustrates it with the arrows.

So, we are done with continuity, it all rings and buzzes, all checks out fine, connection has been made, all is cool, all is good here... Now, we are moving on, and we will deal with female connectors on the component side. We were working on the solder side of the board.

By the way, all WPC pinball machine boards are double side boards. What does that mean now, dude? It means there are traces on the solder side of the board and also, there are traces on the component side of the board, too - therefore double sided. As opposed to single layer boards (like some Data East flipper boards and others, for example), where the traces are only on one side (solder side) of the board. This stuff is really not directly related to GI problems we are dealing here in any case, just throwing it out there, in case you didn't fall asleep through all this crap and you bravely followed this page up to here.

Continue to Part 2 of this pictorial and finishing up...

If you have any questions, please email us and we'll try to help you. Remember to do all these steps safely and frequently check and recheck your work.

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