Just How Indestructible Are Slot PC Boards?

[850mph]

So I’ve owned over 20 pinball machines over a 30 year period and NEVER had a board blow out on me.

Granted most were EMs with no sophisticated digital components, but I’ve had (and still own) my share of digital machines.

Aside from battery’s, I’ve never had a component— display, resistor, capacitor, IC, etc— burn itself out.

I’ve seen video of people pouring water over a pc board, drying it off, and immediately plugging it back into a machine and powering up… with no problems.

QUESTION

I was wondering, aside from EPROMs seated backwards (wink!), do other board components fail regularly…….?

I would think outside of battery and fluorescents, that the LEDs on the display board might be particularly vulnerable, or the optical security components?

How about the reel motors?

Any comments or observations?

Thnx.

[Stayouttadabunker]

Go ahead and pull out an I/O card or MPU board from an IGT S2000 with the power ON, and you'll see how much money you'll be spending.
On the I/O cards, there's a small embedded chip that just does not love any power surges...
Over the years, I've posted several photos of burned out components in different topics...including fried S+ motherboards and cooked software chips.
I have 6 different bench test machines and used to zap out stuff on purpose to lean why stuff burns out...I had to stop that because it was getting costly...lol
Lotta times, you cannot swap certain parts while the machine is powered up or they'll get zapped.
Static electricity in the winter causes a lotta problems with sensitive boards like the heavily chip-embedded boards like an IGT 044 MPU for example.
Even TITO boards I've seen hanging down in machines down next to large cabinet speaker magnets corrupts chip programming.
I've seen coins piled up on top of S+ motherboards spilling out of hopper bowls but not shorting out a thing....other times, circuit traces on the boards were black and curled up.
Once I saw someone actually move a jumper wire in an S+ power supply to European 220 VAC and plug it into a 115 wall outlet..I actually heard the electrical box that's hanging on the wall at the other end of the room, trip a breaker switch....lol
The worst thing you can do to an S+ MPU is to pull it out or install it with the machine's power switch ON....you can just about guarantee something will 
It wasn't so bad before in the 90's and early 2000's when S+ boards were about $25-45 each...(I remember buying 4 MPU's for $100 from Rudy's Deals back then) but now at nearly or over a $125.00 apiece? Nutz!
The most common problem is oxidization of ground pins on the power supply harness to motherboard header.
When that ground pin goes bad and loses contact, you lose stiff reel motors or an un-lit reel glass display.
The 2nd ground female pin tends to open up and overheat on the male header pin....replacing with trifurcon pins is the answer.
As for reel motors, they will rarely quit on ya...I've seen a 1989 S+ on the floor with original internal accounting showing that it has played over 17 million games during its lifetime....there's never been a reel changed in it. The original log book is still in it.

[Tilt]

Capacitors.  Bad caps take out about anything, but power supplies and CRT/LCD's seem to be the most common.  Leaking batteries, they've killed thousands of boards, especially S2000 MPU's.  Mishandling of boards like Bunker said, hot swapping components, and poor/no ESD precautions. 

[off-track]

So I’ve owned over 20 pinball machines over a 30 year period and NEVER had a board blow out on me.

Granted most were EMs with no sophisticated digital components, but I’ve had (and still own) my share of digital machines.

Aside from battery’s, I’ve never had a component— display, resistor, capacitor, IC, etc— burn itself out.

Mark yourself very lucky! 

I've witnessed first hand a transistor flame out like a 100W light bulb and burn a hole clean through, on a Stern (had the back box open cause it was making a strange sound) .  Had several Williams SS machines fully and partially de-gas plasma displays.  Connector pins corrode and cause bad connection. EEprom sockets on the same Williams machines to fail along with inter-board connectors.  Had capacitors fail on power supplies (and on PC CPU's as well).

I know there were others but that's too lengthy for a slot forum.      

[Stayouttadabunker]

This just happened recently...
A co-worker removed the small Philips crew that holds a logic door closed on a Konami, dropped the screw inside, but couldn't find it.
So he figured he ws just going to find another screw in the workroom, and replace it with that.
When he turned on the power switch, they saw a giant spark come out of the MPU area.
Of course, the machine never booted up.
They opened up the logic door, looked inside...it looked like there was a small fire in there, and the entire room smelled like burned transistors for days.
That screw he dropped in there, shorted out the MPU big time...a $500 dollar mistake.
I order a new one, give it them to install and only hear, weeks later, that it HAPPENED AGAIN!!
I get the order to get ANOTHER MPU...another $500 bucks!
This time I oversee the installation personally, and the machine is back in business.
I went ahead and ordered thumb-locks, to replace using a screw, to close the logic door from now on.
To this day, I still don't know how he dropped the screw down in there...the screw is on the OUTSIDE of the door?!?! 

[BigWick]

Konami's KP3+ carriers have an awful reputation where if the video card overheats you get a MOSFET or two that shorts but the PSU doesn't detect the sudden load. Usually I find them when you get complaints about something burning and you narrow it down to a machine with the lights on but dead screens. Almost every time it continues to burn down the whole side of the video card like a candle and eventually roasts, melts and finally shorts the PSU out at the MXM slot.

[Stayouttadabunker]

Holy Crap...that's not good news Wick but thanks for the heads up on it. 
At risk of going a little off-topic here for a question, can the KP3's use some other brand of video card at all?
I'd like to try and pick up a couple of NEW cards in attempt to avoid future shorting MOSFET problems?

[BigWick]

The GPU fans suck. They don't give much if any cooling to the FET's along the edge of the board so when the cabinet runs hot, they run hot. When the GPU fan fails the brain box fan might keep it going for a while but the video card will burn up sooner or later.
The carrier board on the other hand is great. If my fault isn't the GPU it's the game or the system module halting the machine with a network error.