To anyone interested in Jims replacement boards,
I recently got a game from a person who bought it at an auction. I helped the lady get her other 2 games she bought working, as payment for my services she gave me the dead Star Trip cocktail. All 3 games were dead when she bought them but since they all lit up at the auction she mistakenly thought they were "working".
The game she gave me was a very mint looking Star Trip cocktail game. I worked for Game Plan back in 1980 as a game tester, so I had worked with this particular game before, although at Game Plan I really only was a board replacer and game adjuster, so I didn't know much about them ...but enough to know the basics.
When I got the game home I opened it up and found the battery acid had completely consumed the MPU, so even though the general illuminations were on, nothing else worked(no led blinks at all).
I found while searching google a really great Game Plan repair web site (
www.pinrepair.com) and at the bottom of the page I found a note about a guy who had engineered a replacement MPU for all GP games. I decided I really wanted to make this game work so I called Jim and asked about his brand new boards. The price was $219 delivered and since I paid nothing for the game and it looked so sweet I figured....hmmmm why not?
The board was delivered and first I checked the power supply out, then I inserted the board...it fired right up, however, the game still did not play. The sounds were strange and no solenoids were working (with exception to the flippers). I then noticed the playfield fuse was missing. When I attempted to insert a new fuse it would immediately blow the fuse and all the solenoids would attempt to fire at the same time.
I called Jim to let him know that I had received his board but I was then having other problems with the machine. I realized of course that this was not his problem, his board appeared to be working fine, it was other parts of the game that were causing my many other problems.
Jim took the time to troubleshoot all of those problems with me (and believe me, there were many problems we went through together), mostly intermittent shorted caps, all-in-all about 10 bad caps. Some were on the sound board, some were on the SDU and even the large filter cap on the PSU. His exact words were "No problem if I can help get another Game Plan unit up and running it would be great!"
I have to say, the game is working great now !!!
The reason I am writing this post is to let you know what kind of guy Jim is...in my opinion Jim is more than just a guy selling replacement boards, he actually cares about GP games, so if you are ever needing an MPU board replacement, make sure to give him a call.
Thanks Jim !
Mike
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