Bally Board advice

[Koplings]

Hoping someone can help me here with some advice. I have the following boards in my 85 Bally Fireball Classic

MPU - new: alltek
Solenoid Driver - original (went down once and replaced capacitor c23 to get it up again)
Cheap Squeak - original
lamp driver - original
voltage regulator - new: (rotten or rocket dog whatever its called)

Ill be travelling to Vancouver and I thought of picking up alltek boards from John's jukes for both the lamp driver and Solenoid driver to keep for the future.

here is my question. when I look at the Solenoid Driver board (top right corner of the box) I see that the previous owner pulled the connector off and saoldered the wires directly to the back of the board for the top right pin connector only. basically the wires are hacked directly to the board.

My question is this. am I smarter to get the allteck solenoid driver board and when the original dies try and figure out how to remove the hack and run it to a proper connector and onto the pins or b) forget about the alltek altogether and hope when and if the board casues me problems again I can find someone to repair it. at least the hack on the back runs to a square connector so I can remove the board.....

any thought from the pros would be appreciated...thanks PS anyone in the KW area is welcome to stop in and see my games. cheers

 

[BMHouze]

I am no pro
But I usually have my tech rebuild the section to a pony board with the proper connection. Reinstall the proper connector.
That way I can use either.

 

[sylvain]

I also prefer keeping original boards whenever possible, unless too much corrosion (MPU) or damage/burn holes (Solenoid Driver).
Original Solenoid Driver boards are usually very easy to repair. Always make sure fuses are of proper rating (e.g. nothing overfused).
I feel a full set of non-original replacement boards is often overkill and not really a very good $ investment, in my experience.

Installing a new header and Molex 0.100 pins & housing is easy to do although time-consuming - just need to be careful
about wiring repining, e.g. not to swap/mix wires during the operation. The game manual/schematics helps.

Cheers,
- Sylvain.

 

[Menace]

I'm also a big believer in keeping the PCB's original as much as possible. Unless the originals are an absolute mess, I would re-work them over buying repro replacements.

D