Star Wars Pinball Restoration

Data East Star Wars Pinball Machine

One of my employers had a break room that we made into a game room. The Star Wars Pinball machine was donated from an ex-executive who didn’t have room for it in his new home. Other items were donated by other employees, on loan, or purchased by the company.
The Star Wars Pinball machine was physically in great shape, but operationally challenged. No one had spoken up about taking on the restoration work. I decided to look at it.

Existing State
- Main capacitor was toast, already replaced by another co-worker
- Many bad solders, wiring jobs, component connections
- Burned board areas from high voltage hits
- Burned connectors from high voltages and short circuit arcing
- Many lights burned out
- Mechanicals not all working
- …. Basically non functional, yet fires up
Have I worked on a pinball machine before?
- No!
Do I have the skills / tools to do this?
- Yes!
Do I have the budget to do this?
- Company is covering the costs for parts
LET’S DO THIS!

Existing Condition Photos

I repaired many of the issues on the boards and still kept coming up with new issues as a result. Because of the roasting and previous repairs, some of the circuit traces became rather brittle and it started to look like a Frankenboard rather than a proper circuit board. Below are serviced pictures for reference. In the end, I found a new replacement board, which solved many of the original boards’ problems. Bought that, and many issues just went away. Then I could focus on the lighting and issues in the playing field.

Here are some pictures of the Back Box lighting being replaced and final appearance. Half of the original bulbs were dead and the LEDs were SO much brighter.

What I found really nice about working on this machine was the standardization and serviceability they had built into it. Diagnostic modes that let you run through everything from lighting to mechanical electronics to help figure out where the problems were. In the playing field, I changed out most of the diodes, as they had all failed from too much voltage or wear and tear. I learned about the diode importance where solenoids were used to prevent back voltage heading back to the circuit boards. When I last worked on the machine, we hadn’t resolved the LED Light flickering. There was something I could modify that would slow the lights down to act more like incandescent bulbs and not flicker so much. Never got to that. A very fun pinball game to play.