Star Wars Pinball Machine (Data East, 1992)

Location: Highlands Ranch, CO
Symptoms: Wrong wiring on switch and lamps, broken drop target

This is the first machine I’ve ever encountered that had an alarm system attached to the coin door.  I’m pretty sure the owner wasn’t even aware of it.

pb-0120

Coin Door Alarm System

The switch on the shift lever (used in place of the ball shooter) was disconnected.  The normally closed terminal of the switch had broken off.  Normally this terminal is used to hold the diode.  I re-wired the switch and diode and covered the diode and connections with shrink tubing.

There were a number of playfield lamps not working correctly.  Some were staying on, some weren’t working at all. I found that someone had disconnected the “Jabba’s Bounty” overhead light on the playfield and twisted the wires together.  This shorts out the lamp circuit.  Once I un-shorted the wires and reattached them to the lamp socket, many of the other lamps started working.  The remaining lamps were burned out.

The broken drop target was preventing the other drop targets from resetting.  The stem was jammed in the reset mechanism.

I ordered a new drop target, which comes blank.  There are Star Wars decal sets for sale on e-Bay, but they are missing the right target.  The sellers suggests just taking the left decal and turning it upside down.  I think it looks stupid.

Decal set with left decal turned up-side-down to make the right decal.

e-Bay decal set with left decal turned up-side-down to make the right decal.

Here is a link to the IPDB showing the drop targets.

Since I have the old broken drop target, I decided to scan and print a new decal.

Scanned and retouched decal image

Scanned and retouched right decal image

New drop target on left, original on right

New drop target on left with my decal, original on right

The colors don’t match exactly, but I think it’s better than an up-side-down decal.

If you would like the high resolution files for making your own right drop target decal, they can be downloaded here.  There are two .tif files contained in the .zip, one is the original scan without any touch-up, and the other is the touched-up version.