I've hoarded plenty of old pinball boards over the years. Typically these "mystery condition" boards are something that broke, someone tried to fix or hack, failed and it ended up in a pile to wait if anyone would have time to look at them some point.

The narrator: That day never came.

Here's a curious one. Oh pinrepair person of the past, what problem were you fixing by adding this huge DIY heat sink onto this transistor? Was it some high action coil that kept burning transistors? Did the machine do something funny randomly? I guess we'll never know. But the previous transistor had burned so bad it had left marks on the PCB.

#electronics #mystery #retrotech