Just wondering if this has happened to others. I've seen many DMD's die a slow death by degassing, but today the DMD in my FT went from perfect to half gassed to black in about 30 seconds. It had shown no issues in the 2 weeks I've had the machine. I checked all connections and reconnected them with no success. Before I buy a new DMD for it I want to see if it may be a minor board issue or something else I haven't seen before. I know its tough to diagnose without seeing but the speed it went blank with is something I haven't seen happen before.  TKS!  JIM

Maybe it's the high voltage power supply that failed rather than the DMD?

That was a brand new or at least perfect DMD if I remember correctly....

Tinyrodent is right, your Dot Matrix Controller gone bad (most likely the high voltage section as he mentionned).

Same happened to me with my IJ, i bought a brand new Pinled board and it is now flawless !

My display went all degassed suddenly so i shut the game down, turned it back on and nothing. I'm not surprised since the old board was hacked to death when i pulled it.

big ol' 5$:

http://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=WPC-HVP-KIT

Quoted from Mrhide

big ol' 5$:

http://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=WPC-HVP-KIT

Plus the time and challenge of installing all those components. You make it sound easy.

Quoted from jonny_eh

Plus the time and challenge of installing all those components. You make it sound easy.

If you've done it enough, it's not bad at all.  I think I'm down to under 10 mins start to finish on one of these kits.

D

You could get this i know your not very technical Jim.
this would be a fast fix for you just need to locate one.

http://www.pinballinc.com/description.html

And, if you choose, Jim, I will offer to re-do the electronics on the high voltage board if you send it to, me.  Only problem is I don't have a system set up to test it in (although I can probably find one amongst friends).

Does that mean that the DMD is necessarily blown, or is it possible that the high voltage board simply failed and the DMD is re-useable?

Quoted from ethous

You could get this i know your not very technical Jim.
this would be a fast fix for you just need to locate one.

http://www.pinballinc.com/description.html

No longer available. James stopped making a few years ago. Did work great tho.

Quoted from websherpa

Does that mean that the DMD is necessarily blown, or is it possible that the high voltage board simply failed and the DMD is re-useable?

No the DMD will be fine.

Thanks guys for the help!  I took a good look at the board after and its looks as though many things burned (literally) at the same time. I guess likely its sort of a chain reaction when one thing goes. I took Az's advice and bought a whole new board to avoid more trouble going forward. Thats my favorite kind of repair..unscrew old board..screw on new one! A little( actually a lot) more expensive but within my technical capability!!