Who knew a trip to the arcade would lead to a pinball machine in the living room?

A Friday night visit to Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum brought back memories of the arcade games I grew up playing in malls and bowling alleys. A few days of browsing Facebook Marketplace turned up a 1976 Bally Fireball Home Edition in decent shape, and I picked it up the following weekend. One solenoid wasn’t firing, and a few switches weren’t registering hits, but that helped me get a good deal.

Finding wiring diagrams and circuit layouts took some digging through old forums, archived documents, and scattered arcade repair sites. The most helpful resource by far was a scanned PDF of the original Standardized Test Procedures for Bally's Home Pinball Games. It included clear component locations and, most importantly, part numbers for replacements. That made tracking down replacement parts and starting repairs much easier.

Lifting the playfield and removing the backbox cover felt like stepping into a different era of electronics. The solid solder traces and hand-labeled boards were a reminder of how differently things were built in the '70s. One switch was taken apart and cleaned to get it working again, while another had to be completely replaced. The most involved repair was soldering a new MOSFET onto the main control board, which brought a stuck solenoid back to life. The major faults were out of the way, and the mechanics were solid.