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If you have a SEGA After Burner where the "danger" or "lock on" lamps
won't work, then you may have a broken solid-state relay (SSR) board.
The information below may be helpful to you. I've only heard of a
couple of cases where these boards were fried, and in both cases, the
"lock on" board is the one that was broken. The "lock on" lamp
stayed lit on these games, but yours may behave differently.
Before you attempt to repair an SSR board, it is presumed that you have at least checked to make sure that the light bulb itself is not burned out (duh !) and that there is nothing obviously amiss in the wiring (ie you don't see wires hanging loose from the SSR board or from the lamp socket). |
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Here's a picture of the bottom of the After Burner cabinet, showing
the various SSR boards used in this game. The "danger" and "lock on"
SSR boards are the same. The motor SSR board uses similar components,
but it is designed to switch DC and not AC, and it is not
interchangable with the lamp control boards.
If one set of your lights is working, but the other one won't, then you can swap the "danger" and "lock on" SSR boards to see if the problem moves. If it doesn't, then you probably have another problem, which could be a wiring problem, or a problem with the control logic in the game motherboard. If you determine that your SSR board itself is the culprit, then you can probably repair it yourself. You only need entry-level soldering skills to make the repair. If you don't have the tools or are uncomfortable making the repair, you can probably find a local hardware junkie who can do it for you. If all else fails, you can mail the board to me and I'll get the part and fix it for you at my cost for parts+shipping. It's an easy fix. |
| Here's a close-up (sorry about the poor image quality) of one of the SSR boards. The black component on the top of the board is a capacitor/resistor combo, and is probably not broken. The board would probably continue to work even if this part was messed up. The narrow, wide black part in the middle is the solid-state relay component (IOR part number D2W102F on the boards I've seen) rated for 2 amps at 120 volts. The original part may be hard to find, but the pinout is standard and several replacement parts can be found that will work fine on this board. I chose to use NTE Electronics part number RS1-1D4-21 (specifications can be found here) which can be obtained from many suppliers for around $12 (I got mine from Mouser Electronics, see link here). |
| Here's a picture (too close and too much flash !) of the SSR board with the broken relay component removed. All of the dirt and dust was also removed for that matter, which explains why it doesn't entirely resemble the board above, even though it *is* the same board :-) |
| Here's a picture showing the old relay part at the top and the new one at the bottom. You can see that the pinouts and spacing are the same. |
| The NTE component is thicker than the IOR one, and the leads are offset towards the back of the component. The result is that if you try to install this part as-is, it will interfere with the Molex connector at the front of the board. To make it fit, I bent the leads of the device with some needle-nose pliers to more-or-less bring them to the center of the device and make things fit properly. The crummy picture to the left is an attempt to show the bent pins. Hopefully you can squint and see what I'm talking about. |
| Here's a picture of the repaired board with the new relay soldered in. |
Sorry - these "instructions" are a bit lame. If you have any questions or comments or need any help, please feel free to contact me at roy-afterburner@dweeb.net and I will be happy to assist you if I can.