A golden rule in pinball restoration is to always get the machine 100% working before you spend hours making it look pretty. I was recently reminded of why this is so important during a visit to Argoed, just north of Cardiff.

I was called out to look at a Sega Baywatch pinball machine. The customer had done a fantastic job cleaning the playfield and cabinet—the machine looked absolutely beautiful. However, underneath that shine, it had some electrical gremlins: the General Illumination (GI) lighting had issues, and the giant plasma DMD display was completely dead.

I started by tackling the hacked wiring. The display cables had been crudely soldered directly to the boards by a previous owner. I cut out the bad wiring and crimped on brand new male and female Molex connectors. I also replaced the burnt GI lighting connectors. Returning a machine to factory-style modular connectors is crucial—it makes future maintenance easy and safe.

With the wiring sorted, it was time to diagnose the dead display. I found the main display fuse blown. Replacing it didn’t cause an immediate short, but my multimeter showed a missing voltage. Tracing the circuit back, I found the bridge rectifier on the power supply board had failed, so I replaced it.

However, the moment I plugged the display back in, the fuse violently blew again. The customer mentioned they had previously felt heat and seen “weird things” coming from the display. Taking a closer look at the back of the DMD panel, I could see visibly burnt components.

To be 100% certain without risking the freshly repaired power supply, I injected external voltage directly into the display panel. The external voltage immediately shorted out. The verdict was clear: the high-voltage plasma display itself had suffered a catastrophic internal short circuit, which took out the fuse and the bridge rectifier with it.

While I couldn’t make the screen magically turn on that day, the visit was a success. The pinball machine now has rock-solid, safe connectors and molex ready for a new display. The customer can now confidently order a modern, low-voltage LED replacement screen (like a Pin2DMD or ColorDMD), plug it directly into the new connectors I installed, and bring their beautiful Baywatch fully back to life!