Peoria, AZ
This game is in queue for a Firebird Restoration. In the meantime the owner wanted a few things patched up until it comes time to restore it. One pop bumper was shattered, flippers were weak and the strobe unit was missing from the game and he purchased a non-operable used one from RGP.
Flash Gordon came from the factory with 3 different revisions of the strobe. The first version has a clear spot on the backglass for the strobe to shine through, a hole in the light board, the strobe assembly, a 110V isolation transformer and wiring to the transformer/strobe/lamp board. I believe the second version of the game came with the backglass and holes in the light board and wiring in place but no transformer or strobe board and the last version had the hole in the backglass filled in as well as no hole in the light board and no wiring present.
We lucked out and his game already was wired up for the strobe, and had the transformer so his game was of the first run and someone had removed the strobe board.
Tested the board and it didn’t work but we could hear the typical strobe pulsing sound (kind of like the proximity sensors in the movie Aliens!!) This told us that the opto isolator worked as did the 400:1 transformer on the strobe board. This leaves either the 22uf 250V caps or the bulb as the problem. As we want this to work reliably for a long time we opt to replace both the caps and the bulb. The bulb used is the same as the one used later in Attack from Mars and is available from Marco Specialties. After replacing these components the strobe flashed nice and bright as it is supposed to.