Quoted from PinRetail:(Shakes head)
The hardest thing to fix is sabotage.
You have very good troubleshooting instincts.
The purple wire needs to be soldered to the frame or side of the lamp socket itself when you use that kind bulb socket. Directly soldering the purple wire to the white wire with a purple stripe HAS to blow something up... a fuse (F27, 5A 250V) or a trace. The transformer didn't blow up (!) and the relay is not damaged because the other strings of General Illumination are working, and the wires aren't melted insulation all their length, so it has to be a fuse or a trace.
The quick fix is to clip the Purple wire off of the offending terminals, replace the fuse, and see if the rest of the string of lights now come on. (Of course, the two that have the purple wire clipped off won't light up yet...)
If clipping out the two miswired sockets and replacing the fuse gets the rest of your Purple GI string working that's great! If it doesn't you may need to pull the Power/IO board and look at the traces. Hopefully it's just a fuse.
Then you'll need to either get the correct (two terminal) lamp sockets and wire them correctly, or you'll need to solder the purple wire to the frame or bracket of those two sockets, while leaving the white wire with the purple stripe on the terminals.
This is an impressive bit of sabotage!
Good luck!
PinRetail
SUCCESS!!!
Per your suggestion - I re-soldered the 3 fixtures that were wired incorrectly, then replaced the fuse - thank you for pointing out which one I should have been looking at - F27.
When I powered the table up - the new lights I installed immediately came on - and then I went and tracked down all the others in that string and ALL of them we blown and black, so I replaced the other 7 bulbs and EVERYTHING worked beautifully!
Unlike the other "lights out" problem I had on my other table, which was simply a loose wire connector, this one was more complex. Thankfully it was just the fuse that had long blown and the bulbs, and not a trace on the board that would have taken a lot more to fix.
I can't imagine why someone would ever solder the both wires to the same terminal like that. When I initially saw it - I thought, perhaps that is a special connector I have never seen and the bulb is somehow grounded another way ... so I went and researched it and there was no such thing in existence. So this HAD to be the culprit ... still baffled by how / why someone would do that - from the looks of it - it was done a LONG time ago.
The guy I got the machine from had only had it a years or so and he got it from a guy who got it from a guy ... etc etc ... and when I went to see it to perhaps buy it - the guy said, well there are like 2 bulbs out of the playfield. Turns out there were 46 bulbs total that were out including a bank of bulbs behind the drop down photo "TEASE" in the back area. He admitted he knew nothing about maintaining them - he just played them until they ould break down and then he would sell them. I took the risk, and man, after cleaning, waxing, polishing, replacing bulbs and all the rubbers, etc, it was well worth it ... the table looks brand new now.
I have ordered several 3/4" riser 2 terminal bayonet sockets to completely replace the old ones because the old ones were beat up and they appeared to be too low when pushed through the playfield hole up into the playfield area. When I get them in the mail - I will replace them completely and call it done.
Thank you very much for helping me diagnose the problem. Even though I am fairly new to fixing "pinballs" - once I have clarification as to how to go about repairing / fixing something - I am quite capable, I just needed someone to confirm this might have been the problem.
Thanks again.
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Longwood, FL
