How often do black and grey boxes fail?

[Lincoln]

kind of a general question here.  I was lucky to buy 9 black/grey box era jukeboxes from the estate of an operator.  For some reason the black and grey boxes had been removed and stored separately.  I'm not sure why they would have been removed.  I'm doubting that they would have all been bad.  I have 5 other jukeboxes from this era in my collection.  I have yet to run across a "failed" black or grey box.  I know that a wrong bulb can cause a failure, but do the boxes often just "die of old age" due to components inside aging?  We all see the ones on ebay that are sold "as is".  One would have to assume they are bad. Are they difficult to repair?

[Ron Rich]

Hi Lincoln,

When I participated in the development of the black/gray box system, one of the engineers at AMD ( the chip maker) estimated the life of the main chip to be 14 years. His assumption at that time, was based on the ability to "seal the package" against air. As we developed it ( rapid changes were made to it), that ability also improved. Failures became less and less, till the reliability (IMHO) was about 95 + %, after 90 days of operation. If the main LSI chip has not failed, and the box is un-opened, the ones sent to me today are about 99.8 % good--except for burned up lamp drivers (use of incorrect lamp !) Once again, IMHO, any box today that has a "warranty date" label on it, and has not been opened, is probably a working unit. I would not purchase any box that has a "code date" on it today---. Primary concern, if you feel a box is "bad", is to check the power supply specs (see my "Seeburg MicroLog Trouble Shooting Guide" for info). If you wish to "work on them" purchase a copy of my late friend, Tony Miller's, "Black/gray box book" ( 3rd edition !!).

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD EITHER BOX BE OPENED, UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND AND PRACTICE PROPER, "ANTI-STATIC PROCEDURES" !! ALSO, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD ANY BOX BE UNPLUGGED, NOR PLUGGED IN, WITH THE DCC POWER ON !!

Ron Rich