VECTOR: Star Wars works - or does it?

A while back I posted that my Star Wars blew the deflection fuses at 
F3 & F4 while playing a game.  After I replaced the fuses some other 
parts on the board melted within a couple seconds of turning on the 
machine.  Note I'm referring to the deflection board, NOT the HV 
board.

There really isn't much info out there on the deflection board, so 
instead of trying to troubleshoot something I didn't understand, I 
let some time go by and got my hands on 2 more deflection boards.

On board number 1, I hooked up only the 15 pin connector that feeds 
in from the power supply and game boards.  I turned it on and within 
a second started seeing smoke so I turned it off.  The smoke was in 
the general area of F3 & F4.

So I put in board number 2, made the same connections, and got the  
same result.  So I started thinking how unlikely it would be that I 
had 3 deflection boards with the same problem, and since I only had 
the power supply and game boards hooked up the problem must be with 
them.

So I first took off both edge connectors on the game boards and left 
the power supply plugged in.  When I powered up the game, NO SMOKE, 
so the power supply must be okay.  Next I plugged in the lower edge 
connector - no smoke.  So I plugged in the upper edge connector - no 
smoke.  Well crap, since it's all fine and dandy I might as well plug 
all the monitors and HV connections back up - IT LIVES!  Great 
picture, played 2 games with no problems.

So the ONLY thing I did to go from smoke to happy was unplug and 
replug the game board connectors.  It is working - but I wouldn't 
call it fixed.

Can a bad game board/connection really fry stuff on the deflection 
board?  I do recall tweaking some AVG pots a couple days before the 
initial blow-out.
 
Any ideas?