For those of you who don't know. I have been helping Dan out at Slingshots working on some of his pins that have issues. Working on these machines is a uniquely satisfying experience for me so I thought I would share some of it here. Perhaps we can learn a few tricks together. At this point, I am very much a beginner at pinball repair. Also, In case you want even more of this sort of stuff, you can visit my Facebook page (Alveolus Sdtm)
Problem one: No Fear displaying 'ground row short' error in row 7 of the switch matrix.
Switch matrix problems can be very complicated. First, I looked for an actual short on the playfield from one of the indicated switches to ground. There was no such short on the playfield. At that point, I look for some sort of error on the CPU board. This basically involves using a jumper wire to connect the row and column inputs right on the CPU board. The switch matrix checked out okay here. After consulting Clay Harrell's guide, it seemed that the likely culprit could be the under playfield Opto board. The LM339 chips are often the culprits. I noticed that someone had previously attempted to replace the chips. I pulled out those two chips and installed sockets and new chips in their place. However, this did not fix the problem. I dug a little deeper and noticed that a couple of traces on the board had been broken. I soldered a couple jumper wires to reconnect those traces. Luckily, I had a Scared Stiff in my garage which used the same board, which helped greatly for testing and cross-referencing. I reinstalled the board into the No Fear and the problem was solved.
Problem two: Bram Stoker's Dracula won't enter diagnostics.
So, none of the diagnostic switches on the coin door were working. The card reader had been installed in such a way that it hacked up some of the coin door wiring. One of the victims was the ground wire for the switches. When I jumpered the ground wire to actual ground, the coin door switches worked. A simple reconnecting the severed ground wire back to the ground terminal was all that was required.
Problem 3: No multiball in Flintstones.
When I went to empty the balls so that I could work on the machine, I was only able to find two balls. With a little closer inspection, I noticed that there were two balls still in the ball trough. Aha! The balls were not rolling down to the trough plunger. This is the infamous trough divot problem. With a metal file and some elbow grease, I was able to improve the situation. However, the balls still tend to get stuck, so I will need to bring my Dremel tool to smooth out the divots further.
Problem four: Road Show kicking 2 balls into the shooter lane.
This Is the most embarrassing one. I spent a good 30 minutes carefully inspecting the ball trough. All of the optos in the ball trough were working okay. So after scratching my head for several more minutes, I finally figured out that there were five balls in a four ball trough. I removed one of the balls, and everything worked perfectly. Go figure! ;)
That's it for today. I welcome any comments or questions.
Problem one: No Fear displaying 'ground row short' error in row 7 of the switch matrix.
Switch matrix problems can be very complicated. First, I looked for an actual short on the playfield from one of the indicated switches to ground. There was no such short on the playfield. At that point, I look for some sort of error on the CPU board. This basically involves using a jumper wire to connect the row and column inputs right on the CPU board. The switch matrix checked out okay here. After consulting Clay Harrell's guide, it seemed that the likely culprit could be the under playfield Opto board. The LM339 chips are often the culprits. I noticed that someone had previously attempted to replace the chips. I pulled out those two chips and installed sockets and new chips in their place. However, this did not fix the problem. I dug a little deeper and noticed that a couple of traces on the board had been broken. I soldered a couple jumper wires to reconnect those traces. Luckily, I had a Scared Stiff in my garage which used the same board, which helped greatly for testing and cross-referencing. I reinstalled the board into the No Fear and the problem was solved.
Problem two: Bram Stoker's Dracula won't enter diagnostics.
So, none of the diagnostic switches on the coin door were working. The card reader had been installed in such a way that it hacked up some of the coin door wiring. One of the victims was the ground wire for the switches. When I jumpered the ground wire to actual ground, the coin door switches worked. A simple reconnecting the severed ground wire back to the ground terminal was all that was required.
Problem 3: No multiball in Flintstones.
When I went to empty the balls so that I could work on the machine, I was only able to find two balls. With a little closer inspection, I noticed that there were two balls still in the ball trough. Aha! The balls were not rolling down to the trough plunger. This is the infamous trough divot problem. With a metal file and some elbow grease, I was able to improve the situation. However, the balls still tend to get stuck, so I will need to bring my Dremel tool to smooth out the divots further.
Problem four: Road Show kicking 2 balls into the shooter lane.
This Is the most embarrassing one. I spent a good 30 minutes carefully inspecting the ball trough. All of the optos in the ball trough were working okay. So after scratching my head for several more minutes, I finally figured out that there were five balls in a four ball trough. I removed one of the balls, and everything worked perfectly. Go figure! ;)
That's it for today. I welcome any comments or questions.
Re: guru meditation JohnWatson Jun 19, 2013 8:14 AM ( in response to sivaloga ) I've had to deal with a few of these, it is nothing to do with the Oracle database. Cara mengaktifkan microsoft office picture manager. One possibility is that you are not running Future Pinball as Admin on Vista or Windows 7. Right-click the exe, and run as administrator. Clone hd free. You can also perminantly set this in the file properties.