hercules

ok so ive been roaming the internet speaking to all the good pinball people in the northeast and wasnt getting anywhere...i purchased a hercules pinball machine from reading pa about 4 months ago and im in the middle of the restoration and theres no life in her yet...first problem is she doesnt boot...a quick replacement of the common 5101 ram and  the two 2101 chips beside it as well as a new cpu processor and she boots but having switch matrix problems and man was i getting crazy trying to figure out this problem...granted im over 50 and my eyesight is starting to give me problems i just couldnt fint this problem...i took out all the chips on the i/o board and socketed them...used my meter and checked every transistor diode cap ect and pulled this board out 15 times atleast....heres my symptoms...when i fired game up it would work but switches would fire coils that werent supposed to fire..for instance the test switch fired the left slingshot..the ball trough fired the right slingshot and the test button put the ball from the trough in the shooter lane....half of my playfield switches were out......i changed h7 on mpu as well as all chips surrounding it and just couldnt figure out the problem....then after sticking my head back and forth a zillion times it jumped and bit me.....on the i/o board the top left connector was spun 180 degrees out and the pinning would allow this...weird is that all the wires were bent so this would easily happen so i have no doubt the prior owner couldnt fix this issue either....with that said switch matrix issues be sure that when connectors are in place on i/o board that the wires on the plug face upward and not down...superman also uses this version board by atari...hope this helps anyone out there....good luck