Just unboxed my ACDC tonight after picking it up last week. This is from the latest run. Besides one of the lower playfield eyes not working right (bulb issue not displaying proper colors) the game is now unplayable after 4 hours.

On our last game, we had three players. During player twos turn, the game just abruptly ended his turn mid-game. No tilt, no warning, no nothing. Player three steps up and starts playing, during his turn his flippers die. No power at all. This is all on ball 2. We all play ball 3 with no issues.

At this time, my two friends decide it's time to pack it in for the night and leave. A few mins later, I go to play one last game for the night. I hit start, game says SEARCHING FOR BALLS and starts a ball search. I look all over for a ball, don't see one. Lift the playfield up, all four balls are in the trough. Take them all out, go into switch test, drop them in one at a time, all register as they go. Appears normal. Hit start again, BALL SEARCH!!! WTF!!!

I take a ball out, the game starts! Kill the game, turn it back on, add just ONE ball into the trough, hit start, the game STARTS!!! I add the rest of the balls in the trough, it keeps kicking balls into the shooter lane.

Not exactly the first NIB experience I was hoping for. I know Stern is good about customer service and correcting issues, so I'm not worried, but what a crappy way to end the night.

I figured out the problem with the help of my distributor, PinballMike217 (who is a GREAT guy, btw).

It seems that the trough opto boards are bad. With the balls out, the games still shows trough #1 and trough jam (both controlled by the opto boards) are active. Sounds like they were on their way out, last night when the issue started, and now it's full blown crazytown.

No worries, I'll call Stern customer support in a bit after they open. It's only pinball, can't get too worked up about it.

Yeah, I checked connectors last night. One was a little loose in the head. Everything underneath looked good.

I did reseat the two trough board connectors, along with the Z connector from the trough, the phantom switch closures came right back, so it has to be the opto boards.

I spoke to Chaz at Stern this morning, we verified that the opto boards were getting power but obviously were not working properly. The optos show switch closures at trough #1 and trough jam, even with the balls out of the game.

They are going to ship out new opto boards, hopefully after a quick swap I'll be back up and running.

A buddy of mine did that for me tonight, as I'm still not that comfortable with a soldering iron. As soon as I get home from work I'm going to pop them back in and give it a try.

Update - I found out that it is not the opto boards. I removed the trough assembly from ACDC and swapped it with the one from 24. Same exact thing happens, and the ACDC trough optos work flawless in 24. I checked all the conmectors in the head and under playfield again, didn't find anything amiss. The only notable thing to add is that the ball 1 and trough jam errors are constantly on, unless I disconnect the opto receiver. The transmitter board gets no glow. The receiver board, however, has a faint glow from one of the optos, which I was under the impression that those should not glow at all. It behaved this way before the trough swap as well.

After checking a few more things earlier with the help of PinballMike217, we are pretty sure it's something on one of the boards (most likely the CPU) has gone haywire. May take a little longer to get the game up and running, but hopefully by next weekend I'll be back in business.

The idea of doing that came up, but that's getting to be a little bit out of my comfort range, considering I'd have to pull and swap ROMS as well. I'd rather wait a few days and see what Chaz at Stern comes up with first.

Update: It was a broken ground wire on one of the connectors! What a PITA it was to track down, but the game is back up and running once again.