My brand new Aerosmith has developed some strange malfunction regarding the Toy Box and counting of the balls in play.

When it occurs the Toy Box starts opening and closing and also the bottom mechanism keeps running, see video link:

Often this is accompanied with a wrong number of balls in play: two or more while there should be just one, sometimes it even puts two balls in the shooter lane. This results in the game ending as soon as one ball drains (and other balls are still on the playfield).

This malfunction is not present all the time, but pops up after playing for a while. When it starts occurring, it looks like it keeps occurring as long as the machine stays on, so it doesn’t seem to be linked to software but rather a hardware thing that starts malfunctioning when the machine is turned on for a while.

Trying to pinpoint the culprit we swapped the node board with that of another Aerosmith of a friend and the pin seemed to play correctly for a couple of games (the board had to return with it’s owner). After installing my board back, it played flawless for a few games, but after that the malfunction started again…

Can somebody please help me solving this problem on this otherwise marvellous pinball machine?

I have checked connectors on the nodeboard as well as on the trough prints, since my Metallica had a similar problem that was caused by a bad connector on the trough LED print.

I'll check the rest of the connectors as well.