Its an annoying small percentage as well. I have another thread I started about GOT LE. I lost three flippers and replaced node 8 with a brand new one from stern, didn't fix the problem. Lead to hours of additional inspection and testing of other parts of the machine, reverting code back, etc and turns out the brand new replacement node they sent was defective. UGH that sucked but the good news is I am up and running now.

Good to know, and thanks!

So are the node boards interchangeable throughout the game? Flipper nodes included.
Seems you could swap them around to test them out in a game, narrowing problem to the node.
I have GOT on location, no problems.

I don't think GOT pro has the same issues with nodes blowing. Seems to be an LE issue.

I don't know how many different node boards there are but I know of three. They are interchangeable as long as you change the dips to the correct order. Kinda nice to be able to carry three or so to swap out at any time.

In general, yes. There are a handful of specific boards, and like inhomearcades said they're interchangeable as long as you change the dip switches properly. It's a great design. However, if the problem with the node board going out is something up/down-stream, you could smoke the replacement if it's not corrected first. Shouldn't happen, but it's possible.

Incorrect. My GoT pro was was probably the first GoT to lose a node board.

Rob

Node 8 on the pro is unique. Node 9 and 10 are the same. Node 8 is located by the flippers, 9 is middle of the playfield and 10 is upper playfield.

Rob

Oh yeh great. I work for the largest amusement vending operator in the US. And there is NO WAY each service tech would carry two or three extra boards at 200 a pop. Get a grip...... Throw away boards might be great for Joe blow that cant do his own repairs but its not cost effective for OPs.

So your techs have surface mount equipment with them on site?
The choice for your company to fix boards on site with out further game down time is there, it all depends on if they feel it's worth it to have a few extra boards or not.

Do you not have extra white star and Sam board sets for the techs? Those board sets were much more expensive. For under 500 bucks you can have a set of node boards for all spike games.

No need for whitestar and Sam boards on hand. They seem to never die....and they aren't surface mount so onsite work is easy.

First and foremost, we would never RT pins...... tried that. Never a winning combo when you take all expences into consideration. After the split, vehicle costs, insurance, fuel and tolls, repair, parts, commissions, employee benefits and just the lack of money they produce.( You may have 1 good for every 10 dogs on location.) At 5-7K each game its for Mom and Pop vendor at the local pub not for large operators Thats a fact.

Like I said throw away boards might be great for Joe Blow. But for field work you need a board set thats serviceable. Show me any vendor that relies on pinball for the majority of his profits and I show you a broke one. Its was bad enough with a repairable board set. " Just saying "

So your first post was complaining how they are not serviceable on site and then you follow up by saying it doesn't matter anyway because you don't route pins. I guess I don't understand the point of even bringing it up.

They die all the time. Your games are not played enough. Stern boards on occasion need more than just a transistor, not all the time but it happens. So far no more or less than the spike system.

We did in the past.

They are that price. If your distributor isn't trying to make a killing off of you.

I used to feel this way, but it's always possible for hardware, or even software emulation if, or when, it ever gets to that point. It always amazes me that people are capable of emulating chipsets of a completely different architecture on other machines (albeit with a significant drop in efficiency). It just takes someone willing enough to write the code and design the hardware.

Yeah but then we have custom chips and custom software emulating custom chips and custom software. This doesn't really help does it?

If sterns motivation for new board sets was reduced costs, they would use off the shelf chips they could easily get. Nobody is doing custom silicon these days other than huge companies. It's just too expensive.

To inhomearcades:

I route almost 40 pinballs - run 1 pinbar with 11 pinballs, another with 10. SAM is pretty bomber for me. Spike nodes are going, but with time and revisions I think it will be an awesome system. But It's clear there are bugs that need to be worked out and boards need revisions. Growing pains, that's all.

Sounds like an opportunity for the aftermarket to step in and offer knockoff replacements.

I need a Canadian to English translator...

Pete

We are operating similar number of pins about 70 on free play so they get a large number of plays. I haven't come across a system by any manufacturer yet that doesn't have board problems, but I agree with you that the node growing pains should pass and we should have a pretty solid system on our hands.

So basically as opposed to the early days of pinball up to the 90s when things got heavier and more robust, now we are going the other way. Just like everything else in this world. A throwaway item.

Yep, lost Node 8 on my GOTLE within the first week of having the game.

Who said anything about the system being throw away? There is not one item on a 90's pin that hasn't gone bad on my games.

For instance the use of the latch versus slide mechanism for the lock down bar. The latch system is much stronger, lighter and better than the slide system all while being much less expensive.

It sounded like you were describing most modern electronic devices where they are built cheap, you use them for a year until they become obsolete, then you just toss them and get the newest one. Well, that's what it sounded like to me.

Are all the node boards the same? I wouldn't mind having a backup or 2.

There are 3 different node boards. The 8 driver node board(this is what the Node 8 board is), the 4 driver node board and the cabinet node board.

I contacted my distributor and they are sending out a replacement Node 8 Board free of charge.

Of course there are 3 different node boards, why not 6 ? I can understand the one by the coin door being different, but the ones under the playfield should all be the same

Well, sometimes you don't need to control 8 coils. Three seems like a good number to cover all situations.

I agree. The node boards kind of align themselves to the hv coils and lv coils/lamps of yesteryear.

Can you at least use the 8-node board in place of a 4?

I suppose you're correct. However, given enough resources, I'd think it'd be possible to do with "conventional" hardware. For example, the Nintendo GameCube and Wii use the PowerPC architecture with all of their components being 100% custom engineered for them, yet a simple program can run all this on a standard x86 processor with standard DDR RAM and the like. Granted, to do so properly, one must have a computer with multiple powerful cores and a hearty GPU to be able to adequately translate the code in real time.

I wish I knew exactly what kind of hardware and software went in to designing pinball machine hardware--this type of thing fascinates me. I know "back in the day" the programming ran on bare metal using assembly language, but I doubt it does so today. Emulating the operating system that Stern uses now can't be terribly difficult.

It'd be pretty easy to tell most of this if anyone actually had a list of the chips on the boards

Glad to see that Stern hasn't suggested using "Wizards Mist N Shine" to resolve these node board issues

In Stern's effort to make everything cheaper and crappier, they have changed brands of microswitches. Their current manufacturer just sucks. I would suspect the switch itself. I bet they saved a whole five cents per switch. This is what you're up against with Stern... What kills me is you guys actually think that Spike is a good thing. Trust me it was just a way to save money for stern.

Are you checking the switches in the switch test with your finger or with a ball?
If with your finger, you need to note when the switch registers. If it registers when the blade is flush or below the playfield surface, likely the ball may/may not register it. So try to adjust each switch to have it register when it is pushed half to 3/4 the way down.

Sterns are holding up way better than any other pin out there on location.

Please enlighten me with your expertise on spike and sterns manufacturing/sourcing methods.

The KISS scoop switch may not stay closed without some adjustment of the switch arm. This happened with mine. The spinner switch also needed adjustment.

GoT, which switches specifically? If you are talking about the right orbit, that is probably a software timing issue or the ball is getting 'air' and not rolling over the switch cleanly. GoT plays/works best at a 7 degree pitch I find.

Rob

My GOT LE on location has blown 3 node 8 pcbs. I'd be willing to bet that we would be seeing far more failures if there were more LEs on location, but since most of them are going to collectors that level of stress isn't being put on many of them. If the problem hasn't been figured out by the time Premiums hit (which I'd imagine will be more common on location than LEs), we could be seeing it happen a lot more. It can happen on Pros as well, it just doesn't seem imminent like it does on the LE. An op I know down in Portland had one blow on his Pro recently.

To Stern's credit, they are definitely aware of the problem and seem very motivated to figure it out -- they just had me ship my machine back to them to try to figure out what's going wrong. They actually approached me about it and seemed to really want my game to help with the diagnosis. Hopefully a solution is on the way!

Same here on my LE. I have sent the. Defective boards so they can figure out what went wrong. They want it fixed more than we do. With a new system and new applications it may take a dozen titles to figure out what this system is capable of and how to modify the system to be more robust.

As I recall, Williams would field test their new systems by only putting them in to 100 of the normal production games. And almost always, with a distributor customer base where they knew they would get feed back. It would happen with a few models before they would officially roll it out in all production games. And, of course, back then 100% of production were operated on route.

Other than "The Pin", any one know how much field testing did SPIKE get before it was rolled out?

Ive had spike on location with acdc in it. You wouldn't imagine the number of problems that game had.

I think ts flipper vibration.

Rob

Maybe, but why would it happen so much more frequently on the LE? The pcb is mounted in the same place on both the pro and LE.