Guys,

A little update from today’s:

Now ALL flashers are gone, both playfield flashers and saucers flashers, also the main saucer dome light/flasher has now stopped working too (it was functionning yesterday).
Strobe still doesn't work.
And now the motor bank has decided to stop functionning too…

So to sum-up, since « fixing » the GI i now have:
- no flashers nowhere
- no Saucers flashers
- no strobe light
- motor bank wont go down/up

So basically all the 12v stuf

Many thanks.
So do you reckon i should look into the related fuse?
Or should i look into something elsewhere?

Pull and check 12 volt fuse with a meter, and check 12 volt test point to see if you have 12 volts there.

LTG : )

Ok will do that and report. Unfortunately won’t be for a few days now but will keep you guys posted as soon as i can make those tests.

Many thanks

When doing some work in the back box I noticed discoloration around R43 on the AV Board. The display is working fine; however, the -113VDC and-125VDC are both about 10V low at -102VDC and -113VDC. The other voltages are OK. R43 is scorching hot. R44 is barely warm. The output transistor Q7 collector is only at -10V as if negligible current is being supplied through R44 and the collector. Thinking Q7 is bad and all the output current is being supplied through R43 and the base of the transistor. I see Marco has the individual transistor and a HV supply rebuild kit. The description for the kit says "This critical update kit is designed to prevent burnt circuit board damage from original components.". Any feedback on the kit and how it is better than the original components? Any thoughts on AV Board electrolytic capacitor replacement while I have the board out? Any confirmation/correction of my analysis of the problem?

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Might be your idc connections j605 j604 may want to reset them with and idc tool or better yet repin them with trifucon .156 molex pins. Much better connection less resistance. Best of luck with repair.

reseat or change out asic chip on cpu

At the age of these games the PS for the plasma display just needs rebuilt. Replace the plasma display with a color DMD (Pricey) or buy a rebuild kit for the display power section. I think they run around $20. Not worth trying to figure out which components are going bad and ordering individually. Marco and other sources have the kits.

Thanks for the advice! I'm ordering the AV HV section rebuild kit from Marco today.

Replacement opto board arrived. I swapped it out and there's still no power going to the opto board in the cabinet.

Figuring it's the Power driver board or CPU.

Gonna see if I can send then out for repair. Wish me luck!

Wish it goes well

Took the boards out. Power driver board looks fine cosmetically. CPU board....not so much.

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Common issue with those fat GI diodes. Burn themselves and board. You can replace them with a plain old jumpers.

LTG : )

Hey all, just joined the club! What a great game. Going through some issues, but this switch matrix issue has me stumped.
The game will think there is a ball in the SOL scoop when there isn’t. It happens when the saucer drop target goes down and the the ball drops into the VUK trough. For example it will award SOL, Extra Ball, Martian Attack etc. right away after the saucer is destroyed and the scoop coil will fire (even though the ball is traveling down the wire form after being ejected from the VUK).
In switch test, activating switch 78 (center trough) will also activate switch 37 (rt popper) and switch 68 (not used). I jumped the pins on J206 and J208 on the CPU and switch 78 registers by itself. Further, all the switches in Column 7, also trigger the switch in the same row in column 6. But, this problem only occurs when the drop target switch is closed. I replaced that switch and the diode but the problem persists. Any guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks all!
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I would consider your standard switch matrix issue. Switch wired wrong, diode on backwards, or a short to switch lugs or wiring.

Only take a few minutes to check. Look over all your switches. All wired the same. White wire black end of diode to a lug, green wire to a lug, silver banded end of diode to a lug. All are the same !

Start with any your replaced or worked on recently, then ones that balls can hit like on ramps, then the others.

LTG : )

SOLVED: Thanks Lloyd! Turned out to be an improperly installed diode on one of the saucer switches. Not quite sure what’s been done on here as I’ve only had the game for a couple days now. Before that it was wrapped up in a warehouse for a long time. On another note, is it normal for the Ball Launch solenoid to fire twice when powering the game on?

Your Big diodes 6A (d27 to d32) looks to have cold solders. (Cracked solders).

I have a new Rottendog WPC 95 Driver Board, A-20028, $349.99 plus $13.95 shipping, and also WPC 95 MPU, with the AFM chips, $239.95 plus $13.95 shipping.

Both, as shown in the pictures, are brand new and tested.

Any questions please let me know..

Mick

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Just as an FYI, it's always best to logically troubleshoot and identify where the problem is before ordering/replacing components. Did you test F109 with a DMM (as a visual inspection can sometimes be wrong) and test the voltage at test point TP103? These would verify if your 12V unregulated power (including the J127 connector) on the power driver board was correct or had an issue.

Now there are 3 connectors on the power driver board that then supply this 12V unreg to the various components in the machine - J139 (cabinet), J140 (playfield) and J141 (coindoor); and you may have mods (eg ColorDMD that use this power). If you have any mods using the 12V unreg power, they'd be connected or piggy-backed off J138-J141. Disconnecting the mods (in case they are pulling the 12V power down) and double checking J140 connector (which provides 12V unreg power to the 7 switch opto board but also to the motor for raising/lowering the 3 bank target, as well as the strobe board and main saucer LED/Flasher board) will help in determining where the issue is.

Given this problem arose after reseating all the connectors, I do wonder whether the issue is a faulty connection on a IDC connector, as the wires can lose electrical connectivity where they are pushed into the back of the IDC connector. Anyway I hope this helps and if you have any questions there's plenty of us on the thread that can help you troubleshoot an issue.

I very much appreciate the advice and input. Not gonna lie....I'm horrible when it comes to the electrical aspect of pinball machines. Mechanically I'm fine....but can't wrap my head around a multimeter, voltages, etc.

Fuses were tested and were fine. But after pulling out the boards I knew there was some components that needed to be replaced (as you can see in the pics)

Board work is well beyond my capabilities hence why I'm sending them out for repair.

Hopefully they come back like new and the problem is solved. If not I know it's a wiring issue at that point and will go from there.

Thanks Manny65 , LTG and all others.

It's absolutely not normal--it shouldn't fire at all when you power the game on. Others can speak with more authority here, I'm sure, but again I would go into switch test and specifically test the shooter lane switch. Besides a leaky diode somewhere else which might trigger that switch (hopefully not, but possible, I think), I'd say the problem could be in the shooter lane switch itself and a minor adjustment to that switch might be all that's needed. My first thought is that the switch might be closed when it should be open. If that doesn't yield anything, I would look at every switch in the matrix that shares a row or column with the shooter lane switch and check on its status.

I'm speculating, but those are my ideas.

The basics aren't really that hard and you would probably find that most of the issues fall in the basic catergory.
Like bad IDC connectors and cracked solder joints on boards and headers.
I'm an electrical contractor so i use testers fairly often (although 99% i'm just looking for 110v and up), but even with all kinds of testers i prefer my $15 craftsman that doesn't do auto ranging for pinball and arcade(for some reason i'm just never happy with how the autoranging testers work).
You don't have to be a board repair expert to do the simple tests and it can save you weeks and hundreds of dollars simply by testing voltages and continuity, neither of which is a tough skill.

ebay.com link: itm

I use one of those, on a pinball machine you would mainly use 20v (for less than 20v testing), 200v (for more than 20v) and diode/continuity.
Testers with 100 buttons just confuse people, they do have real uses, but 99.9% of the population doesn't need any of that crap.

I’ll dig into it. Thanks!

Sold my Original a couple years ago and just picked up this Limited Edition remake. Absolutely beautiful machine, She's here for the long haul.

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https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/check-f115-f116-j112-and-12v-opto-supply-

^ post #4

Looks like the issue has been ribbon cables for me and I can confidently say its now resolved. (Fingers crossed)

Boards came back as working. Surpsingly. Installed them and the opto board light on my original opto board is lit and working. No double bongs on startup or any error messages.

Going to play a few games tomorrow and hope that all is resolved. Off to league night with the wife right now.

Thanks for all the help folks!

It's good to be back!!!

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Ugh. I was having my personal best on AFM--33 billion on ball 2 and had already ruled the universe. My kid's grand champ is 35 billion. The ball drops in from the pop bumpers into the rear-side of the SOL and then ... nothing. The ball doesn't pop out. I had a hurry-up counting down on the screen, and the animation kept going, but the numbers weren't advancing (presumably because the balls had been up in the pops, where countdowns freeze). Flippers still work, lights are still flashing, music still playing.

I removed the glass, pulled the ball out and dropped it in the SOL again--still nothing. I concede and drop the ball down the drain, hoping a ball advance will help. Nope, the game doesn't recognize that the ball drained--so I can't even finish this game to enter my initials. I tried reseating the cables on the opto board, but that didn't help.

Eventually I turned the game off, and back on. Everything's fine again. My game just had it out for me, I guess.

My wife and youngest son each asked if I'd tried tilting the machine. Nope, and I wish I'd thought of it.

Did you let it go to a ball search?

Sorry--I left that out. It would not go into ball search. I assumed it would when it first got stuck, but after a few minutes of waiting, I realized it wasn't going to happen, and that's when I pulled the glass.

Wondering if the opto board lost power, so it couldn’t detect either the SOL scoop or trough. Also knocking out the trough, would mean that the game would become confused as to if the ball was still in play and hence why a ball search wasn’t activated or the ball deemed as drained.

Given it came good again, I’d suspect an intermittent connectivity issue - most likely an IDC connector or cold solder joint on a header.

Perhaps an odd option but try pushing the gameroms and asic in their sockets, when the power is off

This has worked for me before when I couldn't figure out a GI lighting problem for weeks. I pushed on the Asic and everything went back to normal.

Wow hey did u order a new board or are you fixing that one

Sent them to Brent Butler in Ontario. He tested them and they came back working 100%.

I think it was a ribbon cable that was my issue. It's back to playing normally again.

Sweet that's good news and great she's up and running again

Hey guys. New member of the family...just picked up an original AFM last week.

Overall, the game is in pretty good shape. Play-wise there are just a few quirks that I need to fix with some hopefully minor tweaking, and I'm hoping to get some input from you guys. Cosmetic-wise, I've already added a color DMD and will be looking to do an LED makeover and add a shaker in the near future. Those items aside, I am generally in favor of keeping things as close to stock as possible. I've been reviewing the manual and looking up part numbers for basic maintenance items like rubbers. There are a few items I'd like input on here as well.

Playability Questions:

1) After launch when the ball drops between the 2 guides heading towards the bumpers, when it goes down the right path the ball sometimes gets stuck right where it comes out and meets the rubber ring. It doesn't actually happen when coming down this path from a launch, but sometimes when the bumper kicks it back up there and it's moving slowly. What is the proper fix here? Would a simple rubber ring replacement help? Should I remove the rubber ring between the posts and instead use rubber rings on just the posts themselves? It seems like the latter is the better choice, but I don't know if that's going to create other issues such as the possibility of the ball getting stuck between those posts.
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2) When Multiball starts, typically 1 ball is ejected into the lane, and seconds later just before that ball is launched the 2nd ball is ejected into the lane, which launches them both simultaneously. It's not ejecting 2 balls simultaneously into the launch, it's almost like the timing is just wrong here. Is this typical? Is there a switch I might need to adjust? There are no issues whatsoever with the ball launch in general, just this Multiball quirk. I'm running v1.13 in case it's relevant.

3) The bumpers don't seem to be very sensitive. They're responsive, but not quite as much compared to other games I have...sometimes it will creep past a bumper without it firing. Normally I would just tweak the contact or replace the bumper assembly, but considering how crowded that back area is I was wondering if that is maybe by design. I figured if the bumpers were too sensitive it might get trapped in there forever. Is this normal?

4) This is more of a general question and not specific to AFM, but my left flipper seems to be not perfectly aligned with the inlane and when the ball rolls onto the flipper it bounces up, especially at speed. This makes it extremely difficulty to hit the SOL scoop, right ramp, and right orbit consistently. In comparison, when the ball rolls through the inlane to the right flipper, it's a smooth transition to the flipper making it easier to judge timing for ramp shots. Is there a way to adjust the flipper so that it provides for smooth transition? Or is this just due to the playfield build/drilling? Curious if anyone else has a similar issue.

5) Anyone with a Cliffy protector on the SOL scoop having an issue with the "I" martian target? At one point that target stopped registering and I found that the protector was pushing the target causing the switch to be permanently active. I readjusted the protector to solve the problem, but after a few days of playing the protector rotated back into this same position since it's only held in by one screw on the right side. It's still registering, but not 100% of the time...I expect this will continue getting worse. I haven't yet taken a close look at the underside of the playfield, so I'm not yet sure if there are vertical height adjustments I could make so that the target sits above the protector rather than behind it. Any thoughts on this one would be appreciated.

Cosmetic Questions:

6) I'm looking to replace the rubbers and the manual shows black for all rubber flippers, posts, sleeves, etc. However, the vast majority of all AFMs I've seen on here has white rubbers with varying colors for the flippers. I know this is largely personal preference, but I find it odd that almost everyone has white rubbers and I don't think I've seen a single original AFM that has black flipper rubbers. I shouldn't be questioning the parts list in the manual, but figured I would ask anyways.

7) I've seen a few "Eat at Eddy's" building mods that I like. For those of you that have one, does this block the view of the saucer behind it? Or is it still visible from the player's position? If it's blocking the saucer or key parts of the playfield, then I'm not going to add it.

Thanks in advance for any input you guys can provide!

1 - Thinner rubber ring and be sure switch arm isn't holding it there, not fully depressing.

2 - Divots in ball trough or magnetized balls holding things up.

3 - Turn game off. Adjust the leaf blade switch for it below the playfield.

Turn the game off. Lift playfield up and lean back. See the leaf blade switch ? The long one with the plastic spoon is pushed by a plastic rod coming down from the pop bumper skirt. This plastic spoon should be clean, ( not worn on older games ) well centered on the rod, just resting on it, not pushing it up. The shorter lower leaf blade switch should be close enough so the slightest ball hit triggers it yet vibration doesn't set it off. A little adjusting/tweaking, and you'll be fine.

6 - AFM when new shipped with black rubber rings. What color you use is up to you.

LTG : )

Here are my thoughts on some of your questions:

1) Here is my setup. I had a similar problem and ended up putting a rubber between the two lower posts oriented so it was as low as possible to avoid interfering with the pop bumper. It never hangs up there anymore.
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2) My balls launch one at a time in order so maybe it's a switch or opto problem.

3) My bumpers are pretty sensitive which makes for some good action when the ball drops in. I don't see any reason to reduce the sensitivity.

5) Here is the Cliffy on my machine. The target actually rests on the corner of it but I have adjusted the switch so it is not normally closed. Also, the holes for that target are very close to the edge of the playfield and I reinforced it with some epoxy wood putty as the hole on the edge was close to breaking through the side of the plywood.

6) I have black rubbers and I'm happy with how they look.
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Brian

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From your pic I can't really see a rubber on the left side where it's stuck but if not I would try replacing all the rubbers in that area u never know and when your in there get a ball and just see why it is stoping there

It looks to me like the ball is resting in the bottom of the lane's switch slot. So potentially making the pop bumpers more sensitive to eliminate the slower moving ball from getting caught there.

To me, AFM looks best with black rubbers. I don't know if it's because it's kind of a dark, mean theme or what but it's my only game that still has them.

My 9-year-old suddenly got good at this game. He ruled the universe for the first time this weekend and conquered Mars with a dirty pool on his last country, which I've never seen happen.

Blew something on the A/V PCB and it’s out for repair. Little guy is bummed she’s not up and running lol

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That OoO sign is so awesome!

It is. I’m keeping it for future use for sure!

Hey guys.

Thanks for the input. I finally got some free time yesterday to take a closer look at these issues, and I have an update on a few of them.

1) I'm not seeing anything obvious sticking out here. It's not getting stuck due to the microswitch, the divot isn't abnormal in any way. I just started poking around the area, tugged on that rubber ring a bit, and then wiped the ring with a rag & cleaner. I played a half dozen games and it didn't stick once, and it was starting to happen every game sometimes from a launch. I'm speculating perhaps the ring just got sticky where it made contact. In any case, it's better now, and I'll keep an eye on it. Here's a better picture I took of it getting stuck beforehand just for reference.
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2) The switch is registering just fine, but it's sitting deep within the divot area, and it doesn't look like a standard switch I would see in this area at least when I compare it against my 3 other pins. I'm thinking that when the ball ejects into the launch area it bounces back enough so that the switch doesn't register, then it comes back to a rest and registers again...creating just enough delay for what I'm seeing. I went ahead and ordered a new switch assembly here. I'll swap that out and see if the problem goes away. Based on comments and thinking about it, I also decided to order one of these trough shims while I was ordering other parts, which might help - https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/03-16809. Here's a close-up pic for reference.
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4) For the ball hop, I tried adjusting the guide on the left side, which helped a little but did not completely fix the problem. Doing more research on this last night I found this Cliffy "enhanced" return frame for AFM - http://www.passionforpinball.com/FlipFrames.htm. I went ahead and ordered this and I expect this will fix this problem.

6) Simple answer here as expected. I went ahead and ordered replacement rubbers for the flippers and all rubber rings and posts using the original part numbers from the manual...all black. I'm not sure what brand rubbers were put on here but the flippers are yellow and annoyingly bouncy/grippy compared to any other pinball I've played. Also, the posts adjacent to the ramps are yellow and very spongy compared to standard sleeves and causing abnormal bouncing. Just reverting to standard here.

Thanks to those that have posted with feedback and comments...all helpful. Regarding my other points, I'll just be keeping an eye on #3 and #5 for now.

Anyone have any input on #7? I'm just looking to confirm if the Eat at Eddy's building is blocking the view of the saucer behind it from where the player is standing.

Thanks!

If you are over 5ft tall, i doubt the building blocks your view.
I'm 6'1 and can see everything fine beyond it.

I don't think that is going to be your issue.
I am pretty sure they stopped making the building mod quite a while ago and it's not easy to obtain.
Normally i'm not into mods, most times i think they are a waste of money and make things worse.
The Eat at Eddies building is one of the few times i truly think a mod enhances the look of a pin.

As for rubber, for me it's an easy choice, buckets of clear from pinball life. Good quality (i had titans mixed with them and i couldn't tell the difference if there is any) and a seriously good value. They allow quite a bit more light through.

That rubber in picture 1 looks too big. I believe it should be a smaller rub we ring, causing it to be stretched more, making it thinner.

100% agree on this. Generally I'm not into visual mods either...I like to keep things the way the designer intended. However, I have seen a select few mods for some pins that not only nicely blend in with the visual aesthetic of the playfield but afterwards I couldn't unsee whatever it was hiding, with the Eat at Eddy's building being a perfect example. The VUK just sticks out like a sore thumb now. There are a few out there for sale if you look, but there's one someone is selling on Ebay that is the best design I've seen so far with a more realistic wear/tear and destruction of the building. I went ahead and pulled the trigger on one.