Baby Pac-Man
Bally, 1982Has anyone ever seen a machine where the flippers work fine for a few minutes then all of a sudden they seem to not work or intermittently work? Both sides. Haven’t played my baby Pac-Man machine in a while and when I went to play it tonight it started doing this after a few minutes of play.
Machine has an ultimate MPU in it. (Just FYI)
Check the cabinet switches for the flippers--make sure they're clean and not burnt and corroded.
Check the coil lugs on the coils--make sure the wires have good solder joints (not cracked) and that the wires aren't broken or frayed.
Will do. Didn’t want to pull it out tonight. Having it work fine at first and then after a couple minutes they start acting up makes me think something is heating up and then “failing”.
Well, I check the flippers, which are all fine. They way it’s acting is like the friking machine is possessed. I checked all of the connectors and the flippers started to work again fine. About five minutes later the machine started to act weird again. I rebooted it and half the lights wouldn’t come on and the screen flickerd on and then went blank. When I pressed the video test button the video test came on, but the game itself would not function at all.
Anyone ever seen anything like this?
Note: the machine has an ultimate MPU board in it.
I am wondering if there is some sort of voltage issue going on.
Check your boards for cracked solder joints on the header pins.
Because it works for a few minutes then doesn't seems to indicate heat might be a factor in revealing an issue.
Quoted from alexanr1:Will do. Thoughts on the voltage issue?
Well, you can measure voltages with a multimeter if you think that might be a possible issue.
However, that might lead you right back to cracked solder joints.
I pulled out the solenoid driver board and inspected it. Sure enough, there were quite a few connectors that visually showed solder cracks in them. I reflowed all of the boards connectors and, for the moment it plays fine. Will need to put a few games on it and let it sit running for a while to see if this was The issue. I included a photo of what one of the solder joints showing it cracked.
If it comes back there is a single brown wire connection on the upper left board.
Give it a tug. I had the same issue and after reflowing all of the boards it was still there.
I by chance moved the connector and the wire fell out. It is one of those force in connectors not actually crimped in.
So I swapped it out and my machine is 100% now.
I could not find any help on line so I though I would add this to your fix in case someone searches in the future.
Thx for the additional suggestion.
I am a little surprised that the driver board would also cause some of the weird video issue it was doing as well. Always surprised at how inner connected all of these boards are and if something goes wrong how it can glitch. Played a couple games, left it on and things seem good.
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Cherryville, NC