That's one of the symptoms of a blown aux board. But you may be lucky and it may just be the fuse F7.

The fuse makes the magnet stay on?

a shorted transistor on the aux board can cause the magnet to be stuck on until the fuse blows. A blown fuse cuts the power to call the solenoids in the circuit. That would be opposite of what's happening here. A blown fuse cannot cause this symptom.

Pinaholic: if your magnet coil is shorted, you need to disconnect it or stop playing the game until its resolved. Test it:
1) get a ball
2) remove the glass
3) turn the machine on with coin door open
4) see if the magnet catches the ball
5) if so immediately turn off the machine and do not turn it on again until the magnet is disconnected or the aux board replaced.

My 2nd one blew, and Pat sent me a new Main & Aux board...haven't had a problem since. Could be coincidence, but perhaps there is something bad on the main boards causing the aux boards to blow?

Pdxmonkey had two blow. So when we got the third, I asked him to put the new board into acdc and put the tried and true one for acdc into his xmen. So far nothing has failed. I really don't think it's caused by the power board though.

Yeah, it's probably just a shit batch of Aux boards then.

*SARCASM ON* These boards are not a problem. Only 2 or 3 people tops have had problems with these boards. It's just that EVERYONE that has a problem reports about it here and NO ONE without a problem ever posts here. *SARCASM OFF*

I think it's safe to say that these boards are a real issue and I have never understood someones logic in saying something isn't a wide spread problem and only people with problems report on Pinside. I'm sure there are many people that have a problem that report here as the people without problems sit silently by.....but I'm also sure there are others that have these problems and never report them anywhere except their distributor or Stern support. So seeing a few (quite a few) people post about these problem boards probably means that more and probably many more have the issue.

I have never had any blown fuses or anything that would point to this problem, but I have also never had a game as "unstable" as my X-Men has been. It seems to behave one way for a while (magnets, spinning disc, Nightcrawlers) and then start behaving completely different for no particular reason.

Honestly, I don't think we can say that until we can explain why no one is having problems with these boards in acdc. I agree that there is an issue. But I'm not sure it's entirely with the boards. This may just be a symptom of something else.

Still haven't had an aux board problem on #250. I did have balls lighlty sticking instead of being let go, but turned out my balls (mirror polished) had gotten magnetized (all 4, 800 balls played). So, for others that find this thread thinking the worst.. If the slightest of nudge knocks it loose, check balls for magnetism.

Couldn't the diff between ac/dc and this I'd the board is undersized for the loads in xmen? The bell magnet isn't used as often as wolverine; and night crawlers have all the rubble thing + hefty coils. You get a couple going at once and maybe the tolerances are borderline / they should of moved up a grade in trace size and or chips themselves.

I wonder if it was your nc?
Mine got smokey too.