So I've been ordering parts and soldering for some time now in hopes of fixing this myself...it's time I go to the experts. My Flintstones game was working wonderfully until 6 months ago when the ball would no longer kick up. Upon investigation, it turned out to be Switch 30 (I think...Ball 1 anyway) in the Ball Trough. Logically I bought a replacement Transmitter board from Marco and waited...I live in Canada. Obviously that didn't work. Bought a Receiver ball trough board and waited again...that didn't work...grrr.

So I pulled out the optics board (the one with the LM339 chips) and tested components. A Zener Diode looked suspect so I de-soldered and tested...bingo. They were a string of 1N4004 diodes so I replace with 1N4007 diodes as that was all I had on hand. Also replaced the LM339 chips to be sure.

Anyway, same thing, Ball 1 shows as being empty even though there are 4 balls in the trough. Tried testing at the voltages on receiver board and optics board but it they seem similar across all the optics...from what I remember...nothing obvious anyway.

Can't seem to find anything on the forums specific to this problem so I'm reaching out to the experts.

I'll give it a try tonight. I hope I have the right Molex connectors at home.

Geez...if that's all it is, I'm going to be banging my head on the wall. I never thought to check the Switch Matrix as I was so sure it was related to the Optics Boards.

Update:
Just got back to troubleshooting this. Checked continuity from the Ball Trough to the Optics Board and everything checked out. Jumped the Ball Trough connection on Switch 32 and it doesn't register. Checked the voltages at White/Red wire going into Optics for Switch 32 Row and it's coming up with 15.7V...way too high! The others on each side are 11.7V.

So at this point I was thinking there was something wrong with the board. I went back to the Board at J209-2 and it registered at 15.7V there too...no surprises. Checked J209-3 for reference and it's 11.7V...no surprise. Pulled the plug on J209 as well as unplugged the Optics Board Connector and checked voltage at jumper 2 again, it's 12V (or close to it from memory). Note, I had also unplugged the Ball Trough connectors earlier and left them unplugged for this test.

So, looks like I'm picking up some phantom voltage somewhere in the playfield. Had checked all the switches in the White/Red row in a Switch Test earlier and they all checked out fine...guess they're more resilient to the higher voltage.

Couldn't find anything wrong in the playfield wiring...not ruling it out but onto something else. Removed J209 again and thought I'd recheck the voltages. Turns out Pin-2 is low..10.8V. The other pins are 13.7V so it looks to be the board.

Weird that I would get 15.7V as soon as I hook up the playfield wiring to J209. Anyway, help on this one would be greatly appreciated.

Looks like this is my last test for the evening then it's back to reading. I did a test to help determine where the problem might be according to the PinWiki Guide. I removed the U20 chip and replaced it with a new one with no change in the voltage at J209-2.

I then removed the U20 chip again while leaving the Switch Matrix connectors plugged into the CPU. I tested pins 18-11 (Columns 1-8) and pins 8-1 (Rows 1-8) with the game turned on.

My results:
Pins 8-1 had 4.6V right through
Pins 18-11 had 12.5V right through
J209-2 had 11.7V

Plugged U20 back in and turned game back on:
J209-2 back to 15.7V

Any ideas...

I think I got it. I had checked under the playfield with both intersecting Column and Row for Switch 32...couldn't find anything. Did a Solonoid Test just as a stab in the dark. Solonoids 1-8 weren't working and that was verified by the lack of power at those coils. Turned out to be a loose wire on J207.

Still had the Opto (Switch 32) not registering along with Check Switches 1-32 on bootup. However, I was actually able to play a game! Once I had done that, as suggested in the Pinrepair Guide, my Switch 32 problem went away...cool. I had thought that because the Opto wasn't registering that the ball wouldn't kick up...wrong! The main problem was actually a loose high voltage wire to 8 Solonoids including the kick-up coil that feeds the shooter lane.

I checked the voltage at J209-2 this morning and it's back to 11.7V...weird. Whatever, I'm happy to be moving onto a new problem. Now I have to figure out why I'm getting the dreaded Check Switches 1-32 but that's okay, fixed this pig of a problem last night.

Thanks for the suggestions guys but I'll mark this one as Solved.