For those of you with the Bally "Special Force" pinball (6803 hardware), I bet you noticed the Solenoid Expander Board AS-2518-66 is not shown or listed in the manual. If you need the schematic and parts list for it, I found those in the Eight Ball Deluxe manual. The board schematic is in the schematics section of the manual and the physical board layout and parts list is in the parts section.

In Special Force, Q25 (2N5060) on the control (CPU) board turns on the lamp next to the expander board which also turns on the relay on the expander board. Remember, this bulb has to work or else the expander board can't turn on the relay. So if the 555 bulb is burned out or missing, there's not going to be enough of a load for Q25 to latch on the MOC3011 optocoupler driver that energizes the relay.

Yes indeed! This is one of those rare instances where an incandescent bulb absolutely positvely MUST be there. An LED bulb simply does not draw enough of a load for the Q25 to properly latch. Without a properly working solenoid expander board, the wrong coils will be firing!

By the way, the AS-2518-66 solenoid Expander Board has been reproduced & improved. Here are some links to it:

https://ksarcade.net/bally-solenoid-expander-as-2518-66.html

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/AS-2518-66

http://mad-amusements.com/product.php?id_product=1456

http://pinpointelec.com/solenoid-expander.html

http://www.greatlakesmodular.com/products/pinball/blyseb.html

Here are pictures of an original AS-2518-66 Solenoid Expander Board.

SolExpand1.JPG

SolExpand2.JPG

SolExpand3.JPG

The "AS" part number is a Bally number.

The super long part numbers are Midway numbers.

Yeh, this is a clone of the original board and there is not much to go wrong. Sure you might have a bad one out of the box. Be sure to keep trying to contact the vendor since it's under warranty.

While you are waiting, it is definitely a good suggestion to resolder the connector pins on your old board.