I just got this black hole in not too long ago, and it's a bit of a basket case. Too-many-pins hooked me up with a new small transformer (thanks Skip!), and voltages are good at the power supply.

I've done all the ground mods, and it still locks on all controlled solenoid as soon as I turn the power on. All the transistors seem to test out fine on the driver board and under the playfield. I tested all the diodes on the remote boards and coils as well, all test good.

I've already ordered a new all in one board from pascal janin, but I want to know if anyone has anything I can look at that might be an issue outside of the boards? Is it likely an mpu issue?

I've searched the web for answers but no one seems to report having every single controlled solenoid locking up at the start.

I should mention that I'm still testing this with the lower playfield out of the machine, but that shouldn't matter right?

Thanks for any input. I always get the strangest problems.

Thanks very much srcdube, you've given me a lot to think about and investigate. Much appreciated, and I'll see what I can find and report back.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will test the connection later and see if that's the culprit!

No luck. I cleaned all the connectors, have added the extra wires to the interconnect cable, and checked to make sure the boards were connecting properly which they are. Again, I've added ground connectors to the boards as recommended by Pinwiki and all transistors "seem" to test ok.

I just hope to heck these problems disappear with the new Pascal Janin all in one board, but honestly I'm not holding my breath.

The new all in one board is in and things are looking up, but not that far up, it still has issues.

The Ball release coil locks on when a game is started and it fires to let a ball out into the shooter lane. This in turn blows the 1amp slo blow F16. It connects to Q2 transistor mounted under the playfield, a 2n5875. The transistor seems to test out fine, but I still think it might be the problem. The schematics show a 1k resistor between the 2 wires on the transistor, (penciled in on schematics download from internet), and I don't have that on mine, does it need to be there?
Edit: reading further I found that it's a 4.7k resistor that goes on the base of the transistor? Sometimes the more I read the more confused I get lol, but I'll keep reading.

Also I don't have any sound. All I know about that is that there is indeed 30volts getting to the speech/sound board and I've reseated all the socketed chips. I get static when I adjust the volume knob inside the coin door. But I'm more worried about getting the coil to stop locking on for now.

I added a 4.7k resistor between the Base of the under-playfield transistor and the 24v line as suggested on Pinwiki, and the coil didn't fire at all. I'm going to order new transistors and go from there. I have a 1amp circuit breaker installed now so I can test without losing all my fuses. When I quickly grounded the non-banded lug side of the coil, the coil responded, but I knew there was power there because it does fire when I don't have the resistor on, it just locks and blows the fuse. The coil tested good too, I think it was around 15ohms, and it's a new diode.

Still no luck with this but I have some replacement parts in to try soon. Will keep going and report my progress, it just may be slow going due to RL workload. I try not to leave any threads unfinished, and if I do it probably means I lost the battle.

Thanks, I have installed all new bridge rectifiers and they test good. I haven't had a chance to do anything on it for a bit, but I'm going to start on it soon. I will get to the bottom of it sooner or later. This poor game has had a hard life, I hope to change that.

So I think I had the (pull up?) resistor hooked up wrong to the transistor under the playfield. It's been a long time and it hasn't blown the fuse on me, and that part is working well. The whole game is working well now really except for sound which Quench is helping me on in a different thread,
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/black-hole-no-sound/page/2#post-5147937

Also just had the displays show me Coil 8 Error = 2 and I haven't figured that one out yet. It happens at random.
Edit: I found out it was a wire that came off of the kicker coil. That fixed the Coil 8 error.