Quoted from Pinkitten:

Thanks for the tips! I did discover the settings you can change with the 24 dip switches on the main mpu board in the head. It allows up to 25 credits saved, I think, so each time I play it I just open the coin door and manually add 20-25 credits. Free play for hours after that. Do most people play BH with 3 balls per game, or 5? That’s another setting in the dip switches. I’m guessing 3, but it’s such a hard game at first, maybe 5 is more reasonable for average players?

Quoted from shacklersrevenge:

I’m sure this has been covered before, so before I flip the deck and see for myself, anyone had two balls drain consecutively quick in the lower playfield and they just sit there and don’t go up the tube?
I have to reboot the game and then it recognizes something and kicks them up. This isn’t an issue if you drain one and then the other a few seconds later, just if both drain practically at the same time

Quoted from jasonbar:

Argh. Inconsistent problems are the funnest to diagnose.
- Using Ni-Wumpf MPU.
- All switches test fine in test mode using an actual ball. All switches react fine in-game.
- About 3/4 of the time, when I drain the lower PF I'll get the appropriate sound & light, then the ball will kick up the tube to the upper PF.
- About 1/4 of the time, I'll get the appropriate signals (i.e., the switch in the tube has been closed), ***BUT THE BALL DOES NOT KICK UP THE TUBE.***
- I bought the game reportedly working, so I believe that this was working OK. I didn't play it much before I did my shop job. I never saw this behavior, but it's not entirely impossible that it was there & I just didn't see it. About the only thing I did was unplug & plug in the 3 lower PF harness connectors a few times. I cleaned the pins.
- I cleaned the tube switch contacts. I don't want to bend the tube switch wireform up any higher b/c the kicker arm already grazes it (when there's no ball there holding the wireform down).
Related info:
- *Sometimes* if I shake the game silly, it will then kick the ball up. I'm not sure if this is jiggling the tube switch & opening/closing it again, then the game gets the message & kicks it up.
- Occasionally, the ball won't make it all the way up the tube. When it falls back down, it will sometimes try again but sometimes not.
- Somewhat more rarely, when I make the lower lock, the game will kick out another ball into the shooter lane, but then it will also kick out that lower locked ball, drain it, then kill the flippers to drain both balls.
- Tube coil is not original. Has non-pretty soldering at the lug.
- This may be a biggie, but I think the game can get by fine for now as long as I don't drain 2 balls in rapid succession in the lower PF: I'm missing the entire ball gate trough assembly downstairs! Ack! I see an orphaned green/slate/slate (I think) wire, but I haven't hunted for whatever else goes along w/ that missing assembly. I'm inclined to not focus on this missing stuff at the moment, because my intuition tells me that there's something else amiss. I checked in-game, & the first gate switch in the trough doesn't trigger the sound & lights indicating that the ball is about to kick up--the switch at the bottom of the tube is tied in to that logic.
Thanks,
-Jason
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Quoted from jasonbar:

Updates:
The plot (& the wiring) thickens:

Yes, I get that speech even when it doesn't kick the ball out.
Two power transistors? Heehee. See below.

Indeed. Rather different...
A-4893 is 2.1 ohm, 22AWG, 535 turns
My AL-23-800-01 is 5.3 ohm, 23AWG, 850 turns

Thank you. I have the schematics. Just starting to dig in, but...see below.

I got the topside ball gate mech for the lower PF trough (thank you, tdddddd!). Some degunking & it moves smoothly. I think it's the wrong coil--it's A-5195 but manual says A-16570.
My errors come from 1 ball draining during monoball.
I've neither bent up a wire nor run wires to the lug yet (see below), & the condition has worsened: tube ball lift coil fires less often now, & very often too weakly to get the ball up the tube.
---
Here's where it gets fun.
1. I have only 1 power transistor & bracket by the cutout.
2. Surprise--I have a pop bumper driver board controlling the tube ball lift coil. Haven't seen this one before, but I'm told it's not necessary cray-cray? (But it's not upgraded like the other 6 pop bumper boards were in this game).
I think, rather than try to put band-aids on this to get it running again, the scope of my work to get things squared away properly & robust is:
a) Get 2 correct coils
b) Maybe get the Cliffy EOS flipper coil bracket for the ball lift
c) Rewire the ball lift properly, or leave as-is w/ the pop bumper board?
d) If keeping the pop bumper board, give it the robustifying upgrades
e) Wire up the ball gate
f) Fabricate the bent wire ball pusher in the gate assembly
g) Get a pair of 2N5879 PNP transistors for the 2 coils, add the resistor upgrade, ditch the existing single 2N5875 transistor
On a good day, that's a tall task for me. Given all the rest I've got going on these days, I think I need to gather parts & find me a tech who can get this straightened out (heck given that the lower PF comes out so easily & isn't too terribly heavy or large, I suppose I could even ship it...).
Thanks for reading.
-Jason
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