Hi All,

Just picked up a Black Hole - it was 90% working, a couple of switches needed adjusting and some mechanical coil issues sorted. Played a few games last night and it was all good. This morning on Christmas Day, thought we would have a few games with the kids and it would occasionally spit out 2 balls - this normally occurred on ball 3, but sometimes ball 2, never ball 1.

But then it seems to throw the game into a spin - if you were on a single player game and it spat out 2 balls, it would add a 2nd and sometimes 3rd player, (these displays were previously unlit when i started the 1 player game) - and i also noticed that when the game eventually finished, it seemed stuck in a bonus countdown/countup sequence - what i mean by that, is that even if you didn't get the ball in the lower playfield, and the end of the game of the last player, it would display a score on the lower playfield score and make the countdown sound - but it would never stop - the lower playfield display appearred to very quickly change from (for example) 8700 to 8800 back to 8700 - so there was just a flicker on the 100's digit - almost like it was building up and counting down at the same time, but stuck between 8700 and 8800.

So i wondered if it was a trough switch issue, pulled the apron off and observed things, but couldn't replicate the problem - balls appear to shoot cleanly up and out of the trough and the holding pin seems to work well. So put the apron back on.

Just played a 3 player game now, and on ball 3, same issue - spat 2 balls out, added a 4th player and wouldn't complete the bonus countdown (even though player 4 (who didn't exist) never got it down the lower playfield. Power cycled the machine, then played 5 single player games and it didn't occur again.

Any idea where to look - no idea as ive not worked on System 80 games before (quite comfortable with Classic Bally and Sterns and WPC machines though), whether its wiring, board or switch issue?

Yep, tried that - also nudged the machine around a bit during switch test (after reseating connectors) and couldn't get anything to activate that way.

Issue resolved. I finally got it to occur when i had the apron removed. What was happening, is the ball would shoot up from the outhole, and the switch past the one way gate was adjust a tad too high, and was pushing the occasional ball back and it was balanced under the one way gate - so the machine couldn't work out what was going on as neither of the outhole or trough switches were activated (at least in my mind thats how it is?) - adjusted the trough switch so it didn't stick up so much, and have had 20 games since with no issue.