Let me clarify that- It HAS coils, they just don't work. Let me start at the beginning.

Friend brought me his Black Knight. It has rottendog Power supply and system board. It would start a game but the only coils that seem to work (in test mode) are the Bell, and the Coin Lockout - both in the cabinet. ALL of the rest of the controlled coils do NOT work at all. I noticed one of the coils for the drop targets had locked on and melted badly, so I replaced that. The flippers are the only other coils that seem to work on the playfield. Oh, the GI lights on the board are not working either.

I had left the game on, in the "middle" of a game - it'll score points from most switches, and the controlled lights seem to work, like bonus lights, and when you go over the right return lane, the spinner lights, and scores correctly when you spin the spinner.
So I had the game in the middle of a game and and was looking something up on the computer, but I heard the game start to go bannanas (sound wise) it started saying all sorts of things (It sounded a little like the test loop, "I", "Play", "Me", "fight" but not in any regular order) also, the bell started going on and off randomly. So I took the Rottendog board out and replaced it with what I know to be a good Black Knight set of system boards - I took them out of my working Black Knight - I hoped that would solve all the problems and it would work correclty, but apparently not. It doesn't seem to do the random sound and random bell thing, but It still has the same problem where none of the controlled coils will fire during a game, or in test mode.

Another strange thing- When you start a game, it plays the startup noise - "defend thy self knight" or one of those phrases, but then he goes silent! You can trigger all the twitches but he's mute other than that!

This thing with the coils - that the ones in the cabinet work, and NONE of th eones on the baord do seem to me to point towards a common issue- Maybe ground? I know Williams' games have a problem with F4, and if that blows you'll get NONE of the coils working on the board - but its not exactly that - Like I said those coils in the cabinet fire. It's all the coils on the board - No pop bumpers, no kickers, when you drain the ball it doesn't kick the ball up to the ball trough, nothing.

Any help would be really be appreciated!

-Pulling his Hair out with Mr. Black Knight

Their sound card worked- At least in test mode.

Ground straps appear to be in place, But I'll go back and double check that. It seems strange like I said that the coils in the cabinet seem to work fine- The Bell, and the Lockout mech. Those are the same switched coils like everything else on the playfield, except that they aren't working - which tells me that it must be something in common to all of them.. Like maybe a ground. I find it hard to belive that ALL the coils went out at the same time. Could that burnt/locked on coil have had somethign to do with it? I'm not sure but I'm GUESSING that the problem with the locked on coil must have been with a Q from the previous board since replaced with the Rottendog.... I'd like to plug his rottendog board into my game to make sure it functions properly - recall i said it was acting strangely, activating coils when they hadn't been activated, and starting speaking a bunch of sounds when that wasn't called for. Registering points when no switches were closed.

There was some problems with pinouts and connecters, but the ones that had been converted to non-IDE connectors are verified against the working game. (Boy it's nice to have one for reference that you KNOW works - and you don't have to go digging through manuals for a picture or something that has the correct wiring)

I'll test those voltages next time I have access to the game.

-Brian

Zacaj- I checked voltages on the board, and traced them up through the connectors, and there was nothing coming right from the driver board. I traced power back to the power supply, and found a couple of burnt connector pins. Repinned 3J3 and Solenoids started working. Except for the reset coil for lower right drop targets. I had replaced it with a Solenoid that did not belong in this game trying to make it work for now, but alas, Guess I'll be buying a new one. Why is it that no matter WHAT special part I'm looking for, Marco Specialties is always out of it!?

Now the rest of the craziness going on in this game....

First I guess I was looking at switch edges, and found maybe 3 switches that were so badly mis-adjusted that they were closed. Found a situation with a kicker, where once it started kicking, it would keep making it's own switch, and would never stop kicking! Fixed several stuck/closed switches.

NOW It reports several switches as being closed - even a non-existent/unusued switch, S-which tells me that there is a problem with the switch matrix. I examined all the switches it said were reported, but none of them are actually closed- Seems like these switch matrix problems are many times intermittent. Nice to find a situation where THESE SWITCHES ARE WRONG all the time! It reports 04, 12, 17, 18, 20, 28, 36, and 44 as being closed, but I don't see their switches as being closed - and like I said, one of those switches is Non-existent according to the book. All but two of these switches are on Row 4 of the switch Matrix. I guess that's a good place to start!

I'm feeling confident I'll dig through all these problems eventually!

-Brian