Hello,

I am having an issue with my BoP machine. About a third or so of the lights on the machine constantly flicker on and off when the machine is turned on. The issue persists for several minutes and then it goes away.

It is the right hand loop lights, the heart lights (except the billion flasher), the ball lock light as well as the four extra ball lights and the "One more time" light.

The lights behave normally when triggered, like if I light an extra ball, the light comes on and stays on and doesn't flicker. Or if I activate a loop light, they come on as they should and function normally until they turn off again, then they resume flickering.

When I got the machine it had an older version (L-3) of the games firmware on it, I upgraded it to L-6, but I think that actually made the issue worse. The bottom lights weren't flickering when it was on L-3.

There is a set of Pin Stadium lights on the machine, I tried disconnecting them to see if that was causing it, it didn't fix the problem.

All of the lights in the game are LEDs, except for the heart flasher which is an actual bulb. I am assuming that the fact that they are all LEDs has something to do with it, but I don't know what to do to correct the problem. And, as I said, if you turn the machine on and let it sit for 10-15 minutes the problem goes away completely and the lights behave normally until the next time the machine is power cycled. Then they immediately do it again.

It's kind of annoying and I am afraid that there might be something wrong with a component somewhere that needs to be addressed before it becomes a bigger issue.

Does anyone have any advice they can share?

Thanks,
RW

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I may have fixed the problem.

The electrical problems with the machine had been getting worse, more lights affected, lights flickering even when on now. And then all of a sudden the solenoid for the ball ejector intermittently stopped working. Sometimes it worked after a few seconds, sometimes it would make a humming noise but not actually launch the ball, sometimes it wouldn't work at all. I took it apart and noticed that, for one the last person didn't do a very good solder job, but also that the insulation around the coil had been torn off in one area by something (not sure what, I don't see anything that could have rubbed against it). The coil itself seemed to test good, and if I unwrapped the paper completely the coil looked brand new. So I put the paper back on and then wrapped electrical tape all around the bottom of the coil, where the paper didn't reach, and I wrapped more tape around the hole in the paper. Then I did a proper solder job on the leads. Put everything back together and tested it. Not only does the solenoid now work, but it seems that the majority of the odd lighting issues have gone away too. I suspect something must have been shorting somewhere intermittently or something like that.

Still not 100% sure what scraped the paper off the solenoid, I don't see anything that would have touched it.

We'll see if the problem with the lights stays fixed. I thought I fixed it once before and I was wrong...