I have an old Black knight machine - The kind with the system 6 power system still.. As part of preventative maintenance, I added Inkochnito's kit to fuse my full wave rectifiers (http://www.inkochnito.nl/). Everything was great, until I just turned on the machine, and I couldn't get it to play.. I had been having trouble with the start button switch input, which is what got me to start the bulletproof project in the first place, and so I immediately thought it was just not registering my start game, but then after running switch tests and realizing the switches were all OK, I noticed that it actually WAS starting, but that NONE of my solonoids were working at all. Additionally, the flippers were dead. Very long story short, I traced it back to a bad fuse on the newly added board.
The purpose of the fuses as I understand is primarily to prevent a fire in case of a shorted bridge rectifier. I have tested the rectifier on the add-on board, and it seems fine, so I'm curious about where else to consider looking for a root cause..
I haven't replaced the fuse yet, so I dont know if it was a one time occurrence, or if it's going to blow right away when I fix it, but I'm concerned that perhaps the other bulletproofing measures may have changed the load on those solenoids, and maybe 8 amps isn't the proper size for this fuse? I have replaced the driver transistors and the associated high wattage resistors with the jumpers as otherwise discussed on the bulletproofing thread, and I'm wondering if that might make my system take more amps than a "standard" configuration.
I'm just about to go out to radio shack and buy a handful of fuses but I was curious if I should try a higher amperage one? Normally I wouldnt consider replacing a fuse with a higher value one, especially as someone who had a house fire in 2014, but since these fuses are add-on protection that weren't even in the original game, I figure there's enough wiggle room to ask what the 8 amp value is based on?
Any opinions?
Thanks!
Steve