Hi all, so I just noticed an issue on my Diner table last night which I only noticed because I had recorded my game play and during review of that footage I noticed two issues with the clock. First, when a game starts rather than spin counterclockwise and stop at 1pm, mine will spin clockwise and stop at 5pm. Then during gameplay when dine time is advanced, rather than spin clockwise an hour to add a million to the dine time value, it will spin counterclockwise and move back an hour. It's basically spinning the opposite way it's supposed to everytime.

So it's on warranty and all but I got the ok from my restorer dude to try and fix the issue myself as I'm getting more and more curious about tinkering with these games, so I figured I'd give it s shot so long as I don't butcher it of course and void my warranty. The clock mechanism is simple enough to remove and I took a look at it. There don't seem to be any cold solder joints as far as I can see, and I cleaned the opto just in case but the opto seems to be working well anyways since it always stops at exact hour marks, but the darned thing is just spinning backwards. Likewise the clock wheel doesn't seem to be slipping either. I thought maybe a polarity is reversed someplace perhaps, maybe that would make the clock spin backwards but I'm not sure how to check for that.

Aside from that there isn't much to the clock, the rest is just a small board of parts which all seem well soldered on there, so not sure what else to look for. As always any ideas are appreciated!

Yeah it's a basic motor without any serviceable parts on it, it's real small. There's a 6 pin connector connecting it to the rest of the electronics in the game, and there's another 6 pin cable connecting it to the clock itself. I thought maybe a connector was reversed but the connectors themselves can only be inserted one way because one pin is missing/blocked, and the numbers on the connector pins all match up to the numbers on the board itself. I'll add some pictures a bit later today to document the process. Perhaps two of the wires are inverted on one of the connectors, but I'm not sure what each wire does or how to even test that. Anyways I'll double check it all tonight and add some pics to this thread as well.

Couldn't find a pinout list in the manual alas. On page 69 it shows all the clock board parts and both P1 and P2 connectors, but not their pinouts. Maybe it's buried in there someplace though like in the schematics, have to keep looking.

Awesome thanks for that, yeah that definitely looks like the clock board. I also did find on page 98 of the schematics where it lists GRY-YEL being +12 volts to the clock motor, and BLK-YEL being ground for the clock motor. So using your picture which shows the pins on the P1 connector for 12v and ground, I can see if the colors of the wires are correct and I can use my multimeter to measure if it's actually getting +12v. If that all checks out ok then maybe its the A and B pins on P1 that are swapped. If I understand bipolar stepper motors correctly, flipping those two pins would reverse the direction of the motor. Maybe it's as simple as that, not sure, but at least I have something to explore, I'll follow up once I get around to testing these things although not likely tonight.

Yeah that is helpful, how about the pins on P2 labelled "coil 1" and "coil 2"? Could it be possible that wires "A" and "B" on P1 are wired correct, but those coil wires on P2 are the ones that are setup wrong? Incidentally I did check the 12v and ground on P1 and the colors were correct matching the schematic, and I did measure +12v to the clock board so that is all correct as well. So I need to focus on either the "A" and "B" wires on P1 as the possible culprit, or perhaps the "coil 1" and "coil 2" wires on P2 being the culprits. I'm not sure it would be ic failure because the board performs consistently, it always changes an hour when it's support to, resets when it's supposed to, etc, it's just going backwards. I suppose it could be the motor itself, I'll keep that as an option as well. I attached a pic of my P2 connector, if anyone out there has a Diner can you check if your wire colors match the order of mine?

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Do you need a special tool to pop that key-pin out?

Awesome, it's fixed! I removed that key-pin from P2 and plugged it in the other way, and now the clock works perfect. It spins to 1pm at the start and it advanced correctly 1 hour at a time by spinning clockwise, I tested it until it went all the way back around to noon. My guess is the issue is likely that the "A" and "B" pins are reversed on P1, I attached a pic of P1 and pins 4 and 5 which are the "A" and "B" pins are very similar in color so those are easy to mixup on a rebuild. Those are more of a pain to fix though so I'll leave my fix as is for now with a note on the clock of what I did. In the future I can have flip pins 4 and 5 on P1 for a more proper fix and plug in P2 correctly. For now my reversal of P2 solution will do. Thanks for all the help!

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I'll add one more picture just for documentation purposes, this is the back of the clock on my Diner. The P1 connector is on the right, that brings power, etc from the pinball table to the clock board and the P2 connector is on the left, that one connects the coils to the stepper motor on the clock. That left connector is the one I reversed.

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Go figure, maybe there's something in the water around here.

If you get a chance, could you take a pic of your P2 connector? I'm curious if your wire color order matches mine. If so then that would also point to the A/B pins being reversed on my P1 connector.

Ok, interesting. I took a more clear pic of my P1 connector and put both our P1 connectors side by side in the pic attached, mine on the left yours on the right. To my eye they look to be the same. It's hard to tell pins 4 and 5 because the colors are so similar, but in both cases the top one looks brown with some purple splashed on it. Seems to indicate that my P1 is actually correct. Checking our P2's is a different story, the colors are in totally different order as are the motors. It does make me wonder now if the stepper motor was changed on mine at some point and the P2 connector was just wired wrong, and me flipping P2 fixed it. I guess I'll leave my P1 connector alone then and just stick with my P2 reversal fix.

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Oh so that 3 digit number is the game code. Sweet, didn't know that. That explains it all then, there probably wasn't any bad wiring at all. I bet the old stepper motor died on Diner at some point and someone thought a motor from Jokerz was a direct drop in. It mostly is except I'm betting it's wired to go the opposite way compared to Diner. Hence flipping the connector sorts that issue. Well mystery solved, thanks so much everyone, was actually quite satisfying to resolve this.