Hey guys, Hoping someone can help me troubleshoot an error I'm having with my Premier "Excalibur", a System 80b game.

We moved the machine yesterday, and today none of the drop target banks are resetting (it has 5 total banks) the drops are down and stay down. I entered the test menu and ran the tests, the solenoids for them don't fire - but the flippers, pop bumper, kickers, knocker are all OK. Also tested all the fuses on the power brick, and the 5 under the playfield, all OK. Tried reseating all the connectors to the boards and under the playfield, no change. Anyone have any advice on what may be causing this?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi Chris, thanks so much for trying to help. You saved one of my other Premier games a few years ago!

OK, so back to Excalibur - I ran the solenoid test, with the meter set to DC 200, black lead on the metal transformer case and red on one of the drop target solenoid wire-connectors. When it ran through the that particular one, the meter showed a tiny bit of activity, but negligible, all only the .1-.3 range, then nothing.

I tested the gameplay too - the game seemed to start correctly (flippers and pop bumper working, just no drop targets) but after a few targets hit, the game started repeating the target/sound/score over and over, repeatedly playing the sound and adding to the score. I turned it off at this point.

Thanks again for any advice you have.

-Fitz

Testing the knocker coil reads a steady 25v or so. Does that sound right?

Scanned a page from my manual here, is this the correct page? Had to split it in 2, as it did not all fit on the scanner.

Thanks!

ex2_(resized).jpg

ex1_(resized).jpg

OK, I pulled and tested all 3 of the fuses there, and they all are still good. I also tested continuity from the fuse to one of the solenoids not firing, and it was good.

Another thing I found: Looking around under the playfield, I spotted a disconnected wire. Looks like someone replaced the pop-bumper and cut the 2 wires leading through the pop up into the light inside. When they reconnected it, they did not reconnect it to the original wires on the harness - both are still there, cleanly cut (maybe they could not see them, or they were too small? I don't know why.) Anyway one side (purple/yellow/yellow - that's like 744 on the schematic) now has a jumper running over to another light connector. The other side (the ground side, I think - red/green/green - that's line 255) has a long jumper wire hanging loose, with a bit of solder on the end - so it looks like this end has broken loose from wherever they connected it. This broken line could not have caused the drops all to fail, could it? Or could it have shorted something when it came loose?

I think I should just remove the long jumpers they added and reconnect both wires to their correct cut ends (the wire color codes match). Any reason not to?

Thanks again for the advice. I can take pictures or video if required.